The warming ground sublimates frozen CO2 into vapour that accumulates under the solid CO2. Eventually, the gas escapes through weak spots in the ice. It can erupt into geysers that spread darker material out onto the frozen surface.

The HiRISE camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured this image of these geysers on Mars in October 2018. It has also captured other images of Martian CO2 geysers.

Some of Mars’ CO2 geysers erupt and create dark spots as large as 1 km across. They are fueled by considerable power and can erupt at speeds up to 160 km/h.

Sometimes the eruptions create dark regions under the ice which look like spiders.

Scientists are calling these features araneiform terrain or spider terrain. They are found in clusters that give the surface a wrinkled appearance. NASA scientists recreated these patterns in lab tests to understand the processes behind their formation. “The spiders are strange, beautiful geologic features in their own right,” said Lauren McKeown of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

The process that explains how the CO2 cycle creates these features is called the Keiffer model. Hugh Keiffer was with the US Geological Survey when he and his colleagues published a paper explaining the model in 2006 in Nature titled “CO2 jets formed by sublimation beneath translucent slab ice in Mars’ seasonal south polar ice cap.”

“We propose that the seasonal ice cap forms an impermeable, translucent slab of CO2 ice that sublimates from the base, building up high-pressure gas beneath the slab. This gas levitates the ice, which eventually ruptures, producing high-velocity CO2 vents that erupt sand-sized grains in jets to form the spots and erode the channels,” Keiffer and his co-authors wrote in their paper.

Maybe humans are biased, but there’s nothing as beautiful and splendorous as Earth. Generations of poets have acclaimed its beauty to the point where it borders on the spiritual. However, when it comes to CO2 geysers and the natural patterns they create, Mars has something that Earth doesn’t.

“These processes are unlike any observed on Earth,” the authors of the 2006 paper stated.

Source: 

• Geyser Season on Mars

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

30-01-2025 om 20:56 geschreven door peter  

ESA houdt de onlangs ontdekte ruimterots nauwlettend in de gaten.

Astronomen hebben een nieuwe ruimterots ontdekt die mogelijk op ramkoers ligt met de aarde. Deze planetoïde, 2024 YR4 genoemd, heeft een diameter van 40 tot 100 meter – groot genoeg om flink wat schade aan te richten als hij zou inslaan.

2032
2024 YR4 werd op 27 december 2024 door de ATLAS-telescoop aan het licht gebracht. Vlak na de ontdekking berekenden slimme waarschuwingssystemen dat de planetoïde, hoewel de kans miniem is, op 22 december 2032 de aarde zou kunnen raken.

Grootte
2024 YR4 heeft zoals gezegd een diameter van meer dan 50 meter. Ter vergelijking: een passagiersvliegtuig zoals een Boeing 747 is ongeveer 70 meter lang. Planetoïden van deze grootte slaan gemiddeld eens in de paar duizend jaar in op de aarde. Mocht 2024 YR4 inderdaad inslaan, dan zou dit niet per se catastrofale gevolgen hebben. Wel zal het ernstige schade kunnen aanrichten als hij bijvoorbeeld dicht bij een grote stad of dichtbevolkt gebied landt. Op dit moment is het nog te vroeg om te bepalen waar op aarde een eventuele inslag zou kunnen plaatsvinden.

Asteroid 2024 YR4 Is Level 3 On The Torino Scale, With A Very Close ...

Gevaarlijke planetoïde
Door dit risico staat de ruimterots nu bovenaan ESA’s lijst van gevaarlijke planetoïden. Sinds begin januari hebben astronomen prioriteit gegeven aan vervolgwaarnemingen met telescopen over de hele wereld. Wat we nu over de planetoïde weten, is dat zijn baan rond de zon ellipsvormig (excentrisch) is. Op dit moment beweegt de planetoïde zich bijna in een rechte lijn van de aarde weg, waardoor het moeilijk is om zijn exacte baan te bepalen. Nieuwe gegevens zullen echter helpen om de grootte en koers van de planetoïde nog nauwkeuriger in kaart te brengen.

Hoe wordt de baan van aardscheerders berekend?
De baan van planetoïden wordt berekend door het elliptische pad rond de zon te bepalen dat het beste past bij de beschikbare waarnemingen. Dat wil zeggen, het berekende pad van het object rond de zon wordt aangepast totdat de voorspellingen van waar de planetoïde op verschillende waargenomen tijdstippen aan de hemel had moeten verschijnen, overeenkomen met de posities waar het object daadwerkelijk op diezelfde tijdstippen werd gezien. Naarmate het aantal waarnemingen toeneemt, kan ook de exacte baan van de ruimtesteen verbeterd worden. Op die manier krijgen astronomen een goed beeld van waar het object zich in de toekomst zal bevinden.

Toch is er geen reden om in paniek te raken. ESA schat de kans dat 2024 YR4 op 22 december 2032 de aarde zal raken, namelijk op slechts 1,2 procent. Omdat de kans op inslag binnen de komende vijftig jaar meer dan 1 procent is, wordt de planetoïde nauwlettend in de gaten gehouden. Op dit moment heeft geen enkele andere grote planetoïde een inslagkans van meer dan 1 procent. Maar vergeet niet: er is ook een 99 procent kans dat 2024 YR4 ons voorbij zal schieten.

Risico neemt eerst toe, dan weer af
Toch kan een mogelijke inslag niet volledig worden uitgesloten. Daarom staat planetoïde 2024 YR4 op dit moment op niveau 3 van de Schaal van Torino: een nauwe passage die de aandacht van zowel astronomen als het publiek trekt. Het is goed om te weten dat de kans op inslag vaak eerst toeneemt, maar naarmate er meer waarnemingen zijn, meestal snel weer naar nul daalt. In het verleden zijn er meerdere objecten met een vergelijkbare beoordeling geweest die uiteindelijk van de lijst verdwenen naarmate er meer gegevens binnendruppelden. Wil je weten waarom? Bekijk dan de onderstaande video.

Bombardement uit de ruimte
Overigens is het niet heel zeldzaam dat onze aarde wordt geraakt door stof en gesteente vanuit de ruimte. Elke dag wordt de aarde gebombardeerd met meer dan 100 ton stof en deeltjes ter grootte van zandkorrels. Ongeveer één keer per jaar raakt een planetoïde ter grootte van een auto de aardse atmosfeer. Dit heeft weinig gevolgen, behalve dat ze als oplichtende vuurbollen kunnen worden gezien terwijl ze in onze atmosfeer opbranden. Elke 2000 jaar treft een steen ter grootte van een voetbalveld de aarde, wat wel aanzienlijke schade kan aanrichten. Slechts eens in de paar miljoen jaar komt er een object langs dat groot genoeg is om al het leven op aarde om te leggen (denk aan de planetoïde die een einde maakte aan het dino-tijdperk). Inslagkraters op de aarde, de maan en andere planetaire lichamen zijn hiervoor het bewijs.

Risicolijst
De komende maanden zal 2024 YR4 steeds moeilijker zichtbaar zijn vanaf de aarde. In die tijd zal ESA de waarnemingen blijven coördineren met steeds krachtigere telescopen. Uiteindelijk wordt ook de beroemde Very Large Telescope van de Europese Zuidelijke Sterrenwacht in Chili ingezet om zoveel mogelijk gegevens te verzamelen. Het is overigens ook mogelijk 2024 YR4 uit het zicht verdwijnt voordat we een inslag in 2032 volledig kunnen uitsluiten. Als dat gebeurt, zal de planetoïde waarschijnlijk op ESA’s risicolijstje blijven staan totdat hij in 2028 weer te zien is.

Hoewel het nog steeds uiterst onwaarschijnlijk is dat 2024 YR4 over zo’n zo’n zeven jaar op aarde neerstort, hebben we gelukkig een plan klaarliggen voor het geval het ergste scenario werkelijkheid zou worden. Zo bewees de DART-missie namelijk dat we in staat zijn de baan van een ruimterots te veranderen. Dit betekent dat we de koers van een gevaarlijke aardscheerder kunnen afbuigen, waardoor we de aarde kunnen beschermen. En dat is toch een geruststellende gedachte!

Bronmateriaal

• "ESA actively monitoring near-Earth asteroid 2024 YR4" - ESA
  
• "NASA Shares Observations of Recently-Identified Near Earth Asteroid" - NASA

{ https://scientias.nl/ }

30-01-2025 om 20:21 geschreven door peter  

Scientists uncover the 'strongest evidence yet' for aliens: Breakthrough study confirms asteroid Bennu contains the building blocks of life

• READ MORE: Scientists come up with a way to save Earth from asteroid collision

By XANTHA LEATHAM DEPUTY SCIENCE EDITOR FOR THE DAILY MAIL

Experts have unearthed the 'strongest evidence yet' for aliens on other planets after pieces of an asteroid were found to contain the building blocks of life.

In 2020, a NASA spacecraft collected a sample from an asteroid called Bennu as part of a nail-biting mission that took place more than 200 million miles away.

Once it had returned to Earth samples of the dust were sent to laboratories around the world, including in the UK, to be studied by scientists.

Now, analysis has revealed that traces of ancient brine within the sample contain minerals crucial to life and which kicked off the chemical processes that led to a lush and fertile Earth.

And experts say this is the 'strongest evidence yet' that the building blocks for life as we know it are spread across the solar system – and have been there for billions of years.

The discovery has been published across two papers – one which indicates Bennu was part of a long-lost wet, salty world which originated at the dawn of the solar system, and another which reveals a 'suite' of organic materials that were detected in the sample.

Among them are all five nitrogenous bases - molecules required for building DNA and RNA - and amino acids, which are the building blocks of proteins.

Professor Sara Russell, from the Natural History Museum, was one of the scientists studying the 'dust'.

Experts have unearthed the 'strongest evidence yet' for aliens on other planets after pieces of an asteroid were found to contain the building blocks of life

In 2020, a NASA spacecraft collected a sample from an asteroid called Bennu as part of a nail-biting mission that took place more than 200 million miles away. Once it had returned to Earth samples of the dust were sent to laboratories around the world, including in the UK, to be studied by scientists

Analysis has revealed that traces of ancient brine within the sample contain minerals crucial to life and which kicked off the chemical processes that led to a lush and fertile Earth

She said: 'One of the interesting things we found in there was a whole range of salts. That includes sodium chloride, which is what we put on our chips, and loads of other salts like phosphates and carbonates.

'We think these actually formed a briny, salty water that may have been underground in the asteroid.

'This sort of salty fluid would be a perfect place to make organic molecules. And in the early solar system there would have been millions of asteroids like Bennu, so it could have been really important for "seeding" the Earth and other planets with all these ingredients they can use for life.'

She said although there isn't any evidence for life elsewhere in the solar system yet, 'now we know there were there were all of these ingredients around'.

'I imagine that whatever rained down on Earth would have also rained down on Mars and on the moons of the giant planets, and they might have been really great environments for life to begin,' she added.

'I think it's likely that the fact we've found these things in abundance means that life may have begun elsewhere.

'This is really strong evidence that these building blocks for life were widespread throughout our solar system.'

The two new studies, which appear in the journals Nature and Nature Astronomy, are among the first published analyses of the Bennu samples.

Scanning electron microscope images of trona found in samples of the asteroid Bennu returned by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission

Earth-originating examples of minerals found in Bennu samples. Foreground, left to right: calcite, gaylussite, sylvite with halite, villiaumite

Some of these crucial 'building blocks' have not been detected in meteorites that have fallen to Earth – most likely because their composition would have been altered after burning through the atmosphere and they would have been easily contaminated after hitting the ground.

Bennu consists of pieces of a larger asteroid that formed nearly 4.6 billion years ago, around the same time as the solar system.

By understanding the composition of the Bennu samples, scientists can gain insights into the conditions of that time, helping answer questions about how the solar system - and Earth - formed.

'It's interesting that although Bennu had everything needed for life, it did not form,' Professor Russell added.

'The complex and delicate conditions needed to catalyse life really bring into focus the abundance of biodiversity here on Earth.'

Co-lead author Tim McCoy, curator of meteorites at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington said: 'This extraordinary work, done at the scale of microns, will help us understand what happens at the scale of planets.'

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

29-01-2025 om 21:49 geschreven door peter  

Asteroid Bennu contains the 'seeds of life,' OSIRIS-REx samples reveal

The two teams of researchers who made the discoveries published their findings Jan. 29 in two papers in the journal Nature Astronomy.

"We now know from Bennu that the raw ingredients of life were combining in really interesting and complex ways on Bennu's parent body," study co-lead author Tim McCoy, curator of meteorites at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, said in a statement. "We have discovered that next step on a pathway to life."

Bennu is a potentially hazardous asteroid that has a 1-in-2,700 chance of striking Earth in the year 2182 — the highest odds of any known space object. But scientists are more interested in what's trapped on the space rock: As a carbon-rich asteroid, it likely contains many of the primordial molecules present when life first emerged on Earth.

Related: 

• NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission almost bit the dust — then Queen guitarist Brian May stepped in

OSIRIS-REx launched in September 2016 and traveled 200 million miles (320 million kilometers) to reach Bennu.

Once there, the spacecraft orbited the asteroid for nearly two years as flight engineers searched for a landing site. Upon making contact with the space rock, OSIRIS-REx fired a burst of nitrogen from its Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism to stick the landing and prevent itself from sinking through the asteroid. The nitrogen burst captured a 4.29-ounce (121.6 grams) sample in the process.

In October 2023, the sample was brought to Earth aboard OSIRIS-REx's capsule, which reached speeds of up to 27,000 mph (43,000 km/h) before it deployed its parachute and landed safely in the Utah desert. To avoid contamination, the sample container was taken to a clean room before being opened.

The researchers behind the first study received slices of the Bennu sample, which they examined under a scanning electron microscope. This enabled the team to study features on the sample's surface with a resolution of one-hundredth the width of a human hair.

The scientists discovered sodium carbonate, typically found in evaporated lakes that once contained life on Earth, on the space rock's surface. Within the sodium carbonate, the team found 11 minerals that are important precursors for organic compounds. The mineral compositions differed subtly from those found on our planet; being rich in phosphorus and poor in boron, when the reverse is true in Earth’s lakes.

The researchers think brine similar to that found on Bennu could also exist on other bodies in the solar system, such as the dwarf planet Ceres and Saturn's icy moon Enceladus.

In the second study, conducted by scientists in Japan, a separate piece of the sample was also found to contain the five nucleobases — adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine and uracil — which combine with ribose and phosphate to form DNA and RNA, the ladder-like structures that make up the genetic code of all life on Earth.

This is the first time that scientists have found these nucleobases on a distant asteroid. In 2023, a sample taken from the Ryugu space rock by the Hayabusa2 spacecraft was found to contain uracil, yet the other nucleobases were missing.

It's unclear what this means for life beyond our planet. While the existence of these minerals on Bennu is a sure indication that the asteroid had the right ingredients for life, the researchers are unsure if the asteroid's environment was too harsh for the compounds to grow into complex organic structures. To further investigate, the scientists plan to reexamine meteorites in their collection for similar salts and compounds.

"We now know we have the basic building blocks to move along this pathway towards life, but we don't know how far along that pathway this environment could allow things to progress," McCoy said.

{ https://www.livescience.com/space }

29-01-2025 om 20:47 geschreven door peter  

Chinese astronauts make rocket fuel and oxygen in space using 1st-of-its kind 'artificial photosynthesis'

In this case, the astronauts created the hydrocarbon ethylene, which can be used as rocket fuel. But by using different catalysts in the reaction, the researchers believe they could instead produce methane, which could also be used for fuel; and formic acid, which can be used as a preservative, antibacterial agent or precursor to making sugars, Interesting Engineering reported.

"This technology mimics the natural photosynthesis process of green plants through engineered physical and chemical methods, utilizing carbon dioxide resources in confined spaces or extraterrestrial atmospheres to produce oxygen and carbon-based fuels," Chinese state television channel CCTV reported Jan. 19. "The work is expected to provide critical technical support for human survival and exploration in outer space."

Related: China plans to build enormous solar array in space — and it could collect more energy in a year than 'all the oil on Earth'

The researchers have not revealed details about the technology. However, it supposedly requires much less energy than the electrolysis technology used to create oxygen from water on the International Space Station (ISS), the South China Morning Post reported. Electrolysis uses up to a third of the ISS's power output, according to a 2023 study.

{ https://www.livescience.com/space }

29-01-2025 om 20:26 geschreven door peter  

• READ MORE: Visitor from outer space may have warped the solar system

By JONATHAN CHADWICK FOR MAILONLINE 

For millennia, humans have asked whether we are alone in the universe, yet the discovery of aliens still eludes us. 

But if extraterrestrials do exist, scientists have found a promising location for where they could be hiding. 

Researchers from the University of Oxford have discovered an exoplanet dubbed HD 20794 d that could have the right conditions for life. 

More than six times as massive as Earth, scientists are describing it as a 'super Earth'. 

It is located in the Eridanus constellation and is in the habitable zone of its star, meaning liquid water – and therefore life – could potentially exist. 

Best of all, it's just 19.7 light-years away from Earth. 

This raises the tantalizing possibility that we could snap pictures of any aliens lurking there.

'Excitingly, its proximity with us – only 20 light-years – means there is hope for future space missions to obtain an image of it,' said Dr Michael Cretignier, who first spotted signs of the planet in 2022. 

Pictured, an artist's impression of the new planet HD 20794 d orbiting its star. The planet is six times as massive as Earth and just 20 light-years away

Its orbit places it within the habitable zone of the system, meaning it is at the right distance from its star to sustain liquid water on its surface, a key ingredient for life as we know it

Researchers from the University of Oxford have discovered an exoplanet dubbed HD 20794 d that could have the right conditions for life (stock image)

HD 20794 d was found using the HARPS (High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher) spectrograph at the La Silla Observatory in Chile. 

Described as one of the most successful ever planet finders, HARPS spends most nights monitoring stars for signals that indicate the presence of 'exoplanets' – planets outside of our solar system. 

It uses a planet-detecting method called radial velocity, also known as the wobble or Doppler method, which can detect 'wobbles' in a star caused by the gravitational pull of an orbiting planet. 

Using HARPS, Dr Cretignier spotted distinct, periodic shifts in the spectrum of light emitted by host star HD 20794, which he thought could have been caused by the gravitational pull of a nearby planet. 

But due to the faintness of the signal, it was not clear whether this was caused by a planet or due to background 'noise' or a subtle instrumental error. 

To verify the signal, an international team analysed precise measurements recorded over two decades by HARPS and its successor ESPRESSO, also in Chile.

By combining the results from the two instruments, the discovery was finally confirmed – a 'relief' according to Dr Cretignier because the original signal was at the edge of the spectrograph’s detection limit. 

The discovery, detailed in a new study published in Astronomy & Astrophysics,also relied on data from NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). 

European Southern Observatory's (ESO) La Silla facility in La Higuera, Chile, home to the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) spectrograph

Described as one of the most successful ever planet finders, HARPS (pictured) spends most nights monitoring stars for signals that indicate the presence of 'exoplanets' - planets outside of our solar system

Planet HD 20794 d: Key facts 

Discovered: 2022

Star: HD 20794 (82 G. Eridani)

Orbital duration: 600 days

Constellation: Eridanus

Mass: 6 times that of Earth 

Distance away from us: 19.7 light years 

Dr Cretignier and colleagues know HD 20794 d has a mass six times that of Earth, but as yet they do not know the diameter. 

'The method we are using only provides the distance to the star (the orbital period) and the minimum mass of the planet and not the radius,' Dr Cretignier told MailOnline. 

Although the planet is located in the system’s habitable zone, it is too early to say whether it could host life. 

'It’s important to remember that having a planet in the habitable zone is not sufficient at all to have life on it,' he added.

'Both Mars and Venus are inside the habitable zone of the sun, but I highly don’t recommend you to go there on holiday.'

More questions will have to be answered about the planet first, such as whether it has water on it and if it has an atmosphere, according to the expert.

'The checklist is still long and we have decades of work in front of us,' Dr Cretignier told MailOnline.

Unlike most planets, HD 20794 d’s orbit around its star is 'elliptical' – elongated and not perfectly circular. 

This image shows the flux (the number of photons) on NASA's TESS detector while observing the star HD20794. TESS is a space mission measuring the photometry of the full sky from now a decade with the primary goal of detecting exoplanets using the transits method

Read More

• Visitor from outer space may have warped the solar system 

Its distance from its star changes significantly, causing the planet to move from the outer edge of the habitable zone to the inner edge throughout its year. 

The star is 'a naked-eye star', meaning you could even observe it if you are looking the sky in the south hemisphere, Dr Cretignier added. 

Ultimately, the discovery could eventually give us the first signs of life outside our solar system – although there are many other promising exoplanet candidates. 

'Such a target will be among the primary target list of future space missions with such a purpose that will be on sky the next decade,' Dr Cretignier said. 

Already, NASA has a webpage dedicated to an exoplanet called 'HD 20794 d', which was discovered in 2011.

Dr Cretignier points out that this planet has an outdated name and is actually a different planet in the same system – HD 20794 c. 

The HD 20794 star has three known planets orbiting around it – but there could potentially be more out there waiting to be found. 

The whole system is 19.7 light years away, which, although relatively close to us in the universe is 'desperately out of reach'.

'On the scale of the universe, this is our neighbourhood,' Dr Cretignier said.

'Such is the paradox of the universe – it can be observed, not visited.' 

NASA CONFIRMS THERE ARE MORE THAN 5,000 PLANETS BEYOND OUR SOLAR SYSTEM 

NASA has confirmed that there are more than 5,000 known planets outside our solar system, known as exoplanets. 

As of January 28, 2025, there are 5,830 confirmed exoplanets, according to NASA's online exoplanet archive.

The total reached a milestone of 5,800 in early 2022. 

Exoplanets found so far include small, rocky worlds like Earth, gas giants many times larger than Jupiter, and 'hot Jupiters' in scorchingly close orbits around their stars.  

The more than 5,000 exoplanets confirmed in our galaxy so far include a variety of types - among them a mysterious variety known as 'super-Earths' because they are larger than our world and possibly rocky

However, NASA stresses that only 'a tiny fraction' of all the planets in the Milky Way galaxy alone have been found.   

The majority of exoplanets are gaseous, like Jupiter or Neptune, rather than terrestrial, according to NASA's online database.     

Most exoplanets are found by measuring the dimming of a star that happens to have a planet pass in front of it, called the transit method. 

Another way to detect exoplanets, called the Doppler method, measures the 'wobbling' of stars due to the gravitational pull of orbiting planets.  

5,000 Exoplanets: Listen to the Sounds of Discovery (NASA Data Sonification)

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

28-01-2025 om 22:52 geschreven door peter  

One of my gripes with ‘The Martian’ movie was the depiction of the winds on Mars. The lower air density means that the sort of high speed winds we might experience on Earth carry far less of an impact on Mars. During its 72 flights in the Martian air, NASA’s ingenuity helicopter took meticulous records of the conditions. A new paper has been released and reports upon the wind speeds on the red planet at various altitudes. Previous models suggested wind speeds would not exceed 15 m/s but Ingeniuty saw speeds as high as 25 m/s.

Of all the planets in our Solar System, Mars is perhaps the most similar to Earth, similar but with stark differences. The weather on Mars is harsh and extreme, characterised by cold temperatures, a rarefied atmosphere and dust storms. The average temperature is around -60°C but it can reach a toasty 20°C in summer near the equator. It’s atmosphere is composed mostly of carbon dioxide and is about 100 times thinner than Earth’s so it offers little insulation or protection from solar radiation. On occasion, the winds on Mars whip up global dust storms that obscures the planet’s surface from view. 

Our model of the Martian atmosphere was believed to be fairly accurate, that is until Ingenuity arrived and completed more than 70 successful flights. As part of the Mars 2020 mission and the first aerial vehicle to successfully complete powered flight on another world, Ingenuity revealed some surprising conditions. Surprisingly too perhaps, the first attempt at powered flight was supposed to be a technology demonstration but instead, it provided high resolution images to help direct the ground based rover and collected data from the atmosphere and became a key part of Mars 2020. 

One of the outcomes from Ingenuity’s flights was a better understanding of Martian winds. In a paper written by Brian Jackson and team in the Planetary Society Journal, the team explained their rather ingenious approach. Knowing that the payload was severely limited on board, the decision was taken to use Ingenuity itself to confirm windspeeds. Previous studies had shown that the tilt of a stably hovering drone can be used to calculate speeds. Drones produce forward thrust by tilting in the direction they need to move, if they are stable and in a hover yet the wind is blowing, the drone will drift. Instead and to counteract the drift, the drone tilts flying into wind to maintain position relative to the ground, tilting more in a stronger headwind. 

Measuring the tilt is relatively straightforward thanks to a collection of engineering sensors, cameras and accelerometers. With all of the information gathered by these onboard pieces of equipment and returned to Earth, the analysis and calculation of the drone at different altitudes has enabled the wind speeds to be accurately calculated.

The results were a surprise, showing that the winds on Mars were generally higher than anticipated. Speeds were measured at altitudes from 3 to 24 metres and were found to be blowing at anything up to 25 m/s. This perhaps is a result of Ingenuity’s unique capability of being able to measure speeds at different altitudes over a period of time. Previous measurements have been achieved from probes as they have descent through the atmosphere or from probes on the ground. Taking the success of Ingenuity forward, mission specialists working upon the Dragonfly rotorcraft that will be visiting Titan hope to be able to replicate the results and gain a better understanding of its wind profile too. 

Source : 

• Profiling Near-surface Winds on Mars Using Attitude Data from Mars 2020 Ingenuity

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

28-01-2025 om 18:29 geschreven door peter  

'We are creating the fire equivalent of an ice age': Humans have plunged Earth into the 'Pyrocene'

Related:

• LA wildfires: How can wildfire smoke affect your health

Fire as organizing principle

Humanity and fire have been reforging the Earth since the end of the last glaciation, about 11,500 years ago. Generally, these changes have made landscapes more fire-receptive.

The scale is significant. Recent studies speculate that massive depopulation, especially in the Americas, which removed the torch and allowed forests to reclaim land and so sequester atmospheric carbon, may have even helped nudge the planet into the Little Ice Age from the mid-16th to mid-19th centuries.

Still, there were limits. Fire and life had coevolved across 420 million years, and ecological checks and balances limited how far humans could push and pull fire within the constraints of terrestrial landscapes.

The process unquestionably quickened and changed character with the wholesale burning of fossil fuels, or what we might term lithic landscapes. This combustion lies outside the old boundaries: It can burn anytime, anywhere, and its effluent isn't easily absorbed into the old ecology. By warming the atmosphere, it is a leading cause of climate change, which in turn is generally enhancing conditions for wildfires.

Equally important, the transition to a fossil-fuel civilization has affected how people live on the land, how they design cities and peri-urban communities, how they shape living landscapes with agriculture and nature preserves, how they generate and transmit energy, and what kind of fire practices they adopt.

Petrochemicals from fossil biomass replace, or try to substitute for, fire's ecological effects. Energy from fossil fuels displaces the heat, light and power of flame. Instead of challenging wildfire with tamed fire, modern societies fight landscape fire with the counterforce of industrial fire in the form of pumps, engines, bulldozers and aircraft.

This "pyric transition" in types of combustion forces the two different kinds of burning — fires in living landscapes and fires that burn lithic landscapes — to interact in ways that sometimes compete and sometimes collude. Like the power lines that have sparked so many disastrous wildfires, the two realms of fire are crossing, often with lethal consequences.

The prospect for worsening fires because of changing land use and fire practices was apparent before climate change became a serious consideration in the 1990s. U.S. land agencies recognized the ill consequences of removing fire and reformed policies to reinstate good fire over 50 years ago. Unfortunately, bad fire continues to outpace good fire.

As the world burns

No single factor drives fire: It synthesizes its surroundings. It's like a driverless car that barrels down the road, integrating whatever is around it.

Sometimes it confronts a sharp curve called climate change. Sometimes it's a tricky intersection where townscape and countryside meet. Sometimes it's road hazards left from past accidents, such as logging slash, invasive grasses or postburn environments.

Climate change acts as a performance enhancer, and understandably, it claims most of the attention because it's global and its reach extends beyond flames. But the argument over whether climate or land use is more critical is misguided: They both derive, independently, from the conversion to a fossil-fuel society. Megafires, it seems, feed on modernity as hurricanes feed on warm oceans.

In the U.S., the pyric transition sparked a wave of monster fires that rode the rails of settlement — fires an order of magnitude larger and more lethal than those of recent decades. Land clearing and logging slash fed serial conflagrations, which blew up in the late 19th and early 20th centuries — the waning decades of the Little Ice Age.

This havoc inspired the federal government to intervene to end the environmental wreckage, spare watersheds and shield communities, all under the aegis of conservation, which became a global project. Fire control was regarded as foundational; suppressing fires became an index of success. Led by foresters, the belief spread that fire on landscapes could be replaced, as was happening in cities, or caged, as it was in furnaces and dynamos.

With natural fire and traditional burning removed from the landscape, the population of fires fell to the point where flames could no longer do the ecological work required. Instead of reducing risk, landscapes became prone to more explosive burning as fuels accumulated on them over decades.

Now, too much fossil biomass is burned to be absorbed within ancient ecological bounds. Fuels in the living landscape pile up and rearrange themselves. The climate is unhinged. When flame returns, as it must, it too often comes as wildfire.

Welcome to the Pyrocene

Widen the aperture a bit, and we can envision Earth entering a fire age comparable to the ice ages of the Pleistocene, complete with the pyric equivalent of ice sheets, pluvial lakes, periglacial outwash plains, mass extinctions and sea-level changes. It's an epoch in which fire is both prime mover and principal expression.

Humanity's firepower underpins the Anthropocene, which is the outcome not just of anthropogenic meddling but of a particular kind of meddling, made possible by humans' species monopoly over fire. Even climate history has become a subset of fire history.

Fires in living landscapes, fires burning lithic landscapes — the interaction of these two realms of fire has not been much studied. It's been enough of a stretch to fully include human fire practices within traditional ecology. Yet humans — the keystone species for fire on Earth — are merging the two arenas of earthly burning with a give and take that is reshaping the planet in what resembles a slow-motion Ragnarok.

Add up all the effects, direct and indirect: the ice driven off by fire, the areas burning, the biogeographical migrations as biotas move to accommodate changed conditions, the collateral impacts with damaged watersheds and airsheds, the unraveling of ecosystems, the pervasive power of climate change, rising sea levels, a mass extinction, the disruption of human life and habitats. The result is a pyrogeography that looks eerily like an ice age for fire. You have a maturing Pyrocene.

If you doubt it, just ask California.

• This edited article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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27-01-2025 om 23:39 geschreven door peter  

When searching for alien life, it’s not unusual to use Earth as a test bed for theories and even practice runs. Perhaps one of the most tantalising places in the Solar System to look for life is Saturn’s moon Enceladus. It has a liquid water interior and it is here that life may just be possible. A team of researchers want to test techniques for searching for life on Enceledaus by exploring the oceans of Earth. They have collected  water and ice samples and hope to find chemicals like methane and hydrogen. 

The search for alien life is one of that has fascinated humanity for decades. Scientists explore this vast question through various avenues, including the study of exoplanets within the habitable zones of distant stars but there is still hope that maybe, just maybe we will find life elsewhere in our own Solar System. Some of the moon’s of the outer planets offer tantalising possibilities such as Enceladus, a moon of Saturn. It’s an icy moon where, beneath the icy crust, there is the possibility of the global ocean of liquid water teeming with life.

When the Cassini-Huygens probe visited Saturn in 2004 it sampled the cryogenic plumes that had been ejected over the southern pole, Using its Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer and Cosmic Dust Analyser, research teams identified the presence of water ice, methane and other carbon based molecules. Molecular hydrogen, molecular nitrogen and other elements all of which suggest the sub-surface ocean was a salty composition with the necessary elements for primative life. However to date, no evidence has been found. 

It’s thought that the ice crust of Enceladus is anything form a few kilometres to up to 40 km thick. Beneath, and in the depths of the ocean are thought to be hydrothermal vents  which, just like oceans on Earth, are a source of energy that could drive entire ecosystems. With all the ingredients for life, missions have been discussed to explore the astrobiological aspects of Enceladus. Mission with mass spectrometers have been proposed to identify biosignatures within the ocean. 

In the paper published in Planetary and Space Science and written by a team led by F. French from the Università degli Studi di Bari in Italy, the team look at the technical possibility of detecting methane cycling on Enceladus. If it can be observed, then it would give a strong indication that the sub-surface ocean is currently, or has been habitable in the past. The conclusion can be quite reliably drawn since the methane cycle on Earth is often the result of biological and abiotic processes but is generally considered a byproduct of microbial activity. 

NASA and ESA have been discussing possible missions to Enceladus but ahead of that, one way of practicing the ability to detect geochemical signatures of life is to see if it can be detected on Earth using the same technology. The Arctic Ocean is a great analogy to the conditions on Enceladus with vents on the sea floor in an ocean covered with ice for the majority of the year. The team conducted experiments to simulate the processes and techniques future missions are likely to employ on Enceladus and other outer moons. 

The team found that they were able to detect and measure emitted concentrations of carbon dioxide, other carbon isotopies and other oxygen isotopes within the water. Their results suggest it will be possible to detect the necessary elements using a mass spectrometer at Enceladus. Further studies are appropriate to refine the processes ahead of a future mission. 

Source : 

• An Arctic Analogue for the Future Exploration of Possible Biosignatures on Enceladus

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27-01-2025 om 18:40 geschreven door peter  

This led to the creation of the Constellation Program, which would see astronauts return to the Moon for the first time since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. Since then, NASA’s plans have evolved due to unforeseen circumstances like the Great Recession (2007-2009) and budget shortfalls. By 2010, NASA came back with a new plan known as the Moon to Mars mission architecture, which called for the development of the next-generation Space Launch System (SLS) and the Orion spacecraft.

By 2017, the Artemis Program was inaugurated with the long-term goal of creating a “sustained program of lunar exploration and development.” This plan currently includes returning astronauts to the lunar surface by 2028, followed by the creation of a permanent base around the lunar south pole. Since then, they have enlisted the help of several space agencies and national governments through the Artemis Accords and multiple commercial partners through the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) and Human Landing System (HLS) programs to realize this goal.

However, in 2021, China and Roscosmos declared a joint plan to establish their own permanent base in the Moon’s south pole region, the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS). The program’s timetable calls for Russian cosmonauts and Chinese taikonauts to land on the Moon for the first time by 2030. In 2023, China announced this would consist of two Long March 10 rockets launching the Mengzhou spacecraft and the Lanyue lunar lander, the former carrying two taikonauts and the latter ferrying them to the surface and back.

The Gateway & Base Camp

In 2012, NASA proposed a cislunar station to facilitate its “Moon to Mars” mission architecture, dubbed the Deep Space Habitat. By 2018, the design and the program had matured considerably and was renamed Lunar Gateway. This station is now a multinational collaborative project between NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), and the UAE’s Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC).

According to the current design, this station will consist of the “core elements”: the Power and Propulsion Element (PPE) and the Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO), which will launch no sooner than 2027. Further modules will include the European System Providing Refueling, Infrastructure and Telecommunications (ESPRIT), the Lunar International Habitation Module (Lunar I-HAB Module), the Canadarm3 robotic manipulator arms, and the Crew and Science Airlock Module.

By 2020, the surface elements of the Artemis Program, known as the Artemis Base Camp, were announced. This camp was described in detail as part of NASA’s Lunar Surface Sustainability Concept. The plan includes three core elements that would enable a sustained lunar presence, emphasizing mobility and the ability to conduct extensive science operations.

• A Lunar Terrain Vehicle (LTV) that will transport crewmembers around the landing zone
• A pressurized Habitable Mobility Platform (HMP) that will allow crews to take trips across the lunar surface for up to 45 days
• A lunar Foundation Surface Habitat (FSH) that will house as many as four crew members on shorter surface stays

The Space Launch System (SLS) and the Orion spacecraft are vital to this program, which NASA has been developing since 2011. In 2018, then-Administrator Jim Bridenstine and VP Mike Pence directed NASA to expedite the timetable so astronauts would land on the Moon by 2024. This created a problem since the Lunar Gateway would not be ready in time, leading to the Human Landing Systems (HLS) contract. The resulting concepts include the Starship HLS developed by SpaceX and the Blue Moon Mk. 2 developed by Blue Origin.

The ILRS

In June 2021, the China National Space Agency (CNSA) announced they had partnered with the Russian State Space Corporation (Roscosmos). The detailed plan was made public with the release of the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) Guide for Partnership, which explained how international partners could join. According to the design, five facilities will make up the ILRS. They include:

• Cislunar Transportation Facility (CLF): An orbital station that mirrors the purpose of the Lunar Gateway.
• Telemetry, Tracking, and Command (TT&C): An energy supply network, a thermal management system, and support modules.
• Lunar Transportation and Operation Facility (LTOF): A storage facility where lunar vehicles will be stowed and maintained when not in use.
• Lunar Scientific Facility: A support lunar science operations on the surface, in-orbit, or in deep space.
• Ground Support and Application Facility (GSAF): An operational support facility for communications and missions and a data center for lunar and deep-space missions.

The timeline for the base’s construction is divided into three phases. Phase I—Reconnaissance, which began in 2021 and will last until the end of 2025, consists of exploring the South Pole-Aitken Basin and sample return missions by the Chang’e missions to scout for potential ILRS sites and verify technologies that will allow for soft landings in the southern polar region. This phase has involved multiple launches using China’s Long March 3B (CZ-3B) and Long March 5 (CZ-5), and the Russian Soyuz-2 rocket.

Phase II—Construction is planned to last from 2025 to 2030. The goals of this phase include verifying technologies related to the ILRS command center, analyzing the Chang’e samples to narrow the selection of potential sites, and delivering cargo to build the base. Other objectives will include technologies related to ISRU, 3D printing, and others necessary for the construction of the ILRS. For Phase II and III, China and Russia would begin relying on the Long March 9, Long March 10, and the Angara 5M heavy launch vehicles.

Phase III – Utilization, which will run from 2030 to 2035, will involve the completion of all in-orbit and surface facilities that provide energy, communication, research, exploration, and transport services. This phase will consist of five IRLS missions to establish the base architecture:

• IRLS-1 – establishment of the command center, basic energy, and telecommunications facilities.
• IRLS-2 – establishment of lunar research exploration facilities (sample collection, lunar physics, geology, lava tubes).
• IRLS-3 – establishment of lunar ISRU technology verification facilities.
• IRLS-4 – verification of general technologies like biomedical experiments, sample collection, and return.
• IRLS-5 – establishment of lunar-based astronomy and Earth observation facilities.

Issues and Delays

Long before the Artemis Program was first announced, NASA was experiencing significant delays with the development of mission-critical elements. This includes the SLS, which began development in 2011 with a government-mandated launch set for late 2016. However, cost overruns, management issues, and other challenges delayed this for nearly six years. This also caused delays in the development of the Orion spacecraft, which performed its first successful test flight on December 5th, 2014. The next flight, Artemis I, did not occur until almost eight years later.

On November 16th, 2022, the SLS launched for the first time, sending the Artemis I spacecraft (without crew) on a circumlunar flight. This was to be followed by Artemis II, a crewed circumlunar flight, in 2023 and Artemis III in 2024. In November 2021, due to legal challenges over the HLS contract, NASA declared that Artemis III‘s launch date would be pushed until 2025. On January 2024, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson announced that Artemis II and III would launch no sooner than September 2025 and 2026.

However, by the end of the year, Nelson announced that these missions would be delayed due to the months of engineering investigations into issues with the life support system and heat shield, but should occur no later than April 2026 and mid-2027. There have also been delays on SpaceX’s end. While the company has made several impressive strides with the launch and recovery of the Starship, the first successful orbital test flight took place on June 6th, 2024 – a year after its first crewed launch was scheduled to take place (the dearMoon project) and the same year it was to assist the Artemis III mission.

The complex architecture for that mission also involves orbital refueling, which SpaceX anticipates hopes to test sometime this year. However, concerns have been raised about the number of refuelings needed to allow the Starship to make a Trans-Lunar Injection (TLI) maneuver. At present, the Artemis III and IV missions will involve a Starship HLS docking with a refueling facility in orbit before making a TLI. This facility will be serviced by multiple Starship propellant tankers, but estimates vary on how many launches will be needed to refuel the HLS fully.

Whereas Musk has previously stated that it could be between 4 and 8, others estimate that 16 launches will be needed to fuel a single Starship HLS. SpaceX also hopes to conduct 25 launches with the Starship in 2025, including an orbital refueling followed by an uncrewed TLI and lunar landing in preparation for Artemis III. However, due to the recent loss of a Starship during the most recent flight (January 16th, 2025) and the resulting FAA penalties, these missions may not occur before the year’s end.

Keith Cowing, an astrobiologist and former rocket scientist, is currently the editor of the publications NASA Watch and Astrobiology. As he summarized to Universe Today via messenger:

“The main problem with Artemis as a whole has been poor cost projections, inadequate cost monitoring, bad contract oversight, and over-optimistic schedules that are driven by the need to look like you are making good progress. Any one of these can cause cost overruns and schedule delays. When you have all of them happening, you can have substantial problems.

“The main problems have had to do with the ground infrastructure for launch, issues with the Orion spacecraft, and the impact of earlier cost saving attempts. The most unusual of which was a decision to re-use the avionics from Artemis II Orion in the Artemis III Orion instead of simply building one set of avionics for each. It takes a lot of time to remove things, re-install them, and re-certify them for flight.”

Is Roscomos Out?

However, Roscosmos has also suffered serious setbacks due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. This includes Roscosmos terminating its involvement in the International Space Station (ISS) and the European Space Agency (ESA) suspending cooperation with Roscosmos for the ExoMars rover mission. Roscosmos has also seen a significant drop in revenue since 2022, reporting financial losses of 180 billion rubles ($2.1 billion) in February 2024 due to canceled contracts.

In addition, Roscosmos has experienced a significant drop in launches per year, a trend that began with the annexation of Crimea in 2014. This includes missions related to the ILRS, like the Luna-25 mission. After a two-year delay, the mission was lost when it crashed on the lunar surface in August 2023. This mission and the subsequent launch of Luna-26 and Luna-27, originally scheduled for 2024 and August 2025 (respectively), were a key part of Phase I of the IRLS’ development.

Since the loss of Luna-25, these missions have been delayed until 2027 and 2028. The Luna-28 mission, meant to play an important role in Phase II of the ILRS’ development, has also been pushed back to 2030. In addition, these three missions, and several payload deliveries in Phase II and III are dependent on Russia’s Angara A5 rocket. The design of this heavy-lift rocket was formalized in 2004, and the first test flight occurred in December 2014, but the next flight did not occur for another six years (December 2020).

The third followed in December 2021, which failed to deliver its payload to the intended orbit. The Angara 5M, unveiled in 2017 to address problems with earlier models, made its maiden flight in April 2024. While multiple launches are scheduled between 2025 and 2030s, none are associated with the Luna program or the ILRS. Said Cowing:

“Russia is cash-strapped and is still isolated from most of the world’s economic systems. In addition, their space sector was already suffering from draconian budget cuts, over-promising things that never happened, and increasingly shoddy workmanship from their contractors. The manufacturing problems with a Soyuz capsule and the malfunction of thrusters in the Nauka module, plus the aging of their part of the ISS, simply serve to exacerbate these challenges further.

Despite these setbacks, China continues to pursue the ILRS and there is little doubt that China will be able to continue without Russian involvement. The success of the Chang’e program to date and their progress with the Long March 9 (CZ-9) is certainly an indication of that.

“China, on the other hand, has a rather robust human spaceflight program of its own, including a large space station,” added Cowing. “They also have an ambitious lunar program that has chalked off one success after another. And their robotic and space station programs are all focused on methodically developing the ability to send their astronauts to the Moon. They really do not need the Russians, and the Russians cannot afford to do much anyway.”

Conclusions?

As it stands, China plans to send the first taikonauts to the Moon in 2030, and they appear to be on track to achieve that. This includes the first launch of the Long March 10, slated for 2026, and the successful test of the Mengzhou spacecraft in 2020. In April 2024, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) announced that the initial development of the Lanyue lander was complete. This was followed by an announcement in October that a separation test for the lander and its propulsion stage had been carried out. However, unforeseen delays may occur that could cause the target date to be pushed.

Meanwhile, NASA has experienced multiple delays and there are still logistical questions that need to be worked out with the Starship HLS. However, NASA and its commercial partners still have the lead regarding the major mission elements. For instance, they have already built and validated the SLS and Orion spacecraft, while SpaceX has successfully completed multiple orbital flights with the Starship. While the target date of mid-2027 may slip further, they could still make their original (pre-Artemis) target date of 2028.

What’s more, NASA has the benefit of experience, having already sent six missions and 12 astronauts to the Moon. In addition, NASA has launched over 1,000 uncrewed and 250 crewed missions into Earth orbit or beyond since its inception in 1958, plus thousands more through its commercial programs. As of January 23rd, 2025, China has conducted 558 launches using the Long March family of rockets and trails the U.S. significantly in terms of annual launches. As the saying goes, “There’s no substitute for experience.”

So… will China send its first taikonauts to the Moon before NASA can make its long-awaited return? In Cowing’s estimation, the chance of that happening is “doubtful.” However, there is little doubt that their robust space program will be a force to be reckoned with in the coming decades, be it in orbit, on the Moon, and (in all likelihood) on Mars!

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27-01-2025 om 18:30 geschreven door peter  

'Supersonic jetstream' with winds 130 times faster than a Category 5 hurricane spotted in the Milky Way

By Harry Baker

The record-breaking winds are circling the nearby "puffy" exoplanet WASP-127b, and are traveling six times faster than the alien world spins.

The record-breaking jetstream discovered on WASP-127b spins six times faster than the exoplanet does. 

(Image credit: ESO/L. Calçada)

Astronomers have spotted a "supersonic jetstream" on a nearby alien world, with winds reaching 20,500 mph (33,000 km/h) — the fastest planetary gusts detected anywhere in the cosmos.

The record-breaking weather is raging on WASP-127b, a "puffy" gas giant around 500 light-years from Earth that is slightly larger than Jupiter but has a fraction of the mass. The exoplanet, discovered in 2016, has a large band of strong winds, or jetstream, circling its equator — similar to the winds that cause the stripes seen on the solar system's gas giants. However, the speed of this jetstream had remained a mystery until now.

But in a new study, published Jan. 21 in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, researchers finally determined the jetstream's speed by measuring it against the rest of the exoplanet's spinning atmosphere, using data collected by the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile.

"Part of the atmosphere of this planet is moving towards us at a high velocity while another part is moving away from us at the same speed," study lead author Lisa Nortmann, an astrophysicist at the University of Göttingen in Germany, said in a statement. "This signal shows us that there is a very fast, supersonic, jet wind around the planet’s equator."

Related: 

• 7 solar system worlds where the weather is crazy

The winds on WASP-127b are traveling at 5.6 miles per second (9 kilometers per second), which is around 130 times faster than the threshold for a Category 5 hurricane or roughly 15 times faster than a speeding bullet.

It is also around 18 times faster than the winds in Neptune's largest jetstream, which can hit 1,100 mph (1,800 km/h) — the fastest gusts recorded in the solar system, according to NASA.

WASP-127b's jetstream is traveling roughly six times faster than the exoplanet spins. "This is something we haven't seen before," Nortmann said.

Complex weather

Researchers determined the composition of WASP-127b's clouds by analyzing the light that passed through the puffy planet's atmosphere. This showed that water vapor and carbon dioxide are both present in the spinning clouds. However, while these compounds are both associated with life on Earth, they can also be explained by abiotic processes so are not proof of extraterrestrial life.

Temperature data collected by the VLT showed that WASP-127b's polar regions are colder than the rest of the planet, and that there are slight temperature variations between the day and night sides of the planet. "This shows that the planet has complex weather patterns just like Earth and other planets of our own [solar] system," study co-author Fei Yan, an astronomer at the University of Science and Technology of China, said in the statement.

RELATED STORIES

• James Webb telescope spots wind blowing faster than a bullet on '2-faced planet' with eternal night
• Nearby exoplanet has grown a tail 44 times longer than Earth — and it's acting like a giant 'stellar windsock'
• James Webb telescope reveals rare, 'rotten egg' atmosphere around nearby hell planet

At the moment, only ground-based telescopes like the VLT can measure distant planetary winds because orbiting observatories, such as the James Webb Space Telescope, do not have the "necessary velocity precision," the researchers wrote.

New ground-based telescopes currently under construction, such as ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope, will "likely resolve even finer details of the wind patterns [on gas giants] and expand this research to smaller, rocky planets," Nortmann said.

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This animation shows supersonic jet winds pummeling the equator of the giant exoplanet WASP-127b, located about 520 light-years from Earth. With speeds up to 9 km per second (almost 33 000 km/h), it is the fastest jetstream of its kind ever measured in the Universe.

The Planet With Supersonic Winds | The Planets | Earth Science

Exoplanet with Atmosphere Discovered by Scientist WASP 127b

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26-01-2025 om 23:16 geschreven door peter  

The tests were conducted by Rubin’s international commissioning team, composed of hundreds of engineers, scientists, and observing specialists. According to a statement issued by the Rubin Observatory, the test included verifying that the telescope’s complex systems were all working together, testing the early image quality in all six of the system’s filters, and running the data processing pipelines. They also verified that the system can transmit large amounts of data from the observatory to the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.

They also confirmed the Active Optics System (AOS), which maintains the precise positions and shapes of the telescope’s three large mirrors. The Simonyi Survey Telescope, the camera, data systems, networks, and everyone involved in the engineering test were said to have performed exceptionally well. The test delivered high-quality images within the first hours, even though most of the detailed optical adjustments and environmental controls were not fully activated. Per the statement:

“Thanks to the dedicated efforts and talents of thousands of people over many years, the telescope had been assembled with all its complex parts positioned correctly to better than about one millimeter. Equally satisfyingly, the high-speed network connecting Chile and the data center at SLAC, the data systems, and the algorithms for analyzing the data worked well, too.”

The LSSTCam has 189 CCD sensors, giving it a field of view roughly 45 times the size of a full Moon – over 21 times that of the ComCam. For the final phase of construction, the LSSTCam will replace the ComCam on the Simonyi Survey Telescope. When coupled with this 8.4-meter (27.5-ft) telescope, the LSTTCam will capture images of very faint and variable objects at an unprecedented rate. The installation will take a few months, followed by the observatory capturing its “First Look” images of the cosmos.

“The success of the engineering test phase has given a surge of excitement and anticipation to the team,” said Deputy Director for Rubin Construction Sandrine Thomas. “Reaching this milestone has offered a small taste of what is to come once Rubin Observatory begins its 10-year survey.” Once the final testing and verification phase is complete, the Rubin Observatory will begin the most comprehensive data-gathering mission ever performed in the history of astrophysics.

The observatory is named in honor of American astronomer Dr. Vera C. Rubin, whose work was foundational to the theory of Dark Matter. By repeatedly scanning the southern sky with its cutting-edge instruments for a decade, Rubin will create an ultra-high-definition time-lapse record of the cosmos. This data will allow scientists to investigate Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and other mysteries facing astronomers, astrophysicists, and cosmologists today.

Further Reading: 

• Rubin Observatory

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26-01-2025 om 16:18 geschreven door peter  

Don’t know about you but when I think of Earth my mind is filled with the diversity of life and the rich flora and fauna. In reality, about 99% of Earth is uninhabitable; deep underground places with high pressure and temperature where even the toughest bacteria cannot survive. There are places though where life thrives from tiniest toughest bacteria to the largest elephant. Then there are places that are habitable but devoid of life; lava flows are a great example and the space between microbes. A paper recently released looks at these uninhabited, habitable areas and wonders what we may learn as we search for life in the Universe.

Life on Earth has taken millions of years to evolve to the state we see today and has invaded nearly every corner of the planet. That is, except those places where the environment is so extreme that even the toughest extremophile cannot survive. These regions include places like the Atacama Desert in Chile, one of the driest places on Earth, where rainfall is so rare that even microbial life struggles to survive. Similarly, parts of Antarctica’s dry valleys feature subzero temperatures, minimal liquid water, and high salinity in some soils, creating an environment hostile to most life forms. It raises interesting questions and perhaps pose limitations on life’s ability to survive. 

We can learn a lot from life on Earth as we hunt for live elsewhere in the Universe. At the moment, there is just one place in the cosmos where we know life has evolved, that’s on Earth. A paper recently authored by Charles S Cockell from the University of Edinburgh explores what we might learn from the inhospitable places on Earth and how that might inform our search for extraterrestrial life. The paper discusses places where active microorganisms cannot be found in particular those places where the physical and chemical conditions are not far from areas that support life. 

The physical spaces where microbes cannot sustain the essential metabolic activity or even reproduce can be categorised into two groups: those with uninhabitable conditions and those with habitable but uninhabited spaces, also known as uninhabited habitats. You might need to read that a few times but it does make sense! Uninhabitable conditions occur in environments where life cannot exist due to extreme factors like intense heat, cold, salinity, or acidity. In contrast, uninhabited habitats are environments that are theoretically capable of supporting life but remain unoccupied, often due to barriers to colonisation or the absence of necessary organisms. The paper draws a strong differentiation between these ‘vacant niches.’

These uninhabited habitats, which form on both macroscopic and microscopic scales through diverse processes, offer opportunities for scientific investigation. They can act as negative control environments, helping to reveal how living organisms influence geochemical processes, and how they can provide a framework for studying processes like microbial succession and community development. Despite their potential significance, the occurrence of these habitats in environments at the physical and chemical extremes of life remain poorly understood.

As we continue our search for life across the universe, we may find many more locations like these. Doing so will help to expand our understanding of the distribution of habitable conditions and the potential for life across the universe. They may offer insights into the processes that make a location suitable for life, as well as the factors that have prevented life from arising or persisting there.

Source : 

• Where the microbes aren’t

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

26-01-2025 om 15:59 geschreven door peter  

Don’t know about you but when I think of Earth my mind is filled with the diversity of life and the rich flora and fauna. In reality, about 99% of Earth is uninhabitable; deep underground places with high pressure and temperature where even the toughest bacteria cannot survive. There are places though where life thrives from tiniest toughest bacteria to the largest elephant. Then there are places that are habitable but devoid of life; lava flows are a great example and the space between microbes. A paper recently released looks at these uninhabited, habitable areas and wonders what we may learn as we search for life in the Universe.

Life on Earth has taken millions of years to evolve to the state we see today and has invaded nearly every corner of the planet. That is, except those places where the environment is so extreme that even the toughest extremophile cannot survive. These regions include places like the Atacama Desert in Chile, one of the driest places on Earth, where rainfall is so rare that even microbial life struggles to survive. Similarly, parts of Antarctica’s dry valleys feature subzero temperatures, minimal liquid water, and high salinity in some soils, creating an environment hostile to most life forms. It raises interesting questions and perhaps pose limitations on life’s ability to survive. 

We can learn a lot from life on Earth as we hunt for live elsewhere in the Universe. At the moment, there is just one place in the cosmos where we know life has evolved, that’s on Earth. A paper recently authored by Charles S Cockell from the University of Edinburgh explores what we might learn from the inhospitable places on Earth and how that might inform our search for extraterrestrial life. The paper discusses places where active microorganisms cannot be found in particular those places where the physical and chemical conditions are not far from areas that support life. 

The physical spaces where microbes cannot sustain the essential metabolic activity or even reproduce can be categorised into two groups: those with uninhabitable conditions and those with habitable but uninhabited spaces, also known as uninhabited habitats. You might need to read that a few times but it does make sense! Uninhabitable conditions occur in environments where life cannot exist due to extreme factors like intense heat, cold, salinity, or acidity. In contrast, uninhabited habitats are environments that are theoretically capable of supporting life but remain unoccupied, often due to barriers to colonisation or the absence of necessary organisms. The paper draws a strong differentiation between these ‘vacant niches.’

These uninhabited habitats, which form on both macroscopic and microscopic scales through diverse processes, offer opportunities for scientific investigation. They can act as negative control environments, helping to reveal how living organisms influence geochemical processes, and how they can provide a framework for studying processes like microbial succession and community development. Despite their potential significance, the occurrence of these habitats in environments at the physical and chemical extremes of life remain poorly understood.

As we continue our search for life across the universe, we may find many more locations like these. Doing so will help to expand our understanding of the distribution of habitable conditions and the potential for life across the universe. They may offer insights into the processes that make a location suitable for life, as well as the factors that have prevented life from arising or persisting there.

Source : 

• Where the microbes aren’t

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

26-01-2025 om 15:59 geschreven door peter  

Scientists track intense radio signals from space to their origin – and are shocked by what they find

‘Just when you think you understand an astrophysical phenomenon, the universe turns around and surprises us,’ says scientist involved

26-01-2025 om 15:37 geschreven door peter  

The northern hemisphere is a vast, smooth plain with a thinner crust and fewer craters. It is also less magnetized than the south.

Scientists have been puzzling over this dichotomy and have proposed different reasons for it. One leading theory involves a massive impact. Some researchers using geophysical modelling have suggested that a Pluto-sized body struck Mars early in its history. The impact could’ve created the northern lowlands as a gigantic impact basin.

Other researchers have proposed that the planet’s internal (endogenic) processes created the dichotomy. Plate tectonics or mantle convection could’ve been behind it.

Either way, the dichotomy is fundamental to understanding Mars. We can’t understand the planet’s evolution without revealing the mystery behind the dichotomy. This is why NASA and the DLR launched the InSight lander, which reached the Martian surface in November 2018.

The lander’s name stands for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport. Among its instruments was SEIS, the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure. SEIS helped scientists better understand Marsquakes by detecting and measuring hundreds of them. It also helped them measure crustal thickness and investigate the mantle. InSight’s data also helped them constrain the size of Mars’ core.

Scientists are still working with InSight’s data, and a new research letter published in the AGU’s Geophysical Research Letters suggests that Mars’ convection is behind the Martian dichotomy. It’s titled “Constraints on the Origin of the Martian Dichotomy From Southern Highlands Marsquakes.” The authors are Weijia Sun from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Professor and geophysicist Hrvoje Tkalcic from the Australian National University.

The authors state the Martian dichotomy in clear terms: “The Martian hemispheric dichotomy is delineated by significant differences in elevation and crustal thickness between the Northern Lowlands and Southern Highlands.” The altitude difference is about equal to the height of the tallest mountains on Earth.

This research is based on a cluster of Marsquakes in the Terra Cimmeria region of the southern highlands. “We analysed waveform data from so-called low frequency marsquakes captured by NASA’s InSight seismograph on Mars,” Professor Tkalcic said. “In doing this, we located a cluster of six previously detected, but unlocated marsquakes in the planet’s southern highlands, in the Terra Cimmeria region.”

These quakes gave the researchers new seismic data from previously unstudied regions, which is significant because it allows them to compare the data to seismic data from other regions, especially from the Cerberus Fossae region in the northern lowlands.

Cerberus Fossae is a series of near-parallel fissures on Mars. Scientists think they were created by the Tharsis volcanoes to the east and Elysium to the west.

The researchers worked with InSight’s seismic data and improved the signal-to-noise ratio. That improvement allowed them to pinpoint the locations of the marsquakes. “Here, we improve the signal-to-noise ratios and determine the locations of the low-frequency marsquakes recorded during the InSight mission. We find a new cluster of marsquakes in Terra Cimmeria, Southern Highlands, in addition to those previously located in Cerberus Fossae, Northern Lowlands,” they write.

The researchers used what’s called the spectral ratio method to determine the quality of the waves. In this context, quality refers to how quickly seismic waves lose energy as they travel through the Martian interior. It’s expressed as a value for ‘Q’ which was different between the Cerberus Fossae region and the Terra Cimmeria region.

“Using the spectral ratio method, we estimate the quality factor Q in the range 481–543 for Terra Cimmeria versus 800–2,000 determined for Cerberus Fossae,” the researchers explain. A higher Q in the Southern Highlands’ Terra Cimmeria indicates that seismic waves there ‘attenuate’ or lose energy more quickly.

Such a large difference in Q between regions indicates that the subsurfaces are substantially different from one another. Temperature and mantle convection could be the key. “The attenuation difference might be linked to the temperature differences between the two hemispheres, along with more vigorous convection beneath the Southern Highlands,” the paper states.

“The data from these marsquakes, when compared with the well-documented northern hemisphere marsquakes, reveal how the planet’s southern hemisphere is significantly hotter compared to its northern hemisphere,” Professor Tkalcic said. “Understanding whether convection is taking place offers clues into how Mars has evolved into its current state over billions of years.”

Researchers’ primary goal in studying the Martian dichotomy has been to determine whether endogenic or exogenic processes or events are responsible. However, the impact theory is hampered by timing. There are significant geochronological constraints for giant impacts on Mars. Crater data, mineral distribution, and the presence of river channels all conflict with the impact hypothesis, which most researchers suggest had to have happened early in the Solar System’s history.

“These seismological observations, together with geochronological constraints of giant impacts, reinforce the “endogenic” hypothesis that mantle convection causes the crustal dichotomy,” they explain.

Are these findings a breakthrough in understanding the Martian dichotomy? Possibly. Compared to our seismic probings of Earth’s interior, Mars is practically undiscovered.

“On Earth, we have thousands of seismic stations scattered around the planet. But on Mars, we have a single station, so the challenge is determining the location of these marsquakes when you have only a single instrument,” Professor Tkalcic said.

It seems that the researchers have met that challenge.

“These findings, supported by geochemical analysis of Martian meteorites, provide valuable in situ seismological observations that support the “endogenic” hypothesis, suggesting that mantle convection plays a crucial role in forming the Martian crustal dichotomy,” the authors explain.

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

25-01-2025 om 01:31 geschreven door peter  

Posted by Mark Thompson

NASA is Testing Shape Memory Alloy Wheels

Rovers on alien worlds need to be built of strong stuff. The dry rugged terrain can be punishing on the wheels as they explore the surface. In order to prevent the damage to the wheels, NASA is testing a shape memory alloy material that can return to its original shape after being bent, stretched, heated or cooled.  NASA has already used this material for years but never in tires, in what may be its perfect application.

Rovers are a common sight now as they explore the surface of other planets. Their versatility and ability to respond to the environment and commands from mission controllers make them a valuable exploration tool. Cameras, sensors, collection instruments and analysis tools are common onboard systems that provide information about the local environment. There have been a number of well known examples such as the Mars rovers; Spirit, Opportunity, Curiosity and Perseverance. They have helped us to learn about the geology, atmosphere, presence of water and habitability of the planet. Taken Mars as a case in point, we have only explored 1% so there is most certainly still a need for robotic rover exploration. 

Perhaps the most robust aspect of a rover is its wheels and tires. They must be capable of coping with rugged, uneven and rocky surfaces yet light enough not to cost a fortune to launch to the alien worlds. NASA has recently undertaken and completed a rigorous round of testing of a new tire using revolutionary shape memory alloys material. The tire technology was developed at the Glenn Research Center in partnership with Goodyear Tire and Rubber. 

The shape memory alloys have been used for numerous applications due to their unique feature of being able to return to their original shape after being deformed. They are typically made from combinations of metals like nickel and titanium which exhibit the property known as super-elasticity. The fascinating property allows the material to ‘remember’ its original shape and have been used in medical devices like stents, wires and various aerospace components. This is the first time NASA have explore their use in tyres. 

The idea about their use in rover wheels came about rather by chance. Dr. Santo Padula II, materials research engineer at NASA Glenn Research Center came across Colin Creager a NASA mechanical engineer while leaving a meeting. Creager explained about the work he was doing in the Glenn Simulated Lunar Operations Laboratory (a simulated lunar surface) to improve rover performance. Having enjoyed a tour of the facilities, Padula noticed the rover tyres were made of steel. Padula immediately realised that the steel wheels would get irreversibly damaged through use ultimately leading to their failure to provide traction. On discussing the matter, Creager explained it was the only problem they couldn’t solve. 

As a materials researcher Padula told him about his  work on a new alloy that would solve the problems with wheel irreversible deformations. The SMA tires concept was born. The two joined forces to develop the first nickel-titanium tires that would deform but return to their original shape and, after rigorous testing, the SMA tires became the solution to Creager’s problem. 

The team is now looking for other ways that SMAs can be used in other space exploration such as habitat protection. The extreme environment of space with meteoroid impacts being a regular occurrence make memory alloys the ideal solution. As robotic exploration continues apace and human exploration of our Solar System moves forward, SMAs look set to be a real game changer in ensuring safety and continued operation of a multitude of space hardware. 

Source :

• NASA Sets Sights on Mars Terrain with Revolutionary Tire Tech

Link :

• https://www.nasa.gov/technology/nasa-sets-sights-on-mars-terrain-with-revolutionary-tire-tech/

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

25-01-2025 om 01:04 geschreven door peter  

All 74 exocomet belts, as imaged in this study.

Image: Prof. Luca Matrà.

The study of exoplanets is challenging enough with the immense distances and glare from the host start but astronomers have taken planetary system explorations to the next level. A team of astronomers have recently announced that they have observed belts of icy pebbles in systems with exoplanets. Using a radio telescope they have been able to detect wavelengths of radiation emitted by millimeter-sized pebbles created by exocomet collisions! Based upon this survey, they have found that about 20% of planetary systems contain these exocometary belts.

Our own Solar System is peppered with them so it’s perfectly reasonable to expect to find them in planetary systems around other stars. The so called exocomets are generally only detected when they pass through or near to our own system. It would also be reasonable to assume they are made of the same icy and rocky material as our own comets but they can still provide valuable insights into the formation and evolution of exoplanetary systems. The first such comet was discovered around the star Beta Pictoris in the 19080s.

A team of astronomers that have been working upon the REASONS (REsolved ALMA and SMA Observations of Nearby Stars) study and have imaged exocomet belts around nearby stars! ALMA (the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) and SMA (Submillimeter Array) are powerful radio observatories that explore the skies in millimetre and submillimeter wavelengths. ALMA is based in northern Chile and composed of an array of 66 dishes and SMA is in Hawaii consisting of 8 dishes. 

The team led by astrophysicists from Trinity College Dublin have been revealed images that reveals pebbles and hence the locations of exocomets. In most cases, they are located tens to hundreds of astronomical units from their host star (one astronomical unit is the average distance from Earth to the Sun.) At theses immense distances from the star the temperatures will be in the between -250 and -150 degrees where any water will be frozen. The observations have detected the radiation emitted from the exocometary collisions. It’s the first time such an in depth analysis has been completed and to date, they have released images from belts in 74 exoplanetary systems. 

The rings are quite varied with some multiple disks and risks, others exhibiting high eccentricity. The eccentricity suggests that there are planets in these systems causing gravitational effects to modify the distribution of the pebbles in the belts.

Co-author of the study Dr Sebastian Marino,  Royal Society University Research Fellow from the University of Exeter explained “The images reveal a remarkable diversity in the structure of belts. Some are narrow rings, as in the canonical picture of a ‘belt’ like our Solar System’s Edgeworth-Kuiper belt. But a larger number of them are wide, and probably better described as ‘disks’ rather than rings.”

The study was able to develop a model showing that the number of pebbles seems to decrease for older planetary systems. This makes sense since an aged system will have run out of exocomets to generate the debris. They also found that the decrease in pebbles is faster when the belt is closer to the star.

Over the last few decades the focus seems to have been on exoplanets but this recent study has shown that the field of exocometary research is well and truly off the starting blocks and revealing fascinating insights into the exoplanetary systems. 

Source : 

• Astrophysicists reveal structure of 74 exocomet belts orbiting nearby stars in landmark survey

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

24-01-2025 om 00:00 geschreven door peter  

Dr. Mason and her colleagues thought they might take a different approach. They got some observational time on the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), a telescope in geosynchronous orbit explicitly designed to observe the coronal layer. They used SDO’s extreme ultraviolet wavelength observational capabilities to observe coronal loops in regions that eventually formed a flare versus those that didn’t.

They observed areas that produced around 50 flares and found that the amount of variability in extreme ultraviolet light the coronal loops in those areas put off was much higher than in the areas that didn’t produce a flare. Essentially, the coronal loops acted like “flashing warning lights” in a certain kind of light spectrum, according to a press release from NASA’s Goddard Institute, some of whose scientists contributed to the paper. 

The discovery was critical because the flashing appeared to take place consistently a few hours before a flare was formed. In technical terms, they accurately predicted the onset of a flare about 2-6 hours beforehand, about 60-80% of the time. That might not seem like great odds and even lesser warning, but some warning is better than none. When given the decision between frying half of the Earth’s electrical grid in a few hours and taking preventive measures, I think policymakers would at least appreciate the opportunity to have a choice.

There are some other nuances in the data, such as stronger flares appear to be predicted by earlier peaking flickering, however more work still needs to be done. Ultimately, this research aims to develop a system of automatically warning the appropriate authorities if there is a potentially hazardous solar event coming our way, but without so many false positives that they feel the system is crying wolf.

That automated system is still a little way off, but this research is a step in the right direction. SDO was initially launched in 2010 and has long outlived its original 5-year mission plan. However, there are plenty of instruments constantly watching the Sun, and undoubtedly, there will be more soon. Maybe they will someday contribute to finalizing a system that will one day save civilization from an avoidable catastrophe.

Learn More:

• NASA – NASA Solar Observatory Sees Coronal Loops Flicker Before Big Flares
  
• Kniezewski et al – 131 and 304 Å Emission Variability Increases Hours Prior to Solar Flare Onset
• UT – New Research Indicates the Sun may be More Prone to Flares Than we Thought
  
• UT – High-Resolution Images of the Sun Show How Flares Impact the Solar Atmosphere

Lead Image:

• NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this image of coronal loops above an active region on the Sun in mid-January 2012. The image was taken in the 171 angstrom wavelength of extreme ultraviolet light.
• Credit – NASA/Solar Dynamics Observatory

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

23-01-2025 om 20:25 geschreven door peter  

Is that really a floating spoon on Mars or just a strange rock? 

(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

As one of Earth's closest neighbors in space, Mars has long captivated humans with the prospect of alien life located just a short rocket trip away. No such life has been found. But now, as NASA and other space agencies have begun to explore the skies and surface of the Red Planet using robotic technology, images of strange features and formations continue to inflame skywatchers' hopes, fears and curiosities.

Here are some of our favorite objects on Mars that look like they don't belong on a dead and dusty planet. Many of these are a result of pareidolia — the tendency for humans to seek familiar patterns and shapes in inanimate objects. However, some of them may even lead scientists to the long-sought evidence of past Martian life.

1. An open "travel book"

Perhaps weary from hunting for evidence of ancient water, NASA's Curiosity rover took a short break in April 2023 to leaf through the pages of an old Martian hardback lying in the dust of Gediz Vallis. While the strange object may look like a book with a single page frozen mid-turn, it is in fact just a rock — and a small one at that. The charming little book-rock measures just 1 inch (2.5 centimeters) wide, according to NASA. Hey, at least it's travel-size!

Related:

• 'Spiders on Mars' fully awakened on Earth for 1st time — and scientists are shrieking with joy

2. A "teddy bear's face"

In an image shared in January 2023 by the University of Arizona (UA), what appears to be the face of an enormous Martian teddy bear — complete with two beady eyes, a button nose and an upturned mouth — grins at the camera of NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. According to UA, the cuddly-wuddly formation is likely just a broken-up hill in the center of an ancient crater. But as far as we're concerned, it's the cutest pile of rubble in the known universe.

3. Frozen "mineral flowers"

Branching outward like a tiny coral, this delicate mineral flower is about the closest thing to greenery one can find on the Red Planet today. Mineral deposits like these are common sights across Mars and result from ancient water mixing with ancient rock. Still, it's rare to see a deposit that's so perfectly flower-like, NASA researchers said. You'll notice two slightly less impressive, circular rocks of the same type to the right of the coral. Curiosity spotted this floral feature in February 2022.

4. A mysterious "doorway"

Is this perfectly hewn "doorway" into a Martian cliffside evidence of intelligent alien life on the Red Planet — or perhaps signs of a secret society of human astronauts camped out in clandestine Mars bunkers? Sadly (for conspiracy theorists), the truth is far simpler: It's just an eroded rock formation caught at the perfect angle. The image was captured by NASA's Curiosity rover in 2022.

5. Fossilized "animal tracks"

(credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

Did alien creatures once skitter across the surface of Mars, leaving fossilized tracks embedded in the rocks? One researcher made this controversial claim in 2018, pointing to images of stick-like structures, each about the size of a grain of rice, crisscrossing a Martian rock. NASA researchers quickly debunked the claims, noting that similar features are plentiful on Earth in areas where salts become concentrated in water, such as evaporating lakes. Their presence on Mars is yet more evidence of past rivers and lakes on the Red Planet, but they offer no proof that living creatures ever adorned its surface.

6. A bushel of "blueberries"

Blueberries are not a significant source of iron when consumed on Earth — but these geological "blueberries" discovered by NASA's Opportunity rover on Mars in 2004 are built differently. The iron-rich spheres, polished smooth by plentiful amounts of water billions of years ago, are some of the earliest evidence scientists have of Mars once being an incredibly wet world. Whether they also taste good on cheesecake is a question for future generations to grapple with.

7. Thousands of black "spiders on Mars"

Every spring, thousands of squiggly black "spiders" emerge from their hibernation near the Martian south pole. No, they are not real spiders — they are not alive at all, of course. The seasonal phenomenon is a result of buried carbon dioxide ice sublimating, or turning to gas, as the weather warms. The newly released gas bursts through layers of surface ice, carrying with it dark dust that splatters across the ground in craggy patterns. To be visible from space, as these formations are, the "spiders" must be fairly big — each one measuring 150 to 3,300 feet (45 meters to 1 kilometer) across, according to the European Space Agency (ESA). Please, nobody tell Ziggy Stardust the bad news.

8. Ruins of an "Inca City"

Near the Martian south pole are curious structures that look like the ruins of a vast and ancient city. Dubbed the "Inca City" for its resemblance to actual ruins discovered in South America, the bizarre rock formation may be made of elevated sand dunes that turned to stone over time, according to ESA. However, its exact origins remain a mystery. The labyrinthine formation appears to curve, forming part of a giant circle 53 miles (86 km) in diameter, leading scientists to suspect it may be part of a much larger impact crater from a meteor strike ages ago.

9. An ancient smiley face

Did someone spray-paint a grinning face onto the Martian surface? Not quite, despite what it looks like in this infrared image snapped by ESA's ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter. Visible only under certain conditions, the face seen here is actually the remnants of an ancient lake, outlined by chloride salt deposits and dotted with two meteor crater eyes. While no Martian graffiti artists are going to pop up from the lake to claim their work, the face-like structure could contain evidence of ancient life on the Red Planet. As Mars' once-plentiful lakes dried up, the remaining water sources likely became very salty, possibly offering a haven for microbial life.

10. An extremely out-of-place rock

One of these things is not like the other. Standing out like a sore Martian thumb inside dusty Jezero Crater, this unusually white rock is the first of its kind ever seen on the Red Planet. Dubbed "Atoko Point" after a similarly light-colored feature of the Grand Canyon, the speckled rock is likely made of the minerals pyroxene and feldspar, according to an analysis by NASA's Perseverance rover. How did such a white rock find itself in such dark-hued company? It likely tumbled down from the crater rim or was transported to the crater floor from elsewhere on Mars back when rivers raged across the region.

11. A stony "Star Trek" symbol

Looks like someone from Starfleet left their communicator badge on the Red Planet — or so it would appear from the familiar shape of this rock spotted by the Curiosity rover. The rock's delta shape is just a coincidence, according to NASA. It is one of thousands located on Mount Sharp, which Curiosity has been exploring for years in its search to uncover clues about Mars' past and whether it ever held the conditions for life.

12. A "tile floor"

While scaling the slopes of Mount Sharp in 2021, NASA's Curiosity rover found remnants of what looks like a tile floor from a Martian bathroom. Dozens of interlocked polygons cracked through the dirt; most contain five or six sides and date to between 3.8 billion and 3.6 billion years ago. These jagged polygons are mud cracks, which have repeatedly dried out and moistened again over the course of untold years. They likely date to a time when the water level in the surrounding Gale Crater rose and fell repeatedly, causing the polygonal cracks in the ground to appear and disappear over time before a final dry spell left them as they are today.

13. Perfectly circular sand dunes

Mars is covered in dunes of all shapes and sizes, but few of them are as perfectly circular as the group spotted above by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2022. Snapped while flying over Mars' northern hemisphere, the image shows a bubbling patchwork of dark and strangely round dunes, slanting southward in the direction where the Martian wind likely blew them. Scientists are still not certain why these particular dunes are so circular or why they appear to be slowly migrating away from Mars' equator at a rate of roughly 3.3 feet (1 m) per Martian year (687 days on Earth).

14. A "shark fin" and a "crab claw"

While trawling through Jezero Crater, NASA's Perseverance rover caught sight of a few fishy-looking rocks. The two odd boulders — one jutting upward like a shark fin, and the other crimped like a crab claw — surprised researchers. However, there isn't much mystery to them. They are just rocks, sculpted by the wind over billions of years and left in the Martian dust for pattern-seeking human minds to find.

15. A "floating spoon"

In 2015, NASA's Curiosity rover spotted what appeared to be a wooden spoon, floating in midair with a shadow on the ground beneath it. It was, of course, an optical illusion; the spoon is simply a rock, shaped by the wind over eons, also known as a ventifact. The handle of the spoony rock juts out from a larger formation, allowing the spoon's rounded tip to hover over the ground below, casting a distinct shadow beneath it.

16. An eerie "face"

One of the earliest Martian rock formations to capture the public's interest was this infamous "face" spotted b{{ y NASA's Viking 1 satellite in 1976. While circling the planet looking for a landing site for its robotic companion, Viking 2, the satellite spotted a mound of rocks, partially obscured in shadow, distinctly resembling a human face. Follow-up observations with later spacecraft showed that the face was visible only from certain angles and under certain light conditions, proving that the Martian mound's humanlike appearance was just a trick of light and shadow.

{ https://www.livescience.com/ }

22-01-2025 om 21:23 geschreven door peter