Promoting Science and Critical Thinking
NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has captured an impressive picture of the Curiosity rover’s nail-biting and extremely successful descent. This was no accident, the MRS team had been planning this since last March, they reckoned they had a 60% chance of getting this shot. Now leat you wonder, MRO is a satellite flying high above … Read more
If you don’t by now know, there where the heck have you been for the last 24 hours … on MARS? Well we have a slightly higher resolution image now (left) taken by one of the vehicle’s lower-fidelity, black-and-white Hazard Avoidance Cameras – or Hazcams. “Curiosity’s landing site is beginning to come into focus,” said John … Read more
Some folks claim they have a plan to establish the first human settlement on Mars in 2023. Apparently the idea is that they will build things first so that a habitable settlement will be waiting for the settlers when they land, and that the settlement will support them while they live and work on Mars … Read more
Wow … cool … space.com reports that there is evidence that there has been plate tectonic activity on Mars as recently as 250,000 years ago. You can click on the picture to get a larger copy. What it shows is that the many ridges and scarps on the rumpled apron of land north and west … Read more
Now this is cool … its a 30 second movie of sunset on Mars. We normally tend to think of Mars as Red, so why all the blue? Well yes indeed, dust particles do normally make the Martian sky appear reddish, but they also (as can be seen) create a bluish glow around the sun. … Read more
This has just appeared on the BBC … a fascinating update … it looks as if the Viking landers on board experiment actually created a chemical reaction that destroyed all organic compounds … Carbon-rich organic molecules, which serve as the building blocks of life, may be present on Mars after all, say scientists – challenging … Read more