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Updates from NASA’s Rovers and ESA’s Mars Express

March 8, 2004  Darmstadt, Germany

European Space Agency (ESA)

Beagle 2 Video Shows Bright Object

European scientists said today they are examining a strange blot of an unidentified object in the same frame with its Beagle 2 Mars lander photographed right after the lander separated from its mothership. Beagle 2 was supposed to have landed and operated on December 25, 2003, but there has been only silence and its fate is unknown.

Mark Sims, ESA's Beagle 2 Mission Manager, is trying to figure out if an image of a bright spot on the shady side of the lander, and another bright spot on Beagle 2 are results of image processing or could be an event that might have affected Beagle 2's trajectory. Sims said, "The bright object and the glint on the side of Beagle 2 may be nothing, they may be everything."

 

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Part 3: Mars, A Sulfate Salty Planet – Could It Have Sulfate-Loving Microbes?

Mars and deep gash of Valles Marinaris, largest canyon in the solar system,by the Hubble Space Telescope.
Mars and deep gash of Valles Marinaris, largest canyon in the solar system,by the Hubble Space Telescope.

March 5, 2004  Pasadena, California - When the Opportunity rover's rock abrasion tool (RAT) drilled a hole in a piece of Martian bedrock called "McKittrick" in late February, NASA/JPL scientists were surprised that the sulfur content jumped up four times higher than the amount registered on the surface of the rock. When the rover moved over to another piece of bedrock called "Guadalupe," the sulfur amount jumped up to five times more than measured in the soil. At this week's NASA press conference in Washington, D. C., respected geochemist, Benton C. Clark, member of the Mars Explorer Rover (MER) science team and Chief Scientist of Space Exploration at Lockheed Martin said, "This supposed rock now looks like it is a chemical sediment." Sedimentation of high concentrations of sulfur and sulfate salts on earth means solution in water, the water evaporated, and left the salts.

 

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Part 2: Scientific Challenge of Identifying Substances in the Martian World

Mars, with its icy poles, photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope.
Mars, with its icy poles, photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope.

March 3, 2004  Pasadena, California - At the March 2, 2004, NASA press conference in Washington, D. C., I learned from German geologist, Goestar Klingelhoefer, Ph.D., that his Mossbauer spectrometer needs an area of about 1.5 centimeters in order to get accurate readings about iron and other elements. Very small objects such as the many unidentified spherules, or "blueberries," at the Opportunity Meridiani Planum site are too small for the Mossbauer to get an accurate reading on one, or even a few. The spherule diameters range from 1 to 5 millimeters. To date, what those mysterious little balls are made of is still a mystery.So, in the next couple of weeks, it is hoped that the Opportunity rover can put its robotic arm and various sensors - including the Mossbauer - down against a concentration of the spherules. The idea is that the instruments would then have a dense, larger area in which to take measurements.

 

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Opportunity Grinds Bedrock; Spirit Ready to Grind “Humphrey”

Left: Spirit rover approaches big Martian rock called "Humphrey" to dust off in triad pattern and analyze before grinding. Right: Triad pattern after Spirit's dusting shows dark rock beneath lighter dust. Images by Front Hazard Camera Non-linearized Full frame EDR acquired on Sol 55 of Spirit's mission to Gusev Crater at approximately 13:48:37 Mars local solar time. Image credit: NASA/JPL.
Left: Spirit rover approaches big Martian rock called "Humphrey" to dust off in triad pattern and analyze before grinding. Right: Triad pattern after Spirit's dusting shows dark rock beneath lighter dust. Images by Front Hazard Camera Non-linearized Full frame EDR acquired on Sol 55 of Spirit's mission to Gusev Crater at approximately 13:48:37 Mars local solar time. Image credit: NASA/JPL.

March 1, 2004  Pasadena, California - Nasa reports that the Spirit rover: "...used its rock abrasion tool for brushing the dust off three patches of a rock named "Humphrey," during its 55th sol on Mars, ending at 5:53 p.m. Saturday, PST. Before applying the wire-bristled brush, the rover inspected the surface of the rock with its microscope and with its alpha particle X-ray spectrometer, which identifies elements that are present. Brushing three different places on a rock one right after another was an unprecedented use of the rock abrasion tool, designed to provide a larger cleaned area for examining.

 

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Is There Liquid Water on Martian Surface?

OMEGA, the combined Mars Express camera and infrared spectrometer, observed the southern polar cap of Mars on January 18, 2004, as seen on all three bands. Left: H2O, water ice. Middle: CO2, carbon dioxide. Right: Visible image of Martian south pole. Images credit: European Space Agency (ESA).
OMEGA, the combined Mars Express camera and infrared spectrometer, observed the southern polar cap of Mars on January 18, 2004, as seen on all three bands. Left: H2O, water ice. Middle: CO2, carbon dioxide. Right: Visible image of Martian south pole. Images credit: European Space Agency (ESA).
South Pole of Mars - Is there melt in the water and carbon dioxide ice? Image courtesy Malin Space Science Systems.
South Pole of Mars - Is there melt in the water and carbon dioxide ice? Image courtesy Malin Space Science Systems.
North and south poles of Mars are icy. Photo courtesy Hubble Space Telescope.
North and south poles of Mars are icy. Photo courtesy Hubble Space Telescope.

February 23, 2004  Pasadena, California - The stated goal of the Mars rover missions is to look for evidence of water that might once have flowed in rivers, pooled in lakes, or even created an ocean on the red planet. Photographs like the branching delta below taken by the Mars Orbiter Camera suggest a large flow of water.

 

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New Form of Mad Cow Disease Resembles Human Creuzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD)

British cow infected by deadly misshapen proteins called prions which cause "Mad Cow" disease, also known as Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE). Cow brain tissue on right is filled with microscopic holes like a sponge, produced by the deaths of brain cells. Photographs courtesy www.mad-cow.org.
British cow infected by deadly misshapen proteins called prions which cause "Mad Cow" disease, also known as Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE). Cow brain tissue on right is filled with microscopic holes like a sponge, produced by the deaths of brain cells. Photographs courtesy www.mad-cow.org.
Left: is the normal prion protein, PrP-C. Right: is the abnormal, misshapen PrP-SC. These diagrams are from Huang, Z., Prusiner, Stanley B. and Cohen, Fred E. from "Structures of Prion Proteins and Conformational Models for Prion Diseases in Prions," (ed. S.B. Prusiner) Berlin: Springer-Verlag, © 1996.
Top: is the normal prion protein, PrP-C. Bottom: is the abnormal, misshapen PrP-SC. These diagrams are from Huang, Z., Prusiner, Stanley B. and Cohen, Fred E. from "Structures of Prion Proteins and Conformational Models for Prion Diseases in Prions," (ed. S.B. Prusiner) Berlin: Springer-Verlag, © 1996.

February 19, 2004  San Francisco, California - "Mad cow" disease once thought to be confined to England has spread to other countries the past few years, including most recently herds in Canada and Washington State. And this week came another disturbing discovery: Italian researchers have found a second type of deadly prion disease in cattle that closely resembles the prion proteins that sporadically and spontaneously attack and kill humans in what is called Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, or CJD. That means controlling what goes into cattle feed won't stop all mad cow disease - and that there are even more deadly prions in the food chain than anyone knew until now.

 

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Update On Mars with Cornell Astronomer Steve Squyers, Principal Investigator on the Mars Rover Missions

February 20, 2004  Pasadena, California - Only one month ago, the Mars Rover called Spirit started working inside the Gusev crater and extended its robotic arm for the first time toward that large pyramid-shaped rock, "Adirondack," to find out what it was made of.

Big "Adirondack" rock that was Spirit's first test of its Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT). Turned out to be dark volcanic basalt under a layer of the reddish Martian dust. Image credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell.
Big "Adirondack" rock that was Spirit's first test of its Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT). Turned out to be dark volcanic basalt under a layer of the reddish Martian dust. Image credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell.

The answer is dark volcanic basalt beneath a dusty coating of red iron dust. In fact, many rocks in the Gusev crater seem to be basalt and scientists are trying to figure out if they came from a volcanic eruption IN the crater? Or were carried by a river of water into the crater long ago? Or maybe were even blown into the crater by strong Martian winds?

 

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Distorted Distance Perspective in Martian Rover Camera Images

Actual length of the entire bedrock outcrop is only 50 feet long and the distance from the outcrop to the small, white, unidentified object at the bottom of the frame is no more than about 14 feet. The small "horned" object, according to Prof. James Rice, is about "the size of a man's fist." Original Opportunity panoramic image credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell.
Actual length of the entire bedrock outcrop is only 50 feet long and the distance from the outcrop to the small, white, unidentified object at the bottom of the frame is no more than about 14 feet. The small "horned" object, according to Prof. James Rice, is about "the size of a man's fist." Original Opportunity panoramic image credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell.

February 18, 2004  Pasadena, California - The NASA/JPL Martian rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, each came down near the Martian equator about 6,600 miles apart protected inside many inflated airbags. Each airbag was about 13 feet (4 meters) in diameter and had a stitched pattern of a ring with lines radiating from it. The idea was that each lander would be dropped from its orbiting spacecraft and fall to a bouncing landing inside the airbags. Soon after Opportunity came to rest on January 25, 2004, the rover's panoramic camera took a 360 degree image of the shallow crater surrounding it on the Meridiani Planum near the Martian equator.

 

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