Curiosity Rover Drills For A Second Time On Martian Rock
Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A little more than three months ago NASA’s Curiosity rover drilled into the Martian surface for the first time, collecting a sample from a rock called “John Klein.” On Sunday,...
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Touring museum exhibition, produced by Global Experience Specialists, will highlight content from Jet Propulsion Laboratory and NASA and focus on the search for alien life within and beyond our solar system. KANSAS CITY, Mo. (PRWEB) May 22, 2013 Alien Worlds and Androids, an all-new touring museum exhibition featuring scientific and educational content from Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and NASA, is set to open at Kansas City’s Science Center, Science City, in Union Station Kansas...
Full-Size Mars Curiosity Rover Exclusively on Display, Free Solar Observing, Summer Sky Watching Tips, Enter to Win a Telescope and More! CHICAGO, May 15, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Celebrate the opening of the Adler's new show Cosmic Wonder and the summer-long programming, 100 Days of Wonder, with free solar observing (weather permitting), sky watching tips from Adler staff, Curiosity mission updates, family activities and more! Adler visitors can also enter to win a...
Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online After a month without contact with their rover, the Mars Curiosity team has selected their next target for drilling: a flat rock called Cumberland. According to a NASA statement, Cumberland is about nine feet west of Curiosity's first drilling target, a Martian stone they've dubbed John Klein. In February, Curiosity took the first rock sample ever collected on Mars from that rock. An on-board analysis of John Klein found signs of an...
John P. Millis, Ph.D. for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online In the search for life beyond Earth scientists face significant challenges. Given the great distances and faint signatures of the alien worlds that we have found, discovering which ones are even potentially habitable is difficult. While the first step is attempting to determine which worlds could maintain liquid water on their surfaces, an equally important factor is characterizing the atmosphere maintained above the...
PASADENA, Calif., May 9, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The team operating NASA's Curiosity Mars rover on Mars has selected a second target rock for drilling and sampling. The rover will set course to the drilling location in coming days. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO ) This second drilling target, called "Cumberland," lies about nine feet (2.75 meters) west of the rock where Curiosity's drill first touched Martian stone in February. Curiosity took the...
[ Watch the Video: Ring of Rocky Debris Around a White Dwarf Star ] Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online The Hubble Space Telescope has helped astronomers spot signs of Earth-like planets in an unlikely place. Astronomers say they found the planets sitting in the atmospheres of a pair of burnt-out stars in a nearby star cluster. The white dwarf stars are being polluted by debris from asteroid-like objects falling onto them, and the researchers say this discovery...
John P. Millis, Ph.D. for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online The Holy Grail in the search for planets outside our solar system is finding one that could potentially support life. Traditionally, this means finding a planet with features similar to Earth, which is just the right distance from its host star that liquid water could be supported on the surface. Scientists believe the presence of liquid water on the surface is a necessary component for the proliferation of life. And a...
KENTFIELD, Calif., May 2, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Adam Steltzner, NASA JPL lead engineer and College of Marin alumnus, led the Entry, Descent and Landing (EDL) Team for the NASA Mars Curiosity Rover. He has been a featured guest in variety of print stories, and on television and radio broadcasts, including the New Yorker, NPR, CNN and Nova. WHO: Dr. Adam Steltzner, lead mechanical engineer of the NASA Mars Rover Landing Project, guest lecturer WHAT: College of Marin Grand Opening,...
Alan McStravick for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Currently, if scientists want to study meteorites that had originated from the red planet, they have to rely upon celestial travelers that arrived on this planet so long ago they now possess characteristics that tell of their time on Earth. This masks most clues that might offer information about the meteorites' time on Mars. However, a team of scientists has examined a meteorite that formed on Mars more than a billion years ago in...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online NASA said its Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity placed itself in standby mode during April when the sun was blocking out communication with the Red Planet and Earth. The space agency said mission controllers learned of the changed status on April 27, when they first heard from Opportunity after the blocked communication period. Engineers pumped "fresh commands" into the rover on Monday to get it to resume operations. According to...
Latest Astrobiology Reference Libraries
Image Caption: Artistic concept of a planetary system. Credit: Wikipedia/NASA/JPL-Caltech The term Astronomy encompasses a broad range of topics, including the study of stars, galaxies, and planets. In order to focus on the different areas of study, many subfields of astronomy emerge. One such area is the study of planets known, appropriately, as Planetary Astronomy. Observational Planetary Astronomy Even within the field of Planetary Astronomy, there are several divisions to...
Astrobiology is a peer-reviewed scientific journal published monthly by Mary Ann Liebert Inc. It is the official journal of the Astrobiology Society. As of May 2012, the editor-in-chief is Sherry L. Cady, PhD (Portland State University, Department of Geology). Astrobiology is the leading international journal for astronomers, biologists, chemists, geologists, microbiologists, paleontologists, and planetary scientists designed to advance our understanding of life’s origin, evolution, and...
Carl Edward Sagan (November 9, 1934 - December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer who pioneered exobiology and promoted the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) and science in general. He is less well known for his skepticism. Born in Brooklyn, New York, Sagan attended the University of Chicago, where he received a bachelor's degree (1955) and a master's degree (1956) in physics, before earning his doctorate (1960) in astronomy and astrophysics. He taught at Harvard University...
Xenobiology -- Xenobiology (or exobiology, or astrobiology) is the term for a speculative field within biology which considers the possibility of, and possible nature of, extraterrestrial life. It also necessarily includes the concept of artificial life, since any life form might naturally evolve elsewhere, could conceivably come out of a laboratory using a future technology. It might be difficult to tell whether a truly strange life form had in fact arisen in space, or was designed much...
Panspermia -- Panspermia is a theory (more directly described as a hypothesis, as there is no compelling evidence yet available to support or contradict it) that suggests that the seeds of life are prevalent throughout the universe and life on Earth began by such seeds landing on Earth and propagating. The theory has origins in the ideas of Anaxagoras, a Greek philosopher. An important proponent of the theory was the British astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle. There is some evidence to...
