MARSDAILY - SKY NIGHTLY

Ten Earth Years Later On Mars Sols 3553-3554

Aug 05, 2022 (JPL)

In addition, these days Earth rises relatively late on Mars, pushing the handover (i.e., start of the plan) to the late morning when the thermal environment is ...

Images of EDL Debris

Aug 03, 2022 (JPL)

Some of that EDL hardware was later imaged by Perseverance and Ingenuity. For example on Sol 414 (April 19, 2022), the Ingenuity helicopter returned a detailed ...

Rocky road ahead still not the good kind: Sols 3548-3550

Aug 02, 2022 (JPL)

This terrain is particularly beautiful, so the opportunity to take more imaging is both scientifically interesting and visually stunning, as shown in the attach...

Through the Pass We Go Sols 3551-3552

Aug 02, 2022 (JPL)

Our contact science includes taking a MAHLI "dog's eye" mosaic of the bedrock target "Karisparo." In a dog's eye mosaic, the rover planners attempt to get the M...

Staring at the Ground: Sols 3546-3547

Jul 29, 2022 (SPX)

Today I (Keri) was the Arm Rover Planner, which means I was responsible for writing up the commands for the robotic arm activities in this plan. The original pl...

Small but Mighty on Sol 3545

Jul 28, 2022 (JPL)

Often during single-sol plans we include contact science where we use our arm instruments to take a close look at the structure and composition of a particular ...

NASA aims to return Mars samples to Earth in 2033

Jul 28, 2022 (SPX)

The architecture for the campaign, which includes contributions from the European Space Agency (ESA), is expected to reduce the complexity of future missions an...

NASA marks 25 years since Pathfinder touched down on Mars

Jul 28, 2022 (JPL)

"As I was on the freeway, I had that image on my steering wheel and kept looking at it," Trosper said, reminiscing. "I probably should have been looking more cl...

NASA details plans to bring back Mars rock samples

Jul 27, 2022 (AFP)

The Perseverance rover, which landed on Mars in February 2021, has so far collected 11 samples as part of its hunt for signatures of ancient life. But bringing ...

Sol 3544: Bye-Bye Bolivar

Jul 27, 2022 (JPL)

We cannot drive up the side of Bolivar (although that would be a wild ride!) to investigate its chemical composition, so we are analyzing float rocks in the wor...

Study: Explosive volcanic eruption produced rare mineral on Mars

Jul 26, 2022 (SPX)

Tridymite is a high-temperature, low-pressure form of quartz that is extremely rare on Earth, and it wasn't immediately clear how a concentrated chunk of it end...

Sols 3541-3543: Teamwork? Sure!

Jul 25, 2022 (JPL)

I was Geo science team lead today, and my computer was also guilty of it. Thus, me and a few random others could not see parts of what was happening, especially...

Mars dust as a basis for life? no problem for certain bacteria

Jul 22, 2022 (SPX)

At first glance, the inhospitable environment of the Red Planet seems to hold few usable resources for a life support system or food production. But the high-ca...

Laser marking on Mars

Jul 22, 2022 (JPL)

When I arrived at JPL for the landing of Curiosity in 2012, I was surprised to find that one of our engineers in charge of developing sequences for SuperCam's p...

String theory: NASA Mars rover discovers mystery object

Jul 21, 2022 (AFP)

A tangled object discovered by NASA's Mars Perseverance rover has intrigued space watchers, leaving some musing tongue-in-cheek about the quality of Italian din...

Mars Express peers into Mars' 'Grand Canyon'

Jul 21, 2022 (ESA)

Valles Marineris cuts across Mars like the Grand Canyon cuts across the United States, except the latter is miniscule in comparison. At 4000 km long, 200 km wid...

When Mars throws you a curveball Sol 3539-3540

Jul 21, 2022 (JPL)

Because of the unexpected rover heading, the antenna we usually use to uplink plans directly from Earth was blocked by terrain. This precluded our ability to se...

Unequal siblings: Ius and Tithonium Chasma

Jul 21, 2022 (SPX)

One of the most impressive structures observed was a rift valley up to 10 kilometres deep and roughly 3800 kilometres long - as long as the distance from the Un...

A helping hand for Mars

Jul 20, 2022 (ESA)

The sophisticated robot, known as the Sample Transfer Arm or STA, will play a crucial role in the success of the Mars Sample Return campaign. The joint endeavou...

A chip off the old block: Sols 3534-3536

Jul 20, 2022 (JPL)

Although we would have loved to get closer, the boulder is as large as the rover (as tall as an SUV) and considerably less stable looking, appearing to be almos...