Mars Opportunity Rover Examines Rock With Unique Composition
redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has discovered a pale rock that has a higher composition of aluminum and silica and a lower concentration of calcium and iron than any other...
Latest Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Stories
WASHINGTON, May 15, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Scientists using images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) have estimated that the planet is bombarded by more than 200 small asteroids or bits of comets per year forming craters at least 12.8 feet (3.9 meters) across. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) Researchers have identified 248 new impact sites on parts of the Martian surface in the past decade, using images from the spacecraft to determine...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A new study from an international group of researchers led by the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) reveals that snowstorms that lash the northern hemisphere of Mars during the harsh winters may be predicted several weeks in advance. The team’s calculations reveal a connection between the snowfalls and a weather phenomenon special to Mars: fluctuations of pressure, temperature, wind speeds and directions that in...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter may have captured images of hardware from a Soviet era spacecraft that landed on Mars in 1971. Russian citizen enthusiasts were following news about NASA's Curiosity rover and Mars when they found four features in a five-year old image from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The features resemble four pieces of hardware from the Soviet Mars 3 mission: the parachute, heat shield, terminal retrorocket...
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory Photos from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show how the parachute that helped NASA's Curiosity rover land on Mars last summer has subsequently changed its shape on the ground. The images were obtained by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Seven images taken by HiRISE between Aug. 12, 2012, and Jan. 13, 2013, show the used parachute shifting its shape at least twice in response to wind....
WASHINGTON, March 7, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has provided images allowing scientists for the first time to create a 3-D reconstruction of ancient water channels below the Martian surface. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO ) The spacecraft took numerous images during the past few years that showed channels attributed to catastrophic flooding in the last 500 million years. Mars during this period had been...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online More evidence is coming in Mars used to be thriving with ancient riverbeds, according to a study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. Brown University researchers found networks of narrow ridges in impact craters on Mars that appear to be fossilized remnants of underground cracks through which water once flowed. The study adds more weight to the growing pile of evidence Mars once had an active hydrology and...
[ Watch the Video: Mars Dry Ice and Dunes ] April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A new study, led by the Planetary Science Institute's Senior Scientists Candice Hansen, shows that the spring thaw on Mars leads to a variety of geologic changes on the planet's surface. Frozen carbon dioxide, also known as dry ice, is deposited on the dunes surrounding the north pole's permanent water ice polar cap. In the spring, as it begins to sublimate, or change directly from a...
redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has discovered evidence of a wet underground environment which suggests the planet could have once been home to a groundwater-fed lake, the US space agency announced on Sunday. The new data is the result of spectrometer data collected by the probe of the floor of McLaughlin Crater, which is 57 miles in diameter and 1.4 miles deep. The depth of the crater apparently allowed water to flow...
PASADENA, Calif., Jan. 20, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A NASA spacecraft is providing new evidence of a wet underground environment on Mars that adds to an increasingly complex picture of the Red Planet's early evolution. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO ) The new information comes from researchers analyzing spectrometer data from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), which looked down on the floor of McLaughlin Crater. The Martian crater is 57...
redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online A larger portion of the Mars surface is covered by clay minerals - a type of rock that typically forms in places where water is present over an extended period of time - than was previously believed, claims a new study published in the current online edition of the journal Geophysical Research Letters. Eldar Noe Dobrea of the Planetary Science Institute (PSI) and colleagues identified the clay minerals using a spectroscopic...
![Opportunity Heads Toward Next Destination, \](/media/gallery/mars-exploration-rover-opportunity/thumbs/thumbs_pia16931_opportunity_map_may_2013.jpg "Opportunity Heads Toward Next Destination, \")
