A group at Imperial College London have designed an architecture for a human mission to Mars. They use spin gravity during the trips to and from the Red Planet to prevent the health issues created by weightlessness. Plus take advantage of available materials, including food, water, waste and fuel, for radiation shielding. A system would be sent to the Mars surface ahead of
The crew would then return to Martian orbit in a pre-sent craft fuelled using ice from beneath the planet’s surface.
The project is in conjunction with a BBC program that will be broadcast this weekend:
Lacuna Passage is a story-driven exploration and survival game set on Mars. Not only do you get to play a realistic game based on the red planet, but the only areas you are able to explore are those that have imagery from our martian satellites or rovers. The terrain and texture you will see is taken from actual pictures of Mars!
A group at Caltech has been studying images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter of a 100-square-kilometer area with ridge-like features that lies next to a region called Aeolis Dorsa that has been speculated to be a dried-up ocean bottom. They see evidence that the features of the ridges match well that seen for channels of river deltas going into seas on earth. So this supports the possibility that there was in fact an ocean there long ago.
Comparison of exhumed delta in sedimentary rocks on Mars (left) with a modern
delta on Earth (right). On the left, a shaded relief map shows elevated, branching,
lobate features in Aeolis Dorsa, Mars, interpreted as resistant channel deposits that
make up an ancient delta. These layered, cross-cutting features are typical of
channelized sedimentary deposits on Earthand here are indicative of a
coastal delta environment.
Credit: DiBiase et al./Journal of Geophysical Research/2013 and USGS/NASA Landsat
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Perhaps the next NASA rover to go to Mars in 2020 will examine Aeolis Dorsa. Recently NASA released details of the design of the rover, which will be based on the Curiosity design. The scientific instruments will be chosen in a competitive process. The primary goal will be to look for signs of past life. The vehicle will also gather up samples that a future mission with a lander and return vehicle could take back to earth for closer examination.
This circular depression on the south polar ice cap is about four kilometers across. It first caught the eye of Mars explorers in the 70s, and they still debate whether it’s an impact crater or a collapse feature. The ‘Swiss cheese’ terrain consists of shallow pits where carbon dioxide ice has sublimated away. This landscape was imaged by the high-resolution camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on four separate occasions pictured here. From left to right: March 2013, May 2013, September 2007, and December 2012. Click to see at full size.
PASADENA, Calif. – NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity drove 135 feet (41 meters) on Tuesday, July 9, the third drive of a journey of many months from the “Glenelg” area to Mount Sharp.
Last week, the mission finished investigating science targets in the Glenelg area, about 500 yards (half a kilometer) east of where Curiosity landed. The mission’s next major destination is at the lower layers of Mount Sharp, about 5 miles (8 kilometers) southwest of Glenelg. The July 9 drive brought Curiosity’s odometry to about 325 feet (99 meters) since completing the Glenelg investigations and about 0.51 mile (0.95 kilometer) since landing on Mars in August 2012.
Mount Sharp, in the middle of Gale Crater, exposes many layers where scientists anticipate finding evidence about how the ancient Martian environment changed and evolved. At targets in the Glenelg area, where Curiosity worked for the first half of 2013, the rover found evidence for an ancient wet environment that had conditions favorable for microbial life. This means the mission already has accomplished its main science objective.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL designed and built the project’s Curiosity rover.
