By Paul Scott Anderson, on November 18th, 2020
Artist’s illustration of the Perseverance rover on Mars. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA’s latest Mars rover, Perseverance, is now less than 100 days away from its landing in Jezero Crater on Mars (94 days at the time of this writing). The rover is currently just over 177 million miles (285 million kilometers) from its destination, […]
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By Paul Scott Anderson, on August 24th, 2020
Artist’s illustration of the Perseverance rover mission in flight, leaving Earth on its way to Mars. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Mars has been in the news a lot lately, with the successful launches of NASA’s Perseverance rover, the United Arab Emirates’ Hope orbiter and China’s Tianwen-1 orbiter, lander and rover. All three missions will arrive […]
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By Paul Scott Anderson, on March 23rd, 2020
The Perseverance rover undergoing processing at a payload servicing facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Feb. 14, 2020. Photo Credit: NASA
NASA’s Perseverance rover just reached big another milestone in its preparations for launch to Mars this summer. Key components of the rover’s sample handling system have now been installed. This system will […]
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By Paul Scott Anderson, on November 25th, 2019
Color-coded image of Jezero Crater and the landing site of Mars 2020 (in the ellipse). The delta is on the western side of the crater. Darker colors are lower elevation and lighter colors are higher. Image Credit: NASA/JPL
For the past few decades, rovers and landers on Mars have focused on finding out whether […]
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By Paul Scott Anderson, on October 31st, 2019
Image from InSight showing the “mole” heat probe (the tube on the left) after it jumped about halfway back out of the hole it made while digging. Photo Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Update – Nov. 1, 2019: NASA InSight just tweeted that the mole appears to be stable and more images are being taken to try […]
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By Paul Scott Anderson, on July 25th, 2019
The Mars 2020 rover under construction. The Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (MMRTG) will be inserted into the rear end of the rover between the panels with gold tubing, called heat exchangers. Photo Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA’s new Mars 2020 rover is now only about a year away from the start of its mission, and another […]
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By Paul Scott Anderson, on June 22nd, 2019
Self-portrait of Curiosity in Gale Crater on Mars. Photo Credit: NASA/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
It seems that Mars is belching methane again. NASA’s Curiosity rover has detected a new burst of the gas, it was reported today in the New York Times.
The new detection of the gas – which can come from either biology […]
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By Paul Scott Anderson, on March 21st, 2019
View of the backshell that will help protect the Mars 2020 rover during its descent into the Martian atmosphere, during the Systems Test 1 (ST1). Photo Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The landing of the Mars 2020 rover on Feb. 18, 2021 may still be almost two years away, but NASA’s newest Mars rover has already “touched […]
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By Paul Scott Anderson, on February 13th, 2019
Opportunity casts its shadow in this image from sol 180 (July 26, 2004), taken by the rover’s front hazard-avoidance camera, on the edge of Endurance Crater. Photo Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
It’s been a long 15 years, but the inevitable has finally happened: the Opportunity rover’s days of exploring Mars are over. The sad news was […]
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By Paul Scott Anderson, on December 20th, 2018
View of InSight’s seismometer after it had been successfully placed on the Martian surface on Dec. 19, 2018. Photo Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA’s InSight lander has been busy in its first couple weeks on the surface of Mars, testing out the deployment of some of its instruments and scanning its surroundings with its cameras. And now, […]
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