Mars orbiter image shows Opportunity Rover

February 19, 2014 TopSpacer

[Reposting after the original somehow got deleted.] Here’s another great photo from the HiRISE camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter :

Opportunity Rover on Valentine’s Day 2014

This is the latest HiRISE image of Opportunity rover at Solander Point, where it spent a few weeks investigating Pinnacle rock (the “jelly donut”) that was flipped over by the rover wheel.

We planned this image when this “new” rock was first seen; one hypothesis was that a recent impact deposited the rock. We see no obvious signs of a very recent crater in our image, but a careful comparison to prior images might reveal subtle changes (besides the rover position).

Changes in this region of Mars might be most likely from the action of wind (there are active sand dunes on the floor of Endeavour Crater), but new impacts could occur anywhere. The rover is located in the exact center of the color cutout.

Written by: Alfred McEwen (19 February 2014)

Activism, Contests and Games, Space participation

31 student teams to compete in Mars Society’s University Rover Challenge

February 19, 2014 TopSpacer

The Mars Society gets a good response to their University Rover Challenge contest:

URC Registration Sets New Record with 31 Student Teams Set to Compete

The Mars Society is pleased to announce that 31 student teams from six countries and four continents have officially registered for the 2014 University Rover Challenge (URC), setting a new participation record for the annual international rover competition. Countries represented this year include the United States, India, Egypt, Poland, Canada and Bangladesh.

A sampling of some of the participating universities include: Cornell University, Warsaw University of Technology, Yale University, Cairo University, Częstochowa University of Technology, University of Michigan, Military Institute of Science & Technology and York University. To view the full list of schools involved in the URC, please click here.

Scheduled for May 29-31, 2014, the URC is the world’s premier robotics competition for college students. Held annually in the desert of southern Utah, URC challenges student teams to design and build the next generation of Mars rovers that will one day work alongside astronauts exploring the Red Planet. Launched in 2006, the URC consistently draws an international field of the most talented and promising science, engineering and computer science students.

“In 2013, we shattered every previous URC milestone and had our winning team from Bialystok University of Technology score an almost unthinkable 493 points out of 500. For 2014 our registered field has more than doubled over last year, and we are eager to welcome many new teams to the competition. Everybody involved in the competition is getting excited. 2014 is going to be an incredible year for URC!”, said URC Director Kevin Sloan.

To view regular updates about the URC competition, please visit our web site or Facebook page.

Space Policy

Space policy roundup – Feb.19.14

February 19, 2014 TopSpacer

Today’s selection of space policy/politics related links:

Some space policy related webcasts:

Mars, Multiple media, Space Science

Sand dunes on Mars fly in formation

February 19, 2014 TopSpacer

There are lots of weird surface features seen on Mars in images taken by the orbiters. Here is one of the weirder ones:

Martian Dunes Flying in Formation

Migratory birds and military aircraft often fly in a V-shaped formation. The “V” formation greatly boosts the efficiency and range of flying birds, because all except the first fly in the upward motion of air — called upwash — from the wingtip vortices of the bird ahead.

In this image of a dune field on Mars in a large crater near Mawrth Vallis, some of the dunes appear to be in a V-shaped formation. For dune fields, the spacing of individual dunes is a function of sand supply, wind speed, and topography.

This image was acquired by the HiRISE camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on Dec. 30, 2013. The University of Arizona, Tucson, operates the HiRISE camera, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona
Caption: Alfred McEwen