Scientists work on fusion rocket for Mars
NBC News: Researchers at the University of Washington say they’ve built all the pieces for a fusion-powered rocket system that could get a crew to Mars in 30 days.
“If we can pull off a fusion demonstration in a year, with hundreds of thousands of dollars … there might be a better, cheaper, faster path to using fusion in other applications,” John Slough, a research assistant professor of aeronautics and astronautics, told NBC News. …
Timetables for the advent of fusion energy applications have repeatedly shifted to the right, reviving the old joke that the dawn of the fusion age will always be 30 years away.
Photo: An artist’s conception shows a spacecraft powered by a fusion-driven rocket. (UW / MSNW)
Saturdays have become a veritable “this week in space” day around here lately, as last week we touched on the development of the solar-sail project “Sunjammer,” and this week brings exciting news on the Martian travel front. Of course, relying on fusion energy, this is still theoretical, and thus doen’t speak to anything assured — but isn’t it fun to daydream about a month-long jaunt to Mars anyhow?
Life on Mars…Maybe
A sample pulled from Mars just last month has been thoroughly examined by the Mars Science Laboratory Mission, and earlier today scientists declared that they have finally found solid evidence that Mars could have once sustained life.
From mission lead scientist John Grotzinger of Caltech:
“We have found a habitable environment that is so benign and is so supportive of life that probably if this water was around and you had been on the planet, you would have been able to drink it.”
Read more via Science Now.
Photos: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/MSSS
This is the sort of reblog that doesn’t even need much comment, because its worth and relevance is so self-evident. All hail the Curiosity rover.
A banner day for the Mars rover Curiosity, as it conducted its first drilling beneath the surface layer of a martian rock today. The hope is to gain information about long-past, possibly wet environments on the red planet by taking samples from beneath its surface – in this case, 2.5 inches deep. The rock powder generated from the drilling was saved by the Curiosity, and will be analyzed by its highly sophisticated on-board laboratory. (Photo by NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS) source
Curiosity rover snaps 1st photos of Mars at night
(Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity has captured its first nighttime view of the Red Planet using a camera and ultraviolet light on its robotic arm.
As long as this intrepid little rover is snapping away, we think you owe it to yourself to see what it captures. Unprecedented visual access to the Martian terrain up close? Yes please.
Curiosity’s Mars discovery called ‘one for history books’
(Photo: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Malin Space Science Systems)
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity has apparently made a discovery “for the history books,” but we’ll have to wait a few weeks to find out what the new Red Planet find may be, media reports suggest.
What could it be? This is going to be on our minds constantly now!
I LOOK GOOD A mosaic of photos taken by an imager on NASA’s Curiosity rover shows the underside of the rover and its six wheels, with Martian terrain stretching back to the horizon. The four circular features on the front edge of the rover are the lenses for the left and right sets of Curiosity’s hazard avoidance cameras, or Hazcams. Because of the different perspectives used for different images, some of the borders of the photos don’t line up precisely. (Photo: ASA / JPL via NBC News)
Considering he’s on Mars all by himself, I don’t think we can judge Curiosity for the incomplete camera work.
Listen to the first song from Mars
Hip-hop musician Will.i.am’s “Reach for the Stars” officially became the first song broadcast from Mars today, thanks to a signal beamed from NASA’s Curiosity rover.
“This is the first time that a song’s ever come from another planet,” Leland Melvin, NASA’s associate administrator for education and a former astronaut, told students at an educational event at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
You know, if the aliens come, we should be promoting our highest artistic work. Not the Black Eyed Peas. It’s like introducing Martians to our cinematic history through “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.” I mean, how hard would it have been to put on some John Cage for these folks? You wouldn’t even have had to broadcast anything!
Watch Curiosity land on Mars in full, glorious HD.
There’s a little noise reduction, color balance and sharpening, but this is all Mars, baby. Now that the MARDI descent imager has sent home its full collection of 1600 by 1200 images, NASA could piece together a video of the landing. Missing frames were interpolated using thumbnail data.
MORE MARS:
• 7 Years in 7 Minutes: NASA Engineer Takes Us Inside the Landing
• Obama Mentions ‘Mohawk Guy’ on NASA Call, Gets Mohawk
• Watch Ecstatic NASA Engineers Celebrate as Curiosity Lands
High-resolution Mars will be the coolest thing you’ll see today.
What the descent was like: Here’s a clip of the Curiosity Rover on its final descent to Mars. It’s a big of a sneak-peek — the hi-res stuff won’t come until later, but the low-res stuff should appease you dudes for now.
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Reuters: From the Gale Crater on Mars, NASA’s Curiosity rover sends back its first image of the Martian surface after it lands successfully, it now begins a 2-year mission to search for remnants of life on the red planet’s surface.
Photo: NASA/Curiosity Rover
Just touching the surface. Literally. Dudes, this is so cool.
Neil deGrasse Tyson tweets about what the Olympics would be like on Mars, doing the best coverage of the games so far.
Dear Olympics - Please replace every last one of your uninteresting, incompetent commentators with Neil deGrasse Tyson.
This would be infinitely more watchable.
Ahead of the Mars Curiosity Rover’s planned landing next week, NASA has released a new introductory video featuring narration from William Shatner and Wil Wheaton. The four-minute video explains the steps involved in the gigantic rover’s landing, and what NASA hopes to accomplish during Curiosity’s time on Mars. The Wheaton-narrated version of the video can be found here. (Video via CoconutScienceLab) source
Mars is a very challenging destination. It has a very thin atmosphere — too much of an atmosphere to ignore, but not enough for us to do the things we would at other planets. That was our motivation about nine years ago when we started doing this stuff. …We want to go to higher latitudes at that mass, or use this technology for larger payloads, such as humans.Neil Cheatwood, principal investigator of NASA’s IRVE-3 (Inflatable Re-entry Vehicle Experiment 3), an inflatable heat shield that he believes may have future application in transporting humans to Mars. In the short term, though, the goal is to make it easier to transport space vessels or rovers onto higher latitudes on the Martian surface. Cheatwood also mentioned that the shield could be used to off-load garbage left at the International Space Station and return it to Earth.
(Source: csmonitor.com)
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