Sun-Moon-Mars on EARTH Magazine

Red Planet Roundup: June 2017

Wed, 17 May 2017 12:27:53 -0400

Although Curiosity has found ample evidence that water flowed long ago on Mars' surface, the rover has found no signs of carbonate rocks in its travels through Gale Crater, including at Yellowknife Bay (seen here), suggesting that ancient Mars had much lower atmospheric carbon dioxide levels than previously thought. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.

With two rovers patrolling the surface of Mars, six spacecraft orbiting above it, and scientists here on Earth studying the Red Planet from afar, new findings are announced often. Here are a few of the latest updates.

Red Planet Roundup: May 2016

Thu, 21 Apr 2016 16:48:06 -0400

Seasonal carbon dioxide frost fills gullies amid hilly terrain in a crater on Mars' northern plains. Sublimation of the frost, rather than flowing water, may be responsible for carving the gullies. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona.

With two rovers patrolling the surface of Mars, five spacecraft orbiting above it, and scientists here on Earth studying the Red Planet from afar, new findings are announced often. Here are a few of the latest updates.

Lunar atmosphere more active than we thought

Sun, 27 Mar 2016 16:47:00 -0400

NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) spacecraft orbits near the moon's surface in this illustration. Credit: NASA Ames/Dana Berry

LADEE — pronounced “laddie” and short for Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer — was among the shortest-lived of NASA’s successful satellites. Launched on Sept. 7, 2013, it crashed onto the moon’s surface, as intended, on April 17, 2014, after six months orbiting the moon. Data collected by LADEE have already greatly expanded our understanding of the atmosphere of the moon and other bodies in the solar system; the spacecraft also made a number of unexpected discoveries, some of which were presented at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco last December.

Red Planet Roundup: January 2016

Wed, 23 Dec 2015 13:47:58 -0500

The dark streaks in this false-color image, created by draping a two-dimensional photo of the Martian surface over a digital terrain model, are features called recurring slope lineae (RSL). A new study has found that RSL are created by transient flows of salty liquid water. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona.

Red Planet Roundup: September 2015

Tue, 25 Aug 2015 11:14:12 -0400

Areas shaded green in this image show where signs of impact glass were identified near the central peak of Alga Crater in Mars' southern hemisphere. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/JHUAPL/Univ. of Arizona.

The InSight lander undergoes testing in a facility at Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver, Colo., in April. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Lockheed Martin.

Red Planet Roundup: July 2015

Tue, 16 Jun 2015 13:53:34 -0400

Brines might temporarily form just below the surface of Mars through a process called deliquescence when temperatures drop at night. Credit: Martín-Torres and Zorzano.

With two rovers patrolling the surface of Mars, five spacecraft in orbit above it, and scientists here on Earth studying the Red Planet from afar, new findings are announced often. Here are a few of the latest updates.

Mapping solar winds

Tue, 12 May 2015 11:09:42 -0400

composite map of the sun showing regions (in shades of red and green) from which slow solar winds may emanate. Credit: Brooks et al. (2015), Nature Communications.

Two types of solar winds emanate from the sun: fast winds that travel at more than 700 kilometers per second, and slow winds that move at a mere 400 kilometers per second. As they pass by Earth on their way to the outer reaches of the heliosphere, these winds — composed of charged particles called plasma — can interact with the geomagnetic field and set off spectacular auroras. Now, a newly constructed solar map, published in a study in Nature Communications, has illuminated the sources and directions of the sun’s solar winds in greater detail than ever before.

Red Planet Roundup: May 2015

Mon, 20 Apr 2015 12:07:24 -0400

Small solar-powered helicopters, like that depicted in this artist's drawing, might accompany future rover missions on Mars, flying ahead to scout terrain and help operators on Earth plot better routes. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

With two rovers patrolling the surface of Mars, five spacecraft in orbit above it, and scientists back here on Earth studying the Red Planet from afar, new findings are announced almost weekly. Here are a few of the latest updates.

Red Planet Roundup: March 2015

Mon, 02 Feb 2015 13:41:29 -0500

The sediments that formed these laminated rock layers, photographed by the Curiosity rover's Mastcam last August, are thought to have been deposited in a long-lasting lake in Gale Crater. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.

Red Planet Roundup: January 2015

Tue, 09 Dec 2014 12:15:08 -0500

Within days of arriving at Mars, MAVEN mapped carbon, oxygen and hydrogen in the planet's upper atmosphere with the help of its Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph instrument. Credit: University of Colorado/NASA.

As two rovers patrol the surface of Mars, five spacecraft orbit above and scientists back here on Earth study the Red Planet from afar, new findings are announced almost weekly. Here are a few of the latest updates.

Nanoflares power the sun's superheated corona

Tue, 04 Nov 2014 11:36:13 -0500

An active region on the sun, as seen in extreme ultraviolet light by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft. Credit: NASA/SDO.

The sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona, reaches temperatures of more than 1 million degrees Celsius, hundreds of times hotter than its visible surface. The reason for this has puzzled scientists, who so far have only been able to theorize explanations.

Red Planet Roundup: November 2014

Mon, 06 Oct 2014 09:54:18 -0400

As Curiosity and Opportunity rove around Mars, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), Mars Express and Mars Odyssey orbit above, and scientists on Earth study the Red Planet from afar, new findings are announced almost weekly. Here are a few of the latest updates.

Solar storms cause spike in electrical insurance claims

Thu, 02 Oct 2014 20:57:19 -0400

A new study suggests that solar storms correlate with upticks in business insurance claims for complications such as electrical surges, arcing and overheating. Credit: Kathleen Cantner, AGI.

On March 13, 1989, a geomagnetic storm spawned by a solar outburst struck Earth, triggering instabilities in the electric power grid that serves much of eastern Canada and the U.S. The storm led to blackouts for more than 6 million customers and caused tens of millions of dollars in damages and economic losses. More than 25 years later, the possibility of such a catastrophe still looms, and the day-to-day effects of space weather on electrical systems remain difficult to quantify. Now, a new study correlating electrical insurance claims with geomagnetic data suggests that even moderate space weather may play a significant role in destabilizing the power grid.

Red Planet Roundup: September 2014

Tue, 19 Aug 2014 14:16:14 -0400

Images taken by the Mars Color Imager on March 27 (left) and March 28, 2012 (right), narrowed down the formation date of a fresh impact crater to just one day, the tightest window yet for such a feature. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.

Mars Monthly

Mon, 28 Jul 2014 18:52:05 -0400

The high-elevation Tharsis region appears in shades of red and brown in this topographic map produced with data from the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter aboard NASA's now-defunct Mars Global Surveyor. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Arizona State University.

Thousands of kilometers across and bulging to elevations of almost 10 kilometers, the Tharsis region on Mars hosts several massive volcanoes and straddles the border between the planet’s northern lowlands and southern highlands. Some scientists have postulated that the bulge resulted from a stationary hot spot, or plume, of warmer-than-normal mantle rock beneath it, but a new study supports a competing idea that the hot spot migrated to its present position. Karina Cheung and Scott King of Virginia Tech University identified a plume pathway, based on measurements of crustal thickness and surface topography, from Mars’ south pole to the current Tharsis bulge. The pathway is characterized by thick crust underlying a relatively smooth stretch of surface that stands out from the surrounding pockmarked surface, and which may have resulted as plume-powered volcanism wiped out craters as it traveled north. The researchers noted in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets that the presumed Tharsis hot spot track resembles the path left by the Yellowstone plume as it has migrated under the western U.S.

Solar wind gives lightning a boost

Thu, 10 Jul 2014 11:54:27 -0400

Solar wind consists of charged particles like electrons and protons emitted continuously by the sun. Especially high-speed solar winds — zipping through space at up to 800 kilometers per second — are produced at particular locations in the sun’s atmosphere, and, as the sun rotates, these fast-moving emissions “sweep past Earth quite regularly,” says Chris Scott, a space scientist at the University of Reading in England and lead author of the study.

Mars Monthly

Mon, 23 Jun 2014 18:08:09 -0400

An ancient river channel can be seen entering Gusev Crater on Mars in the upper left of this photo mosaic. Credit: NASA/JPL/Arizona State University.

Scientists have speculated that billions of years ago Mars had a much thicker atmosphere, which warmed the surface enough to maintain large amounts of liquid water. To test that idea, researchers used data from MRO to analyze hundreds of impact craters, formed at about the same time as rocky deposits and features left behind by flowing water, in the roughly 3.6-billion-year-old Aeolis Dorsa region of Mars (near where Curiosity is currently exploring). Because incoming asteroids and meteorites are ablated, or eroded, by atmospheric friction, the thicker an atmosphere, the larger the minimum-size impactor able to reach the surface will be — and hence, the larger the minimum-size crater created will be. Based on the minimum size of the preserved craters observed, Edwin Kite of Caltech and colleagues reported in Nature Geoscience that Mars’ long-term average atmospheric pressure back then was, at most, 1 to 2 bars. This is similar to the average atmospheric pressure at Earth’s surface today (roughly 1 bar), but far lower than levels thought to be necessary to keep water from freezing billions of years ago on Mars. In a commentary also in Nature Geoscience, Sanjoy M. Som of the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science and NASA Ames wrote that the researchers “effectively rule out a long-lasting thick atmosphere.” But it is still possible, he wrote, “that transient intervals of dense atmosphere periodically permitted liquid water to flow.”

Comment: Preparing for the death of Earth

Wed, 14 May 2014 10:03:55 -0400

Credit: Kathleen Cantner, AGI

About 5 billion years from now, Earth will meet its end in a fiery blaze as it is swallowed by the expanding sun. What happens between now and then, in large part, is up to us and our ability to prepare for the distant future.

Bare Earth Elements: Mars rocks wear manganese coats

Tue, 18 Mar 2014 19:23:21 -0400

Portions of this rock, dubbed Caribou and photographed with Curiosity's Mastcam, were analyzed on sol 342 using the ChemCam instrument and found to have a manganese-rich surface coating. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Several rocks on the surface of Mars are coated with distinctive dark-colored surface layers enriched in manganese that, while sharing similarities with manganese-rich rock varnish found on Earth, do not appear to be varnish themselves based on differences in trace element levels, according to new research presented Wednesday by Nina Lanza of Los Alamos National Laboratory at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) in The Woodlands, Texas.

Spot-free sun: Is that normal?

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 06:41:58 -0500

These images, four years apart, show the rise and fall of solar activity during the sun's 11-year cycle. SOHO (ESA & NASA)

For the past few years, astronomers and scientists have been looking up at a sun that is, more often than not, rather blank. Almost too blank. That is, the sun has been relatively free of the dark patches, called “sunspots,” that appear within 30 degrees of the sun’s equator and travel across the surface. Although low sunspot counts are normal in a typical sunspot cycle, this period has gone on longer than usual, scientists noted at an international solar conference on “Solar Variability, Earth’s Climate and the Space Environment” held in early June at Montana State University in Bozeman. However, they said, while slightly longer than the past three or four solar cycles, the current minimum is not too out of the ordinary.