Mars Archives - The Silver Ink

DARPA to use genetically modify organisms to terraform Mars

June 27, 2015 By Dave Smith Leave a Comment

The U.S.’s defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA said that it began a program designed to genetically modify living organisms into surviving on planet Mara and eventually terraform it.

Past projects of colonizing Mars involved sending robotic crafts to Red Planet to set up bases that scientists can later use it, and this time the engineers plan to turn the barren and cold world into sustainable environment for human life to thrive.

Living and performing experiments from close environments or with the astronaut suit on seem not to satisfy the Pentagon. Spokesperson from DARPA said that while terraforming the planet may be lengthy and expensive process it is no longer a Sci-Fi story.

Alicia Jackson from the Biological Technologies Office at the Pentagon’s DARPA said, “For the first time, we have the technological toolkit to transform not just hostile places here on Earth, but to go into space not just to visit, but to stay.”

DARPA researchers hope that current technology may allow them to transform the harsh, isolated world into a more Earth-like planet.

Genetically modified organisms they plan to ship off to Mars must be different from anything we are accustomed with. They must survive extreme temperatures that can reach up to minus 100 degrees F or minus 73 degrees at the equator, the thin atmosphere which is composed of carbon dioxide, low gravitation and lack of liquid water.

But the researchers at DARPA are not easily discouraged as they say the plants and algae they would genetically modify would be able to warm up the planet and even change its atmosphere and hydrological system.

And terraformation does just that, it deliberately modifies a planet’s harsh environment to allow humans to live it.

Ms. Jackson said that DARPA has access to the Google Maps of genomes, which is a huge database of genetic material gathered from hundreds of thousands of living organisms found on Earth. The database allows researchers to quickly find a gene and combine it with a set of other genes to create brand new life forms that can thrive in the Martin landscape.

DARPA before sending those organisms to Mars plans to first test them on Earth in locations that no human can survive. Researchers had been thinking about releasing them in places damaged by natural or human-made disasters to see if they truly are able restore the sites to pre-disaster conditions.

Dawn spacecraft has sent new photos of the mysterious bright spots on Ceres

June 15, 2015 By Doyle Buehler 5 Comments

Scientists are mystified with the dwarf planet’s Ceres bright spots and NASA confirms some smaller bright spots surrounding the two large bright spots.

NASA has been speculating about the mysteries bright spots over the past several months.

The latest image was captured by the NASA’s Dwarf spacecraft on June 6, Saturday. The other smaller bright spots surrounding the two larger spots are clearly visible in the image.

The mission to explore the protoplanets in the solar system, namely the dwarf planet Ceres and Vesta which are the two largest bodies found in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Dawn is also the first probe to explore a dwarf planet.

The latest image sent by Dawn was taken from a distance of 2,700 miles above Ceres. This is also one of the first series of photos that was beamed back from the second mapping of the mission.

The largest bright spots measure 55 miles across, the mission control team and the program managers are confused as how these bizarre, highly reflective features formed on the surface of Ceres.

Chris Russell from the University of California, Los Angeles and the principle investigator said that the configuration of bright spots makes Ceres unique in the solar system where the team of scientists is trying to decipher the source of these lights. However, scientists believe that these could be ice or salt reflecting from the surface.

40 percent of the respondents from the survey answered that the bright spots are made from other materials. Most also answered ice from three out of ten votes making rocks the least popular choice that is selected by only six percent of the respondents.

Dawn spacecraft will begin to travel into lower orbits of Ceres, by the end of June. And in early August 2015, Dawn will be 900 miles over the surface.

NASA says manned mission to Mars impossible without agency’s help

April 20, 2015 By Dave Smith Leave a Comment

NASA and other private organization like SapceX and Mars One are going to send humans to the Red Planet Mars.

NASA recently said the human’s trip to Mars would not be possible without agency’s help.

Charles Bolden, the administrator of NASA, during the session with the U.S. House Committee on Science on Thursday, revealed that the agency is expected to send human on Mars in 2030, and any other private agency will not be able to send humans to mars before them.

Bolden said, “No commercial company without the support of NASA and government is going to get to Mars.”

NASA has send rovers exploring the Martian surface and spacecrafts orbiting the planet, and this experience will help them is sending humans to Mars.

The exploration of the Mars revealed that Mars may have been home to some form of life in the past.

Bolden explained before sending a manned mission it is very important to understand various aspects of the Red Planet. He also said that NASA scientists have to understand what happened to Mars may also happen to Earth.

Mars is believed to have large water bodies just like our planet but it has lost all the water as the planet stopped generating the magnetic field.

Mars One is hoping to send humans on Mars and also to start a human colony there. The company said that they will send humans to Red planet in 2020s and then set up a human colony is 2027.

A return space trip from Earth to Mars would take 500 days.

NASA has sent its astronauts to ISS for 12 months, thereby understanding the suitability of sending humans to Mars.

NASA, a government agency has the technology, finance, information and support from the government, which helps them in sending humans to space.

Private organizations would need help from the agency for sending humans to Mars.

Curiosity rover finds evidence for salty liquid water on Mars

April 13, 2015 By Jeff Suchon Leave a Comment

The latest data collected by US space agency NASA’s Curiosity rover has offered strong evidence for the existence of salty liquid water at the surface of Mars.

The Curiosity rover has discovered evidence of salty perchlorate compounds in the soil present on the Martian surface. According to the new findings, these compounds in the right conditions can absorb water vapour from the Martian atmosphere and reduce the freezing point of water. In simpler terms, liquid water present in the form of concentrated salt water (or brine) can form at the surface as well as at a few centimetres below it.

According to the scientists, the process is likely to take place only when the air available in the Martian environment is at its coldest. It means the favorable time would be at night or during winter mornings.

Morten Bo Madsen, a professor and a member of science team behind Curiosity rover project, said, “Perchlorates are not only oxidants, but they also form highly hygroscopic (water-absorbing) salts and are strong freezing-point depressors when added to water.”

After sunset, condensation of some water vapour begins on the surface of the planet as frost. The freezing point of the water is reduced with the absorption of perchlorates, like calcium perchlorate, in the soil. This will lead to turning the icy frost into a liquid. The soil is porous and this is the reason why the now-liquid water can soak down and precipitate elsewhere below the surface.

Morten Bo Madsen said, “This can explain salts mobility just below the surface, and with this research we now know that this can occur presently and hence is not just a relic from the past.”

The data were collected by Curiosity’s Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM), Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS), and Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons (DAN) instruments. The data were gathered for over the period of a full Martian year (1.88 Earth years).

Concluding the findings, Torres said, “Generally, the study’s results have broad implications for the research works on the availability and the history of water on the Red Planet, for preserving plausible organic products, for studying the corrosive interaction of these brines with spacecraft materials, and, of course, for other geological processes related to water and climate on Mars today.”

The Curiosity instruments have offered the scientists with the largest ever environmental data recorded in-situ on Mars.

The findings of the new study have been detailed in the Journal Nature Geoscience.

Both Earth and Moon formed of same material: Scientists

April 9, 2015 By Kyle Mills Leave a Comment

Putting light the formation of the Moon, a group of scientists from the University of Maryland generated a new isotope-based fingerprint of the Earth’s satellite suggesting that both our planet and its Moon were formed from the same alien body.

The isotopic fingerprint is the geological equivalent of a fingerprint of DNA.

So far, the astronomers and planetary science experts have believed that a massive body approximately the size of red planet ‘Mars’ struck and merged with the Earth within the first 150 million years of the formation of our solar system, triggering explosion of a huge cloud of debris and rock into the space.

According to the scientists, this cloud ultimately combined together and led to the formation of the Moon.

Richard Walker, study co-author and a geology professor, said, “Both Earth and Moon are very similar to each other with respect to their isotopic fingerprints. This suggests that they both are ultimately formed from the same material that gathered early in the history of our solar system.”

Walker called the findings surprising as the Mars-sized celestial body behind the creation of the Moon is likely to have been very different.

“So the conundrum is that both celestial bodies should not be as similar as they are,” he asserted.

The results support the idea that the mass of a material created due to the impact, which later led to the formation of the Moon, should have mixed together wholly before the Earth’s satellite coalesced and cooled.

The study also rules out the idea that the red planet-sized body shared similar composition, or that it was the pre-impact Earth that led to the formation of the Moon.

Concluding the study, the research authors said, “The findings bring us a step closer to better understanding the close familial relationship between the Moon and the Earth. We still require to work out the details… However, it is clear that our early solar system was a very violent place.”

The findings of the study were published in the journal Nature.

NASA’s Curiosity rover detects mineral veins on Mars

April 4, 2015 By Kyle Mills Leave a Comment

In a major breakthrough, US space agency NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover has uncovered mineral veins at a site on the Martian surface.

The new discovery has offered fresh clues about the presence of multiple episodes of fluid movement in the Martian region.

The rover found the mineral veins at a site known as “Garden City”, which is situated on the slopes of a five kilometers high mountain called Mount Sharp.

Garden City is approximately 39 feet higher compared to the bottom edge of the “Pahrump Hills”, which is the outcrop of the bedrock that forms Mount Sharp’s basal layer, at the centre of Gale Crater on Mars.

The mineral veins look like a ridges’ network that is left standing above the bedrock, now eroded-away, in which they were formed.

The individual ridges range up to approximately 2.5 inches high and half that in width. They possess both dark and bright material.

Curiosity project member Linda Kah, from the University of Tennessee, said, “Some of them look like ice-cream sandwiches, i.e. dark on both edges and white in the middle. These materials tell us about secondary fluids that were transported through the region after the host rock formed.”

Mineral Veins like this, where movement of fluid occurs through cracked rock and minerals get deposited in the fractures, often affect the rock’s chemistry that is surrounding the fractures.

The bright veins on Mars are composed of calcium sulfate at many earlier locations. On the other hand, the dark material preserved here offers a greater opportunity to learn more.

Kah said, “At least two secondary fluids have left evidence here. We want to understand the chemistry of the different fluids that were here and the sequence of events. How have later fluids affected the host rock?”

Mud forming lake-bed mudstones that the Curiosity rover had examined near its landing site in 2012 and after reaching the Mount Sharp should have dried and hardened before the formation of fractures.

The dark material lining the fracture walls clearly reflects a previous episode of fluid flow compared to what is done by the white, calcium-sulfate-rich veins. Although both flows occurred after the cracks formed.

NASA’s curiosity rover spots mineral veins on martian surface

April 3, 2015 By Stephen Kenwright Leave a Comment

NASA’s curiosity rover is exploring the Gale Crater on Mars. Some of the objectives of the rover are to investigate the geology and climate of mars, and to find out whether there was environmental condition that favored microbial life and to investigate the evidence of water.

The two tone mineral veins discovered at the Pahrump foothills at the base of the mount Sharp which falls in the center of gale crater and the scientists call it as Garden city site. This indicates that once there was flow of fluids in the regions which has caused the veins. They are found in the ridges where the bedrock eroded making the veins visible. Some veins reveal mountain layers indicating the different stages of weathering.

The fluids once flowing through the rocks were seeped by the cracks thus depositing minerals in the cracks and changing the chemical composition of the rock inside the cracks.

“Some of (the mineral veins) look like ice-cream sandwiches: dark on both edges and white in the middle,” said Linda Kah, Curiosity science-team member at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville,

She said, after the rock was formed the secondary fluids flowed through the region.

“Mud that formed lake-bed mudstones Curiosity examined near its 2012 landing site and after reaching Mount Sharp must have dried and hardened before the fractures formed, the dark material that lines the fracture walls reflects an earlier episode of fluid flow than the white, calcium-sulfate-rich veins do, although both flows occurred after the cracks formed.” NASA wrote in an official statement.

The white deposits are of gypsum and the dark mineral at present is unknown.

The existence of some fluids on Mars does not mean life existed but it points to the fact that there were right conditions at some point of time.

Opportunity rover sets record, covers marathon distance on Mars

March 26, 2015 By Stephanie James

US space agency NASA’s Opportunity rover had succeeded in breaking a 40-year-old record in 2014 when it passed 25 miles of exploration on the Red Planet. But this was not the end for the rover as it rolled on further and eventually crossed the finish line of a so-called marathon on the Mars.

On March 24, Opportunity topped as a long-distance runner as it successfully covered 26 miles of driving distance in 11 years and 2 months, or 3,968 Martian days. A day in the Martian atmosphere is equivalent to approximately 24 hours and 37 minutes on the Earth.

John Callas., project manager of Opportunity, said, “This is the first time any human enterprise has exceeded the distance of a marathon on the surface of another world.”

The team behind the rover project has planned completion a relay of marathon-length run at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on the Earth in order to celebrate the major accomplishment.

Opportunity is not undergoing resting on its laurels. The rover is currently continuing with its mission to explore the Endeavour Crater’s rim in order to find out new clues to the early Martian environment and whether it supported microbial life at any point of time.

The Curiosity rover, NASA’s another mission to Mars, is catching most of the space headlines, thanks to its high-tech sampling equipment and drills.

Opportunity has, however, diligently explored Mars, its surface and atmosphere, ever since its landing in 2004. The Opportunity rover was initially scheduled for only a three-month mission on the Mars.

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