The Zingularity
Just another Freethought Blogs site
New analysis of Martian rocks has one researcher saying long ago, Mars had significant quantities of free oxygen in the atmosphere. [Read more…]
The billion-pixel Mars is a click away at the NASA homepage, the zoom feature makes it safe to load and view
The picture above taken by Mars Curiosity is detailed, but if you click it and go to the NASA homepage you’ll find a zoomable version that lets you zero in on tiny features in crisp detail like never before.
There are more than one-hundred sizable objects in our solar system, many of them with ice or liquid water, including planets, moons, asteroids, and KBOs, each reachable and explorable with present day technology
Small probes the size of a human hand or smaller could be a big help to planetary exploration. Moore’s Law and tightening budgets could team up to make that technological leap sooner rather than later. In particular, small probes packed with microelectronics and advanced software capable of learning on the alien spot might bring the deep subcyrosphere of moons like Europa or Saturn’s Dionne under scrutiny: [Read more…]
The sinuous rock feature in the lower center of this mosaic of images recorded by the NASA Mars rover Curiosity is called “Snake River.” Image taken Dec. 20, 2012.
CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech
New analysis of a Martian meteor that found its way to earth shows a great deal of water in the planet’s crust. Meanwhile, [Read more…]
Mars Curiosity has spotted an odd little feature in a nearby Martian rock. Shown above, at first glance any red-blooded skeptic would assume that’s a piece of the EDL package. But NASA scientists aren’t sure. For now it’s been dubbed the Flower: [Read more…]
In the wake of the somewhat disappointing news about Mars Curiosity this week, there are reports of another rover in the works. That got me to think’n! We’re getting good at building these things and we might be on the cusp of a generalized rover design that would work in many places all over the solar system. A standardized, scalable and adaptable primary architecture and power train married to one of several reliable EDL packages that could turn this century into an age of discovery on par with the one kicked off by Columbus 500 years ago. Hey, a boy can dream. [Read more…]
First a researcher on the Mars Curiosity mission lit up the science blogosphere when he said the rover had found something ‘earth shaking’ for the ‘history books’ during Thanksgiving Week. Then NASA back peddled and clammed up leading to all sorts of speculation. Finally, news made the rounds last week that Curiosity hadn’t found much of interest and it was just an excited researcher happy that the soil sampling and analytical tools were operating as designed. NOW — there are reports the rover may have found some carbon compounds, but they’re not gonna say what they are tomorrow: [Read more…]
I just received this email from AAS press office Dr. Rick Feinberg on the findings of Mars Curiosity. The gist of it is speculations of a major find on Mars are incorrect. Full email below: [Read more…]
Most Americans are emerging bleary-eyed from a tryptophan induced coma today and grudgingly marching back to work after a glorious extended weekend. In this twittering multimedia digital world many stories compete for a slot on our rested minds. The scary looming fiscal cliff and backroom dealings in DC that might fail to ease us down its gentle slope, the political back-and-forth back stabbing continues unabated as Republicans wrestle with ballot box defeat and Democrats continue to come out of the decades long reflexive crouch. It would be easy to miss what could turn out to be the most important story of the season. Right now its mere speculation over tantalizing hints, past and present, centered not on the third rock from the sun, but a more enigmatic planet, the fourth world out. NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover may have found something interesting in the arid frozen soil of the Red Planet. Right now the smart money is on a substance called methane. [Read more…]