NASA released a new Mars rover game to celebrate Curiosity anniversary

Mars enthusiasts will be beside themselves with dusty red delight when they hear about what NASA’s just gone and done.

Celebrating the fourth anniversary of the Curiosity rover’s arrival on the faraway planet, the space agency has released a new social game with the deliciously obvious title of Mars Rover.

The super-straightforward iOS, Android, and desktop game requires you to navigate a rover across rough Martian terrain, the main challenge apparently being to keep its wheels intact and prevent the vehicle from toppling over as you go. “One crater crash, and it’s ‘game over’ for your rover!” NASA says in the game’s notes. Along the way you can use radar technology to search for buried water, a feature expected to be part of the next Mars rover currently being prepped for a 2020 launch.

“We’re excited about a new way for people on the go to engage with Curiosity’s current adventures on Mars and future exploration by NASA’s Mars 2020 rover too,” said Michelle Viotti of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. “Using social networks, the user can share the fun with friends.

The interest that is shared through gameplay also helps us open a door to deeper literacy in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.”

The result of a collaboration between the lab and gaming social network Gamee, Mars Rover‘s vehicle has, perhaps not surprisingly, little in common with the real one that’s currently exploring the red planet.
For example, as NASA points out, while the rover in the game rolls along at a steady clip, the Mars-based machine proceeds at a more leisurely two inches per second. At that rate it’d take about half an hour to make it across a football field.

Also, unlike in the game, Curiosity can’t respond immediately to an operator’s commands “because the signal takes too long to get to Mars,” NASA explains. “Instead, rover drivers send a list of commands to the rovers once per day. The rover finishes its ‘to do’ list, then it usually takes a nap to recharge its batteries.”

For a more realistic view, check out this cool Experience Curiosity simulation that lets you explore Mars’ surface and learn about actual data discovered by NASA’s rover. Besides great graphics (rather better than those in the game, it has to be said), Experience Curiosity also offers tidbits about the rover itself, as well as audio clips explaining its various discoveries.

Have time for more? Then how about NASA’s impressive Mars Trek feature, a web-based tool that lets you zoom in close to Mars’ numerous craters and volcanoes – think of it as Google Earth for the red planet.




Source: Digital Trends

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Juno sends back its first images from Jupiter

 


About a week after NASA's Juno spacecraft entered orbit around Jupiter on July 4, the first images taken from the spacecraft's perch around the largest planet in the solar system have made their way back to Earth.

On Sunday, six days after starting its orbit, Juno's visible light camera was turned on and the JunoCam captured the above scene, proving it survived its first pass through the planet's intense radiation.

The view shows Jupiter with its famous giant red spot on display, as well as three of its four major moons: Io, Europa and Ganymede. While Io is a turbulent world marked by violent volcanic activity, Europa and Ganymede are believed to harbor hidden ocean, with Europa a leading target for the search for life beyond Earth.

NASA says high-resolution views of Jupiter itself from Juno will arrive in a few weeks. For more than a year and a half, the spacecraft will circle the gas giant, studying its huge auroras and peaking beneath its dense clouds to learn more about the planet's structure and maybe even look for signs of crazy sci-fi creatures inhabiting its atmosphere or unseen oceans.



Source: NASA
Via: Cnet

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Juno arrives in orbit around Jupiter After five years

After traveling five years through the solar system, Juno has finally reached its destination and is currently in orbit around Jupiter, traveling nearly 250,000 kilometers per hour (150,000 mph).

The most dangerous aspect of the $1.13 billion mission, which launched in 2011, occurred this evening at 11:18 pm ET when Juno initiated its final approach procedures. In order to successfully insert itself into orbit around Jupiter (instead of flying right past the planet, or crashing into it), Juno needed to ignite its main engine for 35 minutes.

Now that Juno has successfully completed this burn, it will begin its first of 37 orbits around Jupiter.

Jupiter imaged by the Cassini spacecraft / Image courtesy of NASA

During these orbits, Juno will repeatedly dive through Jupiter’s radiation belts, coming within 3,000 miles of Jupiter’s cloud tops at its closest approach. With a suite of scientific instruments, Juno will provide data to improve our understanding of Jupiter’s formation and evolution.

“Juno’s study of Jupiter will help us to understand the history of our own solar system and provide new insight into how planetary systems form and develop in our galaxy and beyond.” – NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Juno, which was named after the Roman goddess who was Jupiter’s wife, will enable scientists to see below Jupiter’s dense cloud cover – something that’s never been done before.

One of the reasons this is such a unique mission is because its destination is extremely dangerous. Of the eight known planets in the solar system, Jupiter has the largest magnetic field and the highest radiation. Because of this, Juno had to be specially designed to survive these extremes long enough to retrieve useful data from this mysterious planet.

To put the extremes of Jupiter in perspective, the background radiation that we’re exposed to here on Earth is about 0.39 RAD. On Jupiter, Juno is expected to see 20,000,000 RAD over the course of its lifetime.

In NASA’s trailer for the Juno mission, scientists describe Jupiter as an unforgiving, relentless monster.

“It’s spinning around so fast that its gravity is like a giant slingshot slinging rocks and dust, electrons and whole comets. Anything that gets close to it becomes its weapon.” – NASA Juno Science Team

Juno spacecraft size in relation to a basketball court / Image courtesy of NASA/JPL

NASA’s needed a spacecraft strong enough to withstand this environment and their answer was Juno: a nearly 8,000 pound spacecraft with three different solar panels that stretch out to 9 meters in length.
At the beginning of the Jupiter orbit insertion, Juno carried 1,232 kilograms of fuel. Now that the 35-minute insertion burn has been completed, there’s only 447 kilograms of fuel left on the spacecraft. Juno will use the remaining fuel to complete the next 36 orbits around Jupiter and ultimately de-orbit into the planet itself.



The video above shows a peek of what the spacecraft saw as it neared its final approach.  Captured with the JunoCam camera on June 29^th, Jupiter along with four of its moons (Callisto, Ganymede, Europa, and Io) can be seen. All equipment on board, including the science instruments and JunoCam, were turned off on June 30^th to prepare the spacecraft for the most dangerous part of its mission: the Jupiter orbit insertion.

“The scariest thing to me about Juno are the unknowns. So much about the environment that it will have to withstand is unknown. Nothings really certain about what’s going to happen.” – NASA Juno Science Team

There’s still a long, dangerous road ahead for Juno, but if everything else goes as planned, the mission will end with the spacecraft de-orbiting and crashing into Jupiter in 2018.




Source: Techcrunch

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NASA's 'Chemical Laptop' could help future rovers find life on alien planets

NASA scientists have a new device up their sleeves to help find life on other planets. The rectangular box is being called the "Chemical Laptop," but it's really more of a portable, automated chemistry lab that can be built into future NASA rovers.

The Chemical Laptop has one primary goal, according to NASA: to find molecules associated with life. Specifically, it's designed to find amino acids and fatty acids, which are key to proteins and cell membranes, respectively, in life here on Earth.

Samples obtained on Mars or elsewhere need to be dissolved in water before they can be analyzed. The Chemical Laptop uses something researchers are likening to an espresso machine to heat up and dissolve the samples in water. Dyes and other chemical additives will be used to help mark molecules in the samples, and anything that's obtained will be analyzed by a laser in the device.

But the tool won't just be able to tell if there are amino acids or fatty acids on an alien planet. It can determine additional information that could help determine whether those amino acids actually came from a life form.

It can tell if amino acids came from life forms

A particular amino acid can come in either a left- and right-handed variety; the two versions, called enantiomers, have identical physical properties, but they are mirror images of each other. Here on Earth, life has evolved to almost exclusively use the left-handed versions. Many biological reactions will retain the "handedness" of a molecule — for whatever reason, left-handed came to dominate life that we know. But it's equally possible that right-handed amino acids could dominate life on another planet. What's not likely is that an alien life form would use an equal mixture of the two — if a sample contained an equal mix, the molecules probably didn't come from life.

Since the left- and right-handed versions are so similar, they can be difficult to distinguish — especially on a faraway planet. To solve this problem, some of the dyes used by the Chemical Laptop only work with left- or right-handed amino acids. That will then let researchers see the composition of a sample, and determine if it's likely life existed on the planet.

Jessica Creamer, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, says in a statement that if an excess of one was found, "That would be the best evidence so far that life exists on other planets." She added that the Chemical Laptop "would be the most sensitive device of its kind to leave Earth," if and when it's implemented on future missions. So far, a version of the device has already been demonstrated here on Earth — now it just needs its chance in space.

Source :The Verge 

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NASA spots real 'Death Star' vaporizing a mini planet

The Death Star in Star Wars is something to be feared. It's a superweapon in space, capable of blasting away a planet on a whim. Darth Vader's deadly ride now has a real-life doppelganger. NASA announced Wednesday it found evidence of a white dwarf star destroying a nearby small rocky object.

NASA's Kepler telescope spotted evidence of the dramatic scene playing out in space. "This discovery validates a long-held theory that white dwarfs are capable of cannibalizing possible remnant planets that have survived within its solar system," NASA notes.

White dwarfs are dense dead stars that have already been through the super-sized red-giant phase of their lifespans and then shrunk in on themselves.

"We are for the first time witnessing a miniature 'planet' ripped apart by intense gravity, being vaporized by starlight and raining rocky material onto its star," said Andrew Vanderburg, lead author of a paper on the findings that waspublished in the journal Nature Wednesday.

The "mini planet" described by NASA is more accurately called a planetesimal, which is a small object made up of dust, rock and other space debris. It orbits the white dwarf every 4.5 hours, which means it's dangerously up close and personal with the dying star.

Kepler was able to pick up a regular dimming of the light coming from the white dwarf, indicating the presence of the planetesimal, which showed signs of breaking up in its orbit. "For the last decade we've suspected that white dwarf stars were feeding on the remains of rocky objects, and this result may be the smoking gun we're looking for," NASA staff scientist Fergal Mullally said.

Kepler is currently engaged in its K2 mission of monitoring distant stars and looking for signs of planets around them. The mission started last year.

Source :CNET 

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NASA cuts ties with organization aimed at protecting Earth from asteroids

NASA is parting ways with the B612 Foundation — the organization hoping to build a spacecraft to hunt down Earth-destroying asteroids,SpacePolicyOnline reports. NASA had a Space Act Agreement with the foundation to help develop the vehicle without giving out any money. But now NASA has terminated the agreement as the B612 Foundation hasn't even started development on their spacecraft — an important milestone laid out in the contract.

The B612 Foundation is a US-based non-profit run by former astronauts Ed Lu and Rusty Schweickart. The main initiative of the organization is the Sentinel Mission; it entails launching a space telescope into a Venus-like orbit around the Sun. The Sentinel would use an infrared lens to detect all Near-Earth Asteroids, or NEAs, that are more than 450 feet across. The B612 Foundation claims that after six and a half years in orbit, the Sentinel Telescope will have mapped nearly 98 percent of all known NEAs. This will allow us to know if any are headed toward Earth — giving us ample time to prepare deflection strategies, according to the foundation.

B612 Foundation hasn't even started development on their spacecraft

The B612 Foundation boasts an impressive team of engineers, including personnel from Ball Aerospace who worked on the Hubble Space Telescope and the Kepler Mission. NASA got on board in 2012, when it signed its Space Act Agreement with the organization. The contract, originally meant to last 10 years, laid out a number of milestones that the foundation needed to meet. These included a critical design review for the Sentinel Mission in October 2014, with a planned launch scheduled for December 2016. However, those dates have been pushed back, with a launch tentatively scheduled for sometime in 2017 or 2018.

The delays are likely the result of slow fundraising. The B612 Foundation is relying on crowdfunding and private donations to shoulder the cost of the mission, which is estimated to be $450 million. Yet the organization only raised $1.2 million in 2012 and $1.6 million in 2013.

"Due to limited resources, NASA can no longer afford to reserve funds" to help out the endeavor, SpacePolicyOnline reported. In an email toMotherboard, B612 Foundation CEO Ed Lu said they are still moving forward with the Sentinel Mission despite the contract termination:

The status of the SAA in no way changes the resolve of the B612 Foundation to move forward. Funding for large private space projects has historically been difficult to predict, and Sentinel is no different. We have made strong technical progress in the past 3 years and will continue to work independently and together with NASA, the US Congress and others to move forward.

NASA says it's open to signing another Space Act Agreement with the B612 Foundation in the future.

Source : The Verge 

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NASA confirms that liquid water flows on Mars

It's the first direct evidence of a long-suspected theory

(NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)

Liquid water exists on the surface of Mars during the planet's warmer seasons, according to new research published in Nature Geosciences. This revelation comes from new spectral data gathered by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), a spacecraft that studies the planet from orbit. The orbiter analyzed the chemistry of weird dark streaks that have been known to appear and disappear seasonally on the Martian surface. The analysis confirms that these streaks are formed by briny — or salty — water flowing downhill on Mars.

NASA has advertised these findings as the solution to a major Mars mystery: does the Red Planet truly have liquid water on its surface? Researchers have known that water exists in ice form on Mars, but it's never been confirmed if water can remain in a liquid state. The space agency is claiming that we now have that answer.

NASA has advertised these findings as the solution to a major Mars mystery

This isn't the first study to suggest liquid water is present in some form on Mars. Scientists have theorized for years that Mars was once home to a large ocean more than 4 billion years ago. And recent findings from the Mars Curiosity rover suggest that liquid water exists just underneath the Martian surface. The discovery of water on Mars has almost become a joke among planetary scientists. Alfred McEwan, a planetary geologist at Arizona State University who also worked on this research, wrote in Scientific American that the studies have become extremely commonplace: "Congratulations — you've discovered water on Mars for the 1,000th time!" he joked.

Today's findings seem to offer more direct evidence of liquid water than most, though the study only confirms what NASA has long suspected — that flowing liquid water forms the strange, dark streaks that have been observed on Mars. These streaks — called recurring slope lineae — were first observed by the MRO spacecraft in 2010. The lines are blackish and narrow at less than 16 feet across. During the warmer seasons, the streaks grow thicker and longer; they then fade and shrink at times when Mars is colder.

This led scientists to believe years ago that perhaps water and salt were involved in the creation of these lines. "[The streaks] loved forming at temperatures that were right for liquid water to exist," study author Lujendra Ojha, a graduate student at Georgia Tech, told The Verge.

The average temperature on Mars is a frigid -80 degrees Fahrenheit, but on a summer day near the equator, the temperature can reach up to 70 degrees Fahrenheit. Ojha and his team speculated that when conditions are warm enough, liquid water filled with perchlorates — a type of salt — flow downhill on the planet's sloping geological features. Together, water and perchlorates form a brine solution, which has a much lower freezing point than water. This allows the brine to stay in a liquid state even when temperatures grow colder. Ultimately, the streaks are the leftover salt deposits from these briny flows, Ojha believed.

The new study published today offers direct evidence that liquid water is indeed involved. Using the MRO's imaging spectrometer, the researchers studied the chemical makeup of the recurring slope lineae. The visible-infrared spectrometer, which can determine the composition of minerals by observing them in different light wavelengths, showed that the dark streaks were indeed composed of hydrated salts that have molecular water in their crystal structure. "What that seems to be telling us is that water plays a key role in the formation mechanism of these features," said Ojha.

Water strengthens the possibility of finding microbial life on the Red Planet

As for where this water is coming from, Ojha noted there are three possible sources. The perchlorates may be pulling water out of the Martian atmosphere when the air grows particularly humid. The water also may be from a subsurface reservoir of ice that turns into liquid when it comes in contact with the salts. There's even the possibility of an aquifer that is generating the water needed for the briny flows.

Whatever the source, Ojha said the evidence is unambiguous proof that liquid water exists on Mars. And if so, that strengthens the possibility of finding microbial life on the Red Planet. The presence of liquid water on Earth is intimately linked with the formation of life, so the odds are better than ever that extraterrestrial organisms are nearby in our Solar System.

Except we kind of already knew that. But now, we're really, really sure. 

Source : The Verge 

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Google's new computer runs at the coldest temperature on earth

The famous Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab is getting some powerful new hardware. A joint project between Google, NASA, and the Universities Space Research Association, the Quantum AI Lab today announced a multiyear agreement to install a D-Wave 2X, a state-of-the-art quantum processor released earlier this year. With over 1,000 qubits, the machine is the most powerful computer of its kind, and will be put to work tackling difficult optimization problems for both Google and NASA.

The fragility of the qubits also means the computer's processor can only operate at extremely cold temperatures. The 2X's standard operating temperature is less than 15 millikelvin, a temperature far colder than outer space.

The computer operates at 15 millikelvin

"Working with the D-Wave processors has helped us develop and fine-tune models of quantum annealing," Google's Harmut Neven, head of the Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab, said in a statement. "We look forward to the continued advancements coming from each generation of D-Wave systems."

But while the lab moves to test the new machine's capabilities, there are still real questions about whether D-Wave's approach to quantum computing will yield results. Benchmarking tests on D-Wave's previous models have failed to find evidence of the so-called "quantum speedup" — the exponential increase in computing power that makes quantum computing so appealing. D-Wave has proposed alternate benchmarks that show something closer to a speedup, but for most experts, the debate is still unsettled.

At the same time, D-Wave's computers aren't Google's only play in the quantum computing space. The company's biggest rival in the quantum computing space is a team of scientists from UC Santa Barbara team that was hired by Google in 2014. Where D-Wave chains together hundreds of qubits with higher error rates, the UC Santa Barbara group is working with smaller numbers of more reliable qubits, and struggling to maintain low error rates at the scale of the D-Wave machine. It remains to be seen which model has the better shot — but if either one succeeds, Google will have first pick of the results.

Source : The Verge 

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Mars panorama from Curiosity shows petrified sand dunes

Some of the dark sandstone in an area being explored by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows texture and inclined bedding structures characteristic of deposits that formed as sand dunes, then were cemented into rock.

A panorama from Curiosity's Mast Camera (Mastcam) that includes a ridge made of thissandstone is online.

This sandstone outcrop—part of a geological layer that Curiosity's science team calls the Stimson unit—has a structure called crossbedding on a large scale that the team has interpreted as deposits of sand dunes formed by wind. Similar-looking petrified sand dunes are common in the U.S. Southwest. Geometry and orientation of the crossbedding give information about the directions of the winds that produced the dunes.

The Stimson unit overlies a layer of mudstone that was deposited in a lake environment. Curiosity has been examining successively higher and younger layers of Mount Sharp, starting with the mudstone at the mountain's base, for evidence about changes in the area's ancient environment.

The dozens of individual Mastcam images combined into this panorama were taken on Aug. 27, 2015. Curiosity has driven about 103 yards (94 meters) in the subsequent two weeks, generally southward. Outcrops of the Stimson unit sandstone are still accessible to the rover, and researchers plan to use the rover to collect and analyze a drilled sample of Stimson unit sandstone this month.

Curiosity has been working on Mars since early August 2012. It reached the base of Mount Sharp last year after fruitfully investigating outcrops closer to its landing site and then trekking to the mountain.

Source : phys.org 

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