The arm will be crucial for putting samples of soil or powdered rock into analytical instruments inside the rover.

A camera and spectrometer to be installed at the end of the arm will also examine rocks and soils in place.

The Mars Science Laboratory will launch from Florida in November or December 2011 and land in August 2012 at one of the most intriguing sites on Mars.

The landing site is still to be chosen from four finalists.

Once on Mars, Curiosity will study whether the landing region has ever had environmental conditions favorable for life and favorable for preserving evidence of life if it existed.

]]> Mon, 06 SEP 2010 14:07:21 AEST Pasadena CA (JPL) Sep 06, 2010 - Experiments prompted by a 2008 surprise from NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander suggest that soil examined by NASA's Viking Mars landers in 1976 may have contained carbon-based chemical building blocks of life.

"This doesn't say anything about the question of whether or not life has existed on Mars, but it could make a big difference in how we look for evidence to answer that question," said Chris McKay of NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.

McKay coauthored a study published online by the Journal of Geophysical Research - Planets, reanalyzing results of Viking's tests for organic chemicals in Martian soil.

The only organic chemicals identified when the Viking landers heated samples of Martian soil were chloromethane and dichloromethane - chlorine compounds interpreted at the time as likely contaminants from cleaning fluids. But those chemicals are exactly what the new study found when a little perchlorate - the surprise finding from Phoenix - was added to desert soil from Chile containing organics and analyzed in the manner of the Viking tests.

"Our results suggest that not only organics, but also perchlorate, may have been present in the soil at both Viking landing sites," said the study's lead author, Rafael Navarro-Gonzalez of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico City.

Organics can come from non-biological or biological sources. Many meteorites raining onto Mars and Earth for the past 5 billion years contain organics. Even if Mars has never had life, scientists before Viking anticipated that Martian soil would contain organics from meteorites.

"The lack of organics was a big surprise from the Vikings," McKay said. "But for 30 years we were looking at a jigsaw puzzle with a piece missing. Phoenix has provided the missing piece: perchlorate. The perchlorate discovery by Phoenix was one of the most important results from Mars since Viking."

Perchlorate, an ion of chlorine and oxygen, becomes a strong oxidant when heated. "It could sit there in the Martian soil with organics around it for billions of years and not break them down, but when you heat the soil to check for organics, the perchlorate destroys them rapidly," McKay said.

This interpretation proposed by Navarro-Gonzalez and his four co-authors challenges the interpretation by Viking scientists that Martian organic compounds were not present in their samples at the detection limit of the Viking experiment.

Instead, the Viking scientists interpreted the chlorine compounds as contaminants. Upcoming missions to Mars and further work on meteorites from Mars are expected to help resolve this question.

The Curiosity rover that NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission will deliver to Mars in 2012 will carry the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument provided by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. In contrast to Viking and Phoenix, Curiosity can rove and thus analyze a wider variety of rocks and samples.

SAM can check for organics in Martian soil and powdered rocks by baking samples to even higher temperatures than Viking did, and also by using an alternative liquid-extraction method at much lower heat.

Combining these methods on a range of samples may enable further testing of the new report's hypothesis that oxidation by heated perchlorates that might have been present in the Viking samples was destroying organics.

One reason the chlorinated organics found by Viking were interpreted as contaminants from Earth was that the ratio of two isotopes of chlorine in them matched the three-to-one ratio for those isotopes on Earth. The ratio for them on Mars has not been clearly determined yet. If it is found to be much different than Earth's, that would support the 1970s interpretation.

If organic compounds can indeed persist in the surface soil of Mars, contrary to the predominant thinking for three decades, one way to search for evidence of life on Mars could be to check for types of large, complex organic molecules, such as DNA, that are indicators of biological activity.

"If organics cannot persist at the surface, that approach would not be wise, but if they can, it's a different story," McKay said.

]]> Mon, 06 SEP 2010 14:07:21 AEST Washington (UPI) Sep 3, 2010 - New analysis of data sent from Mars 34 years ago showing there was no organic material on the planet suggests maybe there was after all, U.S. scientists say.

Researchers say the result from re-examining findings of the 1976 Viking mission does not bring scientists closer to discovering life on Mars, but it does increase likelihood that life exists, or once existed, on the planet, The Washington Post reported.

The findings demonstrate the risk of "false negatives" in space exploration based on limitations of the equipment used and on scientists' assumptions about conditions beyond Earth, Mary Voytek, senior scientist for astrobiology at NASA, said

"We can now say there is organic material on Mars, and that the Viking organics experiment that didn't find any had most likely destroyed what was there during the testing," said Rafael Navarro-Gonzalez of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, who performed a re-creation of the original testing.

Researchers replicated the Viking mission with soil from the most Mars-like environment on Earth -- the Atacama Desert in Chile -- and heated the sample in the same way it was heated by the Viking instruments on Mars.

The small amount of organic material known to be in the Atacama soil was detectable low temperatures, but was broken up into water and carbon dioxide when heated.

But the tests always produced other evidence of organic material, evidence discounted in the original Viking mission.

"The big lesson here, and the great importance of this finding, is that we have to know what we're looking for and how we can find it," Voytek said. "It shows that we could actually uncover life on Mars and not know it."

]]> Mon, 06 SEP 2010 14:07:21 AEST Pasadena CA (JPL) Aug 30, 2010 - One of the instruments on a 2016 mission to orbit Mars will provide daily maps of global, pole-to-pole, vertical distributions of the temperature, dust, water vapor and ice clouds in the Martian atmosphere.

The joint European-American mission, ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, will seek faint gaseous clues about possible life on Mars. This instrument, called the ExoMars Climate Sounder, will supply crucial context with its daily profiling of the atmosphere's changing structure.

The European Space Agency and NASA have selected five instruments for ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter. The European Space Agency will provide one instrument and the spacecraft. NASA will provide four instruments, including ExoMars Climate Sounder, which is coming from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Two of the other selected instruments are spectrometers - one each from Europe and the United States - designed to detect very low concentrations of methane and other important trace gases in the Martian atmosphere.

"To put the trace-gas measurements into context, you need to know the background structure and circulation of the atmosphere," said JPL's Tim Schofield, principal investigator for the ExoMars Climate Sounder.

"We will provide the information needed to understand the distribution of trace gases identified by the spectrometers. We'll do this by characterizing the role of atmospheric circulation and aerosols, such as dust and ice, in trace-gas transport and in chemical reactions in the atmosphere affecting trace gases."

The ExoMars Climate Sounder is an infrared radiometer designed to operate continuously, day and night, from the spacecraft's orbit about 400 kilometers (about 250 miles) above the Martian surface. It can pivot to point downward or toward the horizon, measuring temperature, water vapor, dust and ices for each 5-kilometer (3-mile) increment in height throughout the atmosphere from ground level to 90 kilometers (56 miles) altitude.

Schofield and his international team have two other main goals for the investigation, besides aiding in interpretation of trace-gas detections.

One is to extend the climate mapping record currently coming from a similar instrument, the Mars Climate Sounder, on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been working at Mars since 2006.

The orbital geometry of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission enables this sounder to record atmospheric profiles only at about 3 p.m. and 3 a.m. during the Martian day, except near the poles. The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter will fly an orbital pattern that allows the spacecraft to collect data at all times of day, at all latitudes.

"We'll fill in information about variability at different times of day, and we'll add to the number of Mars years for understanding year-to-year variability," said Schofield.

"The most obvious year-to-year change is that some years have global dust storms and others don't. We'd like to learn whether there's anything predictive for anticipating the big dust storms, and what makes them so variable from year to year."

A third research goal is to assist future landings on Mars by supplying information about the variable density of the atmosphere. At a chosen landing site, atmospheric density can change from one day to the next, affecting a spacecraft's descent.

"We want to provide background climatology for what to expect at a given site, in a given season, for a particular time of day, and also nearly real-time information for the atmospheric structure in the days leading up to the landing of a spacecraft launched after 2016," said Schofield.

The 2016 ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter is the first in a series of planned Mars mission collaborations of the European Space Agency and NASA.

A variable presence of small amounts of methane in the Martian atmosphere has been indicated from orbital and Earth-based observations. A key goal of the mission is to gain a better understanding of methane and other trace gases that could be evidence about possible biological activity. Methane can be produced both biologically and without life.

Besides the two spectrometers and the climate sounder, the orbiter's selected instruments include two NASA-provided imagers: a high-resolution, stereo, color imager, and a wide-angle, color, weather camera.

The orbiter will also serve as a communications relay for missions on the surface of Mars and will carry a European-built descent-and-landing demonstration module designed to operate for a few days on the Mars surface. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, manages NASA's roles in the mission.

]]> Mon, 06 SEP 2010 14:07:21 AEST Bonn, Germany (SPX) Aug 30, 2010 - Orcus Patera is an enigmatic elliptical depression near Mars's equator, in the eastern hemisphere of the planet. Located between the volcanoes of Elysium Mons and Olympus Mons, its formation remains a mystery. Often overlooked, this well-defined depression extends approximately 380 by 140 kilometres in a north-northeast to south-southwest direction.

It has a rim that rises up to 1800 metres above the surrounding plains, while the floor of the depression lays 400 to 600 metres below the surroundings.

The High-Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter acquired the images during Mars Express orbits 2216 and 2238.

The images show an area centred at approximately 14 degrees N / 177 degrees E, and have a ground resolution of about 30 metres per pixel. The camera is operated by the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR).

The term 'patera' is used for deep, complex or irregularly shaped volcanic craters such as the Hadriaca Patera and Tyrrhena Patera at the north-eastern margin of the Hellas impact basin. However, despite its name and the fact that it is positioned near volcanoes, the actual origin of Orcus Patera remains unclear.

Aside from volcanism, there are a number of other possible origins. Orcus Patera may be a large and originally round impact crater, subsequently deformed by compressive forces.

Alternatively, it could have formed after the erosion of aligned impact craters. However, the most likely explanation is that it was made in an oblique impact, when a small body struck the surface at a very shallow angle, perhaps less than five degrees above the horizontal.

The existence of tectonic forces at Orcus Patera is evident from the presence of the numerous 'graben', rift-valley-like structures that cut across its rim. Up to 2.5 kilometres wide, these graben are oriented roughly east-west and are only visible on the rim and the nearby surroundings.

Within the Orcus Patera depression itself, the large graben are not visible, probably having been covered by later deposits. But smaller graben are present, indicating that several tectonic events have occurred in this region and also suggesting that multiple episodes of deposition have taken place.

The occurrence of 'wrinkle ridges' within the depression proves that not only extensional forces, as would be needed to create graben, but also compressive forces shaped this region. Wind-driven processes probably formed the dark shapes near the centre of the depression, where dark material excavated by small impact events in the depression has been redistributed.

However, the presence of graben and wrinkle-ridges has no bearing on the origin of Orcus Patera, as both can be found all over Mars. The true origin of Orcus Patera remains an enigma.

The High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) experiment on the European Space Agency's Mars Express mission is led by the Principal Investigator (PI) Prof. Dr Gerhard Neukum, who was also responsible for the technical design of the camera. The science team of the experiment consists of 45 Co-Investigators from 32 institutions and 10 nations.

The camera was developed at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) under the leadership of the PI, G. Neukum, and built in cooperation with industrial partners (EADS Astrium, Lewicki Microelectronic GmbH and Jena-Optronik GmbH).

The experiment on Mars Express is operated by the DLR Institute of Planetary Research, through ESA/ESOC. The systematic processing of the HRSC image data is carried out at DLR. The scenes shown here were processed by the PI-group at the Institute for Geosciences of the Freie Universitat Berlin in cooperation with the DLR Institute of Planetary Research, Berlin.

]]> Mon, 06 SEP 2010 14:07:21 AEST Tucson (UPI) Aug 27, 2010 - A NASA spacecraft with a high-resolution camera has photographed a young Mars crater and found frozen water in it, scientists say.

A recent image from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter HiRISE camera shows water ice at the bottom of a 20-foot-wide crater on the planet's surface, SPACE.com reported Friday.

Researchers suspect the crater in the northern hemisphere formed recently, no earlier than April 2004, Nathan Bridges, a HiRISE science team member at the University of Arizona, said.

The crater appeared in photos taken between June 6 and July 7.

"It's showing we're getting ice pretty far south," Bridges said. "As we continue to look at these things it's a good way to determine where shallow ice is on Mars."

The ice patch covers an area of up to 20 square feet. It "is probably at the same depth and has a similar origin to that excavated by the Phoenix lander back in 2008," he said.

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander landed in the Martian arctic in May 2008 and found evidence of water ice just beneath the surface.

During the next Martian summer "the HiRISE team will likely take additional pictures to check up on the crater," Bridges said.

]]> Mon, 06 SEP 2010 14:07:21 AEST Pasadena CA (JPL) Aug 27, 2010 - Opportunity has paused in her trek toward Endeavour crater to examine an exposed outcrop of rock that is of interest to the science team.

On Sol 2336 (Aug. 19, 2010), the rover performed a 7-meter (23-foot) backward turn with a forward bump to approach the outcrop contact. On the next sol, Opportunity performed a short turn to place surface targets within reach of the robotic arm (Instrument Deployment Device, IDD).

On Sol 2339 (Aug. 23, 2010), Opportunity conducted a relay test pass with Mars Express as part of a regular checkout of the Mars Express relay.

On the next sol, the rover used the robotic arm to collect a microscopic imager (MI) mosaic of a surface target, called "Clarin Beach," which was followed by a placement of the alpha particle X-ray spectrometer (APXS) on the same target for integration.

On Sol 2341 (Aug. 25, 2010), Opportunity continued the investigation of this outcrop contact, collecting another set of microscopic imager mosaics of new targets and then a placement of the APXS on a target called "Duero Beach."

As of Sol 2340 (Aug. 24, 2010), solar array energy production was 562 watt-hours with atmospheric opacity (Tau) of 0.334 and the solar array dust factor of 0.7285.

Total odometry as is 22,647.85 meters (22.65 kilometers, or 14.07 miles)

]]> Mon, 06 SEP 2010 14:07:21 AEST Huntsville AL (SPX) Aug 26, 2010 - It spreads, it mutates, it refuses to die. For the seventh year in a row, the Mars Hoax is infecting email boxes around the world. Passed from one reader to another, the message states that on August 27th Mars will approach Earth and swell to the size of a full Moon. "NO ONE ALIVE TODAY WILL EVER SEE THIS AGAIN," the email declares--always in caps.

News flash: It's not true.

Here are the facts. On August 27, 2010, Mars will be 314 million km from Earth, about as far away as it can get. Mars will shine in the western sky after sunset like a tiny red star of ordinary brightness. If you didn't know it was there, you probably wouldn't notice. The origins of the Hoax can be traced back to 2003 when Mars really did swell to unusual proportions.

On August 27th of that year, Mars came within 56 million km of Earth-the nearest it has been in 60,000 years. People marveled at the orange brilliance of Mars in the night sky and crowded around telescopes for clear views of the planet's towering volcanoes, ruddy plains and glistening polar ice caps. At the height of the display, Mars was about 75 times smaller than the full Moon.

That's when "the virus" was born.

Someone, somewhere, reasoned as follows: If Mars is 75 times smaller than the Moon, then magnifying it 75 times should make it equal to the Moon. Early versions of the Hoax encouraged readers to get out their telescopes and insert a 75x eyepiece: "At a modest 75 times magnification," the message stated, "Mars will look as big as the full Moon to the naked eye."

Soon, the Hoax was vectoring around the internet, making copies of itself and mutating. Advanced versions of the virus, sleeker and less wordy than its ancestors, omitted the magnification and simply stated, "Mars will look as big as the full Moon to the naked eye!"

Before long, the year was omitted, too. August 27, 2003, became August 27, and the Hoax became immortal. Indeed, years of stories contradicting the Hoax have failed to stamp it out. This is the fourth vaccination by Science@NASA alone.

Tolerant readers point out that the Mars Hoax is not really a hoax, because it is not an intentional trick. The original composer probably believed everything he or she wrote in the message. If so, even the name of the Mars Hoax is wrong!

Here's what you should do on August 27th. Go outside at sunset and face west. The bright light you see shining through the twilight is lovely Venus. Grab a pair of binoculars and scan the sky around Venus. A few degrees to the right, you'll come across a little orange star-like object. That is Mars.

Now go back inside and delete that email.

]]> Mon, 06 SEP 2010 14:07:21 AEST Washington DC (SPX) Aug 23, 2010 - Mars. Roman god of war. The Red Planet. From the perennial Mars hoax to Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, no other body in our solar system has so captured the human imagination. Throughout history mankind has gazed into the night sky wondering what civilizations awaited those who landed on the Red Planet's surface. The novels of Burroughs and others tout the planet's allure and films have warned humanity of its dangers.

In 1965, the Mariner 4 spacecraft sent the first images of another planet to waiting scientists on Earth. Since that image, the Red Planet has revealed a world strangely familiar, yet challenging. Each time scientists feel close to understanding Mars, new discoveries send them back to the drawing board to revise existing theories.

In the 35 years since NASA launched Viking 1 on Aug. 20, 1975, the ambitious mission only whetted the scientific world and public's enthusiasm for future space exploration.

In the ensuing years, NASA has launched the Phoenix Mars Lander, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Exploration Rovers, among others. Perhaps the most successful of these missions is Mars Exploration Rovers. Launched in June and July 2003, respectively, Spirit and Opportunity landed on Mars each for a 90-day mission that continues after more than 6 years.

For centuries, scientists wondered if Mars might be covered with vegetation - or even inhabited by intelligent beings. Today, we know Mars to be quite different. It is a frozen desert world with now silent volcanoes and deep canyons. Polar ice caps expand and contract with the Martian seasons.

While the story began years earlier, it culminated in August and September 1975 with the launch of two large, nearly identical spacecraft from Cape Canaveral, Fl. Vikings 1 and 2, named for the fearless Nordic explorers of Earth, finally give humans a close-up look at this alien world.

Viking 1 and 2, each consisting of an orbiter and a lander, became the first space probes to obtain high resolution images of the Martian surface; characterize the structure and composition of the atmosphere and surface; and conduct on-the-spot biological tests for life on another planet.

Among the discoveries about Mars over the years, one stands out above all others: the possible presence of liquid water, either in its ancient past or preserved in the subsurface today.

Water is key because almost everywhere water is found on Earth, so is life. If Mars once had liquid water, or still does today, it's compelling to ask whether any microscopic life forms could have developed on its surface.

Viking 1 arrived at Mars on June 19, 1976. On July 20, 1976, the Viking 1 lander separated from the orbiter and touched down at Chryse Planitia. Viking 2 was launched Sept. 9, 1975, and entered Mars orbit Aug. 7, 1976. The Viking 2 lander touched down at Utopia Planitia on Sept. 3, 1976.

]]> Mon, 06 SEP 2010 14:07:21 AEST Washington (UPI) Aug 19, 2010 - Researchers say if life existed on Mars, the best place to look today is a region rich in what they say were mud volcanoes spewing sediment from underground.

An area of the planet's northern plains called Acidalia Planita contains thousands of the circular mounds, formed from ancient sediment that might contain evidence of possible past or present life, Astrobiology magazine reports.

"If there was life on Mars, it probably developed in a fluid-rich environment," Dorothy Oehler of the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science Directorate at NASA's Johnson Space Center said.

"Mud volcanoes themselves are an indicator of a fluid-rich subsurface, and they bring up material from relatively deep parts of the subsurface that we might not have a chance to see otherwise," she said.

She and her colleagues estimate there may be as many as 40,000 mud volcanoes in the Acidalia region.

Scientists first observed the mounds in Acidalia using imagery obtained from the Viking mission in the late 1970s.

U.S. researcher Kenneth Tanaka was one of the first to suggest they were mud volcanoes.

"I also thought that these features, which also occur elsewhere in the northern plains of Mars, were good places to search for signs of life," Tanaka, a scientist at the Astrogeology Science Center of the U.S. Geological Survey, said.

]]> Mon, 06 SEP 2010 14:07:21 AEST Subscribe to our daily selection of space, military, environment and energy newsletters responseText http://visitor.constantcontact.com/manage/optin/ea?v=0016gbbKsaiGSpQFojVO8ZoHw%3D%3D