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Posts Tagged ‘Mars’

Video: Curiosity rover captures 360-degree panorama of Mount Sharp on Mars, showing changing landscape

24 Aug

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover recently explored Mount Sharp. The mountain is 8km (5 mi) tall and is within the 154km-wide (96 mi) basin of Mars’s Gale Crater. Curiosity captured a new 360-degree panorama at Mount Sharp, revealing its diverse terrain and shedding light on the area’s ancient environment.

NASA writes, ‘Images of knobbly rocks and rounded hills are delighting scientists as NASA’s Curiosity rover climbs Mount Sharp, a 5-mile-tall (8-kilometer-tall) mountain within the 96-mile-wide (154-kilometer-wide) basin of Mars’ Gale Crater. The rover’s Mast Camera, or Mastcam, highlights those features in a panorama captured on July 3, 2021 (the 3,167th Martian day, or sol, of the mission).’

Studying the region has been a long-term goal for the Curiosity mission, which is now in its ninth year on Mars. By studying the layers of Mount Sharp, scientists hope to understand how the environment of Gale Crater dried over time. Similar changes in mineral composition are seen across the planet, so understanding Gale Crater should pay dividends in understanding other parts of Mars.

‘The rocks here will begin to tell us how this once-wet planet changed into the dry Mars of today, and how long habitable environments persisted even after that happened,’ said Abigail Fraeman, Curiosity’s deputy project scientist, at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

‘NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover used its Mast Camera, or Mastcam, to capture this 360-degree view near “Rafael Navarro Mountain” on July 3, 2021, the 3,167th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. Stitched together from 129 individual images, the panorama has been white-balanced so that the colors of the rock materials resemble how they would appear under daytime lighting conditions on Earth. A craggy hump that stretches 450 feet (137 meters) tall, the geologic feature is located on Mount Sharp in northwest Gale Crater.’ Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS. Click to enlarge.

When Curiosity landed on Mars on August 5, 2012, its primary mission was to study whether different Martian environments could have supported microbial life in Mars’s ancient past. Lakes and groundwater once existed within Gale Crater, and scientists want to use Curiosity to understand better what happened and how Mars changed over time.

Looking forward, Curiosity is currently working its way up a path between Rafael Navarro Mountain and a towering butte. In the coming year, Curiosity will drive past these features and enter a canyon. It will then revisit Greenheugh Pediment.

You can learn more about the Curiosity mission by visiting NASA’s dedicated Mars website. You can also check out some of our prior coverage, including Curiosity photographing rare shimmering clouds in June and a neat selfie Curiosity sent to Earth in March.

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NASA’s ambitious Perseverance rover lands on Mars and sends back its first images

19 Feb
The first image sent back to Earth from Perseverance following its successful landing on Mars. You can see Perseverance’s shadow in the foreground. Image credit: NASA

On July 30, 2020, NASA launched its Mars Perseverance Rover on an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Yesterday, February 18, 2021, Perseverance landed successfully on the red planet.

The 2,260-pound (1,025kg) rover touched down with precision at an ancient river delta site in Jezero Crater. Perseverance is exploring an area where a lake existed nearly 4 billion years ago. The Perseverance mission has numerous objectives, including exploring its geologically diverse landing site, assessing ancient habitability, seeking signs of ancient life, gathering rock and soil samples, and demonstrating technology for future exploration by robots and humans alike.

Map showing Perseverance’s landing site at the Jezero Crater on Mars. Image credit: NASA

In the video below, you can see mission control react when Perseverance landed on Mars. Mission control was recorded using an Insta360 Pro 2 camera. When using a compatible browser, you can rotate the camera around mission control. The moment of elation is around the 1:46:00 mark. It’s an emotional moment for the team, and it’s cool to see it captured in 360 degrees.

Perseverance will spend at least one Martian year (about two Earth years) exploring the landing site region. Onboard are seven instruments, including the MastCam-Z, SuperCam, Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry (PIXL), and Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals (SHERLOC). The Mastcam-Z is an advanced camera system with panoramic and stereoscopic imaging capabilities. The camera, which can zoom, will analyze the minerals of the Martian surface. SuperCam is provides imaging, chemical composition analysis, and mineralogy at a distance.

Engineers working on Perseverance. Image credit: NASA

PIXL is an X-ray fluorescence spectrometer and high-resolution imager. PIXL will map the elemental composition of surface materials. SHERLOC provides fine-scale imaging and uses an ultraviolet laser to map mineralogy and organic compounds. SHERLOC is the first UV Raman spectrometer to land on Mars. SHERLOC also includes a high-res color camera for microscopic imaging of Mars’ surface.

Mission control. Image credit: NASA

It’s difficult to overstate what an accomplishment it is to land not only NASA’s most ambitious Mars rover yet, but also to do so during a pandemic. As Chelsea Gohd writes for Space.com, ‘This mission didn’t just propel technology and science forward, it demonstrated the incredible Perseverance of the human spirit. Despite everything, the teams at NASA were able to accomplish this incredible feat, which, even in ‘normal times,’ would have been difficult.’ Matt Wallace of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) shared a similar sentiment following Perseverance’s successful landing, ‘It’s been a tough year. It’s been tough to do this mission in this environment. But the team, like they have with every other challenge, has stepped up to it…’

An illustration of the Perseverance rover. Image credit: NASA

If NASA had been forced to delay the launch from last July, the launch window would have been pushed back 26 months due to planetary alignment. Perseverance is a $ 2.7B mission, so a more than two-year delay is a tough pill to swallow. Instead, NASA was swift to enact COVID protocols, which came with unique challenges and ultimately allowed the mission to continue as scheduled.

This is the first image Perseverance sent back to Earth following its successful landing on Mars. Image credit: NASA

Back to yesterday’s historic landing. Perseverance, or ‘Percy’ as some at mission control call the rover, landed at 3:55 p.m. ET. The landing went smoothly, and Percy wasted no time sending its first image back to Earth. Perseverance then sent a second image, showing the view from the rear of the spacecraft. Both images were captured using onboard ‘hazard cameras,’ and the protective covers were still in place. Future images will be more detailed and impressive, but these are nonetheless important photos. The images will be used to help the team very precisely locate Perseverance’s landing site on the Martian surface.

The second image shows the view from the rear of Perseverance. Image credit: NASA

For Perseverance, the next few days on Mars will be spent exploring the area. Its handlers will come to grips with the area and stabilize the rover’s onboard systems, including communications systems that will allow specialized software to be uploaded from Earth.

A 3D-printed model of MastCam-Z. Image credit: NASA

Per Space.com, ‘Perservance’s head-like, instrument-laden mast will also be deployed in these first few sols, allowing capture of great new imagery. For example, the rover’s MastCam-Z camera system is scheduled to take its first color panorama on sol 3.’ Mars 2020 deputy project manager Jennifer Trosper says that NASA will do about four days transitioning to new software before digging its teeth into planned scientific endeavors. It’s taken a considerable amount of time, money, and work to get to this point so that the team won’t rush anything.

As you can see in this diagram, Perseverance includes a lot of onboard instruments and equipment. Among other objectives, the rover will use its instruments to analyze and gather information on the chemical and mineral composition of the Martian surface. Image credit: NASA

Perseverance includes an onboard helicopter, Ingenuity. The four-pound helicopter will drop from the rover soon and, if all goes well, become the blueprint for future extraterrestrial exploration.

An illustration of NASA’s new Mars helicopter, Ingenuity. Its maiden flight will mark the first powered flight on another world. Image credit: NASA

If you want to take part in the celebration of Perseverance’s successful landing, NASA has set up a Mars Photo Booth. You can upload a selfie and place yourself on Mars, in mission control, or in front of a handful of other backgrounds.

There’s a lot to look forward to over the next Martian year (and hopefully longer). Perseverance includes 23 cameras, so we should be treated to some amazing imagery throughout 2021 and beyond.

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Video: Astrophotographer creates stunning global map of Mars

17 Nov

Astrophotographer Jean-Luc Dauvergne spent six nights this fall capturing images of Mars. Dauvergne used the 1.06m telescope of Pic du Midi observatory in the French Pyrenees to capture his photos, which he has since used to create a global map of Mars.

In addition to the six nights Dauvergne spent at the observatory, he told PetaPixel that it took him an additional 10 days to process the images. He says that Pic du Midi ‘is one of the best places in the world for planetary imaging.’

The 1m telescope has a 17,000mm focal length and was originally installed in 1963 to help NASA with its Apollo missions. Dauvergne says that ‘it’s still one of the best [telescopes] in the world to study planetary surfaces in the visible part of the spectrum.’ He’s used the telescope to create what he says is the best global map of Mars shot from Earth’s surface.

Dauvergne photographed Mars this October and November due to the Mars opposition. This event happens roughly every 26 months. This year, the opposition itself occurred on October 13. You can learn much more about the Mars opposition by clicking here. Dauvergne picked a great place for his observations and the Pic du Midi Observatory has an interesting history with observing Mars.

Image credit: Jean-Luc Dauvergne. Click to enlarge.

The Pic du Midi observatory is located 9,439′ (2,877m) above sea level at the top of the Pic du midi de Bigorre mountain. The Pic Du Midi Observatory is part of the Midi-Pyrenees Observatory, which includes additional research stations in France. Construction of the observatory began on the mountaintop all the way back in 1878, although costs slowed progression significantly. In 1908, an 8m dome with a mechanical equatorial reflector was built. Interestingly, this reflector was used to observe Mars and discredit the theory that there were canals on its surface.

When NASA funded the building of the 1m telescope in 1963, the telescope was used to photograph the surface of the Moon. In 1965, the telescope was then used by astronomers Pierre and Janine Connes to analyze Mars and Venus. Their work helped inform James Lovelock, a scientist in California, to theorize that these planets didn’t support life.

The observatory includes a 2m telescope as well, which was built in 1980. It’s the largest telescope in France. There’s also a 0.6m telescope which has been used by amateur astronomers since the early 80s. In total, the Pic du Midi Observatory includes four telescopes. With the aid of these telescopes, the discovery of nine minor planets are credited to the Pic du Midi Observatory.

If you’d like to see more from Jean-Luc Dauvergne, check out his Twitter and YouTube channel. On YouTube, he has additional videos of Mars from his observations at Pic du Midi.

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NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance mission to carry more cameras than any interplanetary mission in history

30 Jul

Tomorrow morning, NASA is expected to launch its Mars 2020 mission, which will take the Perseverance rover to the Red Planet to search for signs of ancient life, collect terrain samples for potential return to Earth and overall provide a better look at the Martian surface.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket with NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover onboard is seen on the launch pad at Space Launch Complex 41. Credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky

Amongst dozens of other pieces of equipment, the Perseverance rover features a record-breaking 19 cameras that NASA says ‘will deliver images of the [Martian] landscape in breathtaking detail.’ There are four additional cameras onboard other parts of the spacecraft that will be used for entry, descent and landing. These additional cameras will ‘potentially [allow] engineers to put together a high-definition view of the landing process after the rover safely touches down on Mars, according to NASA’s fact sheet.

An overview of the tools on board the Perseverance rover.

NASA breaks down how each of the cameras aboard the Perseverance rover will be used:

19 cameras total on the rover: 9 for engineering (color); 3 for entry, descent and landing (1 black-and-white dedicated to Terrain-Relative Navigation and 2 color for public engagement and engineering reconstruction of entry, descent and landing); 2 for Mastcam-Z (color with zoom); 1 for SuperCam (color); 2 for SHERLOC (color); 1 for PIXL (black-and-white with some color capabilities); and 1 for MEDA (black-and-white)

3 cameras on the back shell: all color, all looking up to capture parachute inflation

1 camera on the descent stage: color, looking down to view the rover from above

Students Alex Mather, at left, and Vaneeza Rupani, stand near the countdown clock at the News Center at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on July 28, 2020. Mather named the Perseverance rover, and Rupani named the Ingenuity helicopter. Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

Hitching a ride with the Perseverance rover is Ingenuity, the Mars Helicopter, which NASA hopes will ‘be the first flyer on another world.’ The 1.8kg (4lb) helicopter is this mission’s technology demonstration, which is separate experiment designed to test interplanetary technology.

The UAV features two 1.2m (4ft) carbon-fiber blades that will spin at roughly 2,400rpm on counter-rotating motors — about eight times faster than the blades spin on a standard helicopter here on Earth. While Ingenuity is a separate experiment from the Mars 2020 Perseverance mission, the helicopter will have two cameras onboard: one color camera with ‘an oblique view for terrain images’ and one black-and-white camera for navigation.

As it has with previous Mars missions, NASA plans to make both raw and processed images captured during the mission available for the public to download on the mission’s website.

A ‘Quick Facts’ overview of the Mars 2020 mission.

The Perseverance rover and Ingenuity helicopter are set to land on Mars on February 18, 2021, after which its primary mission will last ‘at least’ one Mars year (approximately 687 Earth days). You can find out more about the Mars 2020 mission on the NASA website and watch the launch live tomorrow if all goes to plan.

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Go on a 4K video tour of Mars with images captured by NASA’s Mars rovers

23 Jul

ElderFox Documentaries has compiled a 4K UHD video tour of Mars using ultra-high resolution images and photo mosaics captured by NASA’s Mars rovers. It’s a stunning look at the Martian landscape and a great way to view another world nearly 34 million miles away.

The video is technically a slideshow, as there are massive technical constraints limiting NASA’s ability to record and transmit high-resolution video from Mars to earth. As NASA points out, it can take about 20 hours to transmit 250 megabits directly back to earth. There is an eight-minute window during each Martian day (sol) in which the rover can send the same 250 megabits of data to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter as it passes overhead. As ElderFox Documentaries notes, at those transmission speeds and considering that ‘nothing really moves on Mars,’ it makes more sense to send images back home rather than video files.

In the video above, we see images captured by three different NASA Mars rovers: Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity. In the bottom left corner of the video tour, ElderFox has noted the Mars rover used to capture the images and the location on Mars in which they were captured.

If you want to see more of Mars, we have a lot more to show you. In March, NASA shared the highest-resolution panoramic image of Mars ever captured by its Curiosity rover. You can see a video NASA published below. In July 2017, Curiosity captured images of clouds above the Martian landscape. Earlier that year, space enthusiast Jan Fröjdman turned NASA anaglyph images into a simulated flight video using 33,000 reference points and NASA’s own depth information. You see that incredible video here.

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NASA Curiosity rover breaks its own record with new 1.8-billion-pixel Mars panorama

09 Mar

On March 4, NASA shared the highest-resolution panoramic Mars image ever captured by its Curiosity rover. The panorama features 1.8 billion pixels and is comprised of more than 1,000 individual images captured by the rover over the Thanksgiving 2019 holiday break in the US.

NASA explains that Curiosity captured two different panoramas using two different lenses: the record-breaking 1.8-billion-pixel panorama using the Mast Camera (‘Mastcam’) with a telephoto lens and a smaller 650-million-pixel panorama using a medium-angle lens. The larger panorama captured with the telephoto lens was not able to include most of the rover in the final image, but the lower-resolution panorama does include Curiosity amid the landscape.

Curiosity’s smaller 650-million-pixel panorama. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

The Mastcam is mounted at a height of 2m (6.5ft) on Curiosity; it supports capturing color images and videos using ‘left eye’ and ‘right eye’ lenses featuring 34mm and 100mm focal lengths. The camera has a resolution of 2MP, which produces images with a 1600 x 1200 resolution. When recording video, Curiosity’s Mastcam can capture 10 frames per second. According to NASA, the rover’s 8GB storage can hold 5,500 or more Raw frames.

While the mission team was away on holiday leave from November 24 to December 1, Curiosity worked to snap images using Mastcam over a six-and-a-half-hour period of time spread across four days. The camera was programmed to take the images from between noon and 2 PM local time to ensure that the lighting was consistent for the eventual panorama.

The new record 1.8-billion-pixel image. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

NASA explains this holiday break provided a rare moment of downtime for the rover, which typically does not stay in one place long enough to capture so many images from the same vantage point. The resulting 1.8-billion-pixel panorama, which exceeds the rover’s previous record 1.3-billion-pixel image, took ‘months’ to assemble.

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Curiosity project scientist Ashwin Vasavada said:

While many on our team were at home enjoying turkey, Curiosity produced this feast for the eyes. This is the first time during the mission we’ve dedicated our operations to a stereo 360-degree panorama.

The public can download a full-resolution version of the 1.8-billion-pixel panorama in JPEG and TIFF formats from NASA JPL’s website here, as well as the 650-million-pixel version from the same link. At its highest resolution, the panorama has a massive 2.43GB file size. The space agency offers lower quality versions with file sizes ranging from 82MB all the way down to 350KB.

In addition, NASA has an online 360-degree viewer to present the panorama in full screen with a zoom tool.

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NASA’s InSight lander shares its first photos from the surface of Mars

28 Nov
Photo via NASA/JPL-Caltech/Lockheed Martin, used under Public Domain

It took six months and more than 300 million miles, but NASA’s InSight lander is now safe and sound on the surface of Mars and transmitting back the first bits of data to scientists here on Earth.

Among the first observations sent back to Earth from Mars is a collection of 1-megapixel photos captured with its onboard Instrument Deployment Camera (IDC). The images, which were transmitted by relaying the data to NASA’s Odyssey orbiter that’s currently orbiting Mars before being sent back down to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, are the first of many that will be transmitted back to Earth during InSight’s two-year mission to study the interior of Mars.

The first publicly-shared photo sent back was one captured before the lens cap was removed from the camera, as evident from the dust covering the image.

The second image shared by NASA shows off a bit of the spacecraft itself with Elysium Planitia, a large plain on the equator of Mars that’s located in the Elysium and Aeolis quadrangles, in the background.

The landing site, which is approximately 370 miles north of where NASA’s Curiosity rover is rolling around the Martian surface, will now be scanned and covered with various scientific instruments as part of InSight’s mission to ‘probe the mysteries of Mars’s deep interior and help answer geophysical questions about the planet’s structure, composition and how it formed,’ as noted by The New York Times.

To keep up with the InSight mission, visit NASA’s InSight mission page and follow the verified InSight Twitter account.

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Photographer sues Bruno Mars for posting childhood photo of himself on Instagram

29 Nov
Photo by Brothers Le, CC-BY-2.0

Singer Bruno Mars recently shared a childhood photo of himself from 1989, and now the photographer behind the photo, Catherine McGann, is suing him for copyright infringement. The image was shared by Mars back in June on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, amassing more than a million ‘likes’ and thousands of comments.

As of this writing, it’s still live on the pop star’s Instagram account:

A post shared by Bruno Mars (@brunomars) on

The lawsuit, which was first surfaced via TMZ, is being leveled against both Mars and record label Warner Music. According to McGann, Mars never asked for permission to share the image on his social media accounts, and the lawsuit seeks any and all profits made from the image’s use, plus damages.

A look at McGann’s Instagram page shows that she posted a version of the image with a copyright notice on November 3rd, 2016.

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NASA Curiosity Rover captures rare photographs of clouds on Mars

12 Aug
Clouds drift across the sky above a Martian horizon in this photograph captured on July 17, 2017 by the Navcam on NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover. Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech/York University

Last month, NASA’s Curiosity Rover captured something (appropriately enough) curious in the Martian sky: clouds. Specifically, Curiosity snapped several sequences of “wispy, early-season clouds resembling Earth’s ice-crystal cirrus clouds” that NASA is calling “the most clearly visible so far” since the Rover landed 5 years and 5 days ago.

As NASA explains in a news release:

Researchers used Curiosity’s Navigation Camera (Navcam) to take two sets of eight images of the sky on an early Martian morning last month. For one set, the camera pointed nearly straight up. For the other, it pointed just above the southern horizon. Cloud movement was recorded in both and was made easier to see by image enhancement.

Each sequence of 8 images was enhanced and turned into an animated GIF:

To learn more about these photos and the science behind why there are clouds on Mars, and why they were a lot more common billions of years ago, head over to the NASA news release by clicking here.

All photos courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/York University

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NASA ortbiter snaps aerial photo of lonesome Mars Curiosity rover

23 Jun
The bright blue dot at the center of this photo by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is actually NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover, going about its lonely mission on the Red Planet. © Photo courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

No human photographer could capture this aerial photograph. That’s because this image is literally out of this world – it was captured by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on June 5th, and shows the Mars Curiosity Rover as it traverses the red planet, approximately 241,500,000 miles away from where I sit typing this right now.

It’s hard to spot, and you have to look really closely, but there’s a small blue dot in the very middle of the photograph above. This closer crop might help:

There, amid the Martian landscape, you can actually see the Curiosity rover as it trekked along the northwestern flank of Mount Sharp, on its way to ‘Vera Rubin Ridge.’

The photograph was taken by the NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter using its High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera, which captures a red band, blue -green band, and an infrared band, combining these together to form an RGB image. Because of this, the photograph is not a so-called ‘true color’ image, and the orbiter appears bluer than it actually is.

Oh, and if you’re curious, you can actually see what Curiosity was seeing when this photo was captured. The rover was using its Mast Camera to shoot these photographs of the Martian landscape while its picture was taken.

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