Enlarge / Some seismic waves bounce off Mars’ core before reaching the InSight lander. (credit: Chris Bickel / Science ) We’ve learned a lot about our planet’s interior simply by tracking how the seismic energy released by earthquakes moves through or reflects off the different layers present beneath Earth’s surface. For over a Martian year, […]
NASA’s Mars helicopter has now completed nine flights. (credit: NASA) On Monday, NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter made its ninth and most ambitious flight yet. This time, the space agency said, the tiny flier took to the skies for 166.4 seconds and reached a maximum speed of 5 m/s. This is equivalent to 10 mph, or a […]
Enlarge / Venus’ thick atmosphere was photographed in ultraviolet light in 1979 by the Pioneer Venus Orbiter. (credit: NSSDCA Photo Gallery) Last year, a study made waves by suggesting a chemical that had been proposed as a potential indicator of life was present in the atmosphere of Venus. While the hellish conditions on the planet’s […]
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Enlarge / NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter is seen here in a close-up taken by Mastcam-Z, a pair of zoomable cameras aboard the Perseverance rover. (credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech) NASA has resolved the issues with its Ingenuity helicopter on the surface of Mars and is ready to fly. The space agency announced on Saturday that it will attempt […]
Enlarge (credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech) On Tuesday, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) hosted a press conference where it detailed the plans for the Ingenuity drone that hitched a ride to Mars attached to the underside of the Perseverance rover. The scientists and engineers behind the drone announced that they’ve now picked a site for what is expected […]
Enlarge / Perseverance’s two Mastcam-Z imagers (in the gray boxes) are part of the rover’s remote sensing mast. (credit: NASA) The seven minutes of terror are over. The parachute deployed; the skycrane rockets fired. Robot truck goes ping! Perseverance, a rover built by humans to do science 128 million miles away, is wheels-down on Mars. […]
Panoramic image of Mars taken by Perseverance on February 20, 2021. (credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech) Never before, in all of our millions of years, have humans directly observed a spacecraft landing on another planet. Until now. On Monday, NASA released a video (embedded below) that included several viewpoints from the descent of Mars Perseverance to the surface […]
Enlarge / This is a high-resolution still image, part of a video taken by several cameras as NASA’s Perseverance rover touched down on Mars. (credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech) NASA on Friday released new images of its Perseverance spacecraft approaching the surface of Mars and safely settling upon the red planet. The new photos included an arresting image […]
Enlarge / Perseverance has landed about two kilometers from a delta system, shown in the upper left of this image. In their first press conference following Perseverance’s successful landing on Mars, NASA and JPL scientists revealed some information on where the rover landed and what to expect for the next several days and weeks as […]