December 20th, 2019
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NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now wrapping up Sol 2620 tasks. “All dressed up…and no data to (touch and) go on,” reports Michelle Minitti, a planetary geologist at Framework in Silver Spring, Maryland Curiosity handlers were anxiously awaiting the images from the end of the rover’s drive of 66 feet (20 meters) further up “Western […]
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Those perplexing recurring slope lineae (RSL) on Mars might be explored in the future by a Pop-Up Flat Folding Explorer Rover. The idea was detailed at the recent American Geophysical Union’s Fall Meeting held in San Francisco. According to an abstract overview by Kalind Carpenter and his colleagues, definitive confirmation of current liquid water activity […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now wrapping up Sol 2619 duties. New imagery from the robot includes these picturesque photos:
The nominal plan for Curiosity was to do a touch (contact science) and go (drive), as well as science observations with instruments located on the rover’s mast, reports Lucy Thompson, a planetary geologist at University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, Canada. “However, we made a decision early on during planning to forgo the contact science in […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover has just started Sol 2617 operations. New imagery from the robot includes these scenic photos:
China’s farside rover – Yutu-2 – has broken the longevity record for working on the Moon. China Global Television Network (CGTN) reports the robot rolled by the previous record set by the Soviet Union’s Lunokhod-1. Lunokhod 1 was the first roving remote-controlled robot to land on another world, operating in the Sea of Rains starting […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now performing Sol 2615 tasks. The rover is keeping up the pace on the Western Butte, reports Catherine O’Connell, a planetary geologist at the University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. A recently planned 3-sol weekend script has been developed. “Usually, the first day of a weekend plan is […]
NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mars is now performing Sol 2613 duties. “Curiosity is approaching another unconformity—or maybe it is a distant part of the same one. A large sloping surface called Greenheugh pediment looms ahead, past Western Butte,” reports Roger Wiens, a geochemist at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. “Part of the exploration […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now performing Sol 2610 tasks. Reports Susanne Schwenzer, a planetary geologist at The Open University in the U.K., Curiosity’s rich workspace includes bedrock, pebbly areas and a brighter float rock of a kind which has been observed frequently in the vicinity. “Thus, lots of variety…and a three-sol plan to fill.” […]
China’s space exploration future includes paving the way for a human mission to the Moon, and carrying out an upcoming, aggressive robotic investigation of Mars. James Head of the Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, recently provided an overview titled “Space Exploration in China: The Rise of […]
