A television company in Holland is seeking volunteers for a one-way trip to Mars. The good news is that the sort of people who would volunteer to be on a reality TV show will be on a one-way trip to Mars.

Mars One was founded in 2010 by 36-year-old engineer Bas Lansdorp, who told ABC News he has a road map and financing plan for the project, and that "the mission is perfectly feasible."

In order to raise the estimated $6 billion required to fund such an ambitious project, Lansdorp says that it hopes to capitalize on vast public interest in a manned mission to Mars by selling global broadcasting rights to the mission.

Seems legit.

From the company website:

Mars One is a not-for-profit organization that will take humanity to Mars in 2023, to establish the foundation of a permanent settlement from which we will prosper, learn, and grow. Before the first crew lands, Mars One will have established a habitable, sustainable settlement designed to receive astronauts every two years. To accomplish this, Mars One has developed a precise, realistic plan based entirely upon existing technologies. It is both economically and logistically feasible, in motion through the integration of existing suppliers and experts in space exploration. We invite you to participate in this journey, by sharing our vision with your friends, by supporting our effort and, perhaps, by becoming the next Mars astronaut yourself.

These images compare rocks seen by NASA's Opportunity rover and Curiosity rover at two different parts of Mars. On the left is " Wopmay" rock, in Endurance Crater, Meridiani Planum, as studied by the Opportunity rover. On the right are the rocks of the "Sheepbed" unit in Yellowknife Bay, in Gale Crater, as seen by Curiosity. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/MSSS

An analysis of a rock sample collected by NASA's Curiosity rover shows ancient Mars could have supported living microbes. Scientists identified sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbon -- some of the key chemical ingredients for life -- in the powder Curiosity drilled out of a sedimentary rock near an ancient stream bed in Gale Crater on the Red Planet last month. "A fundamental question for this mission is whether Mars could have supported a habitable environment," said Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA's Mars Exploration Program at the agency's headquarters in Washington. "From what we know now, the answer is yes."

Mars peopled by one vast thinking vegetable!

Go and check out Glenn Fleishman's fantastic set of photos from the Jet Propulsion Lab's sandbox, where the scientists get to hang out and play with one of Curiosity rover's siblings.]]> http://boingboing.net/2013/01/31/meet-curiosity-rovers-earthb.html/feed 12 http://boingboing.net/2013/01/11/mars-needs-seitan.html http://boingboing.net/2013/01/11/mars-needs-seitan.html#comments Fri, 11 Jan 2013 21:55:31 +0000 Maggie Koerth-Baker http://boingboing.net/?p=205305 no bacon on Elon Musk's Mars. UPDATE:Elon Musk would like you to know that he is not trying to be the Emperor of Mars and has no authority to ban meat there. (Thanks Carl Franzen!)]]> http://boingboing.net/2013/01/11/mars-needs-seitan.html/feed 25 http://boingboing.net/2013/01/04/how-space-radiation-hurts-astr.html http://boingboing.net/2013/01/04/how-space-radiation-hurts-astr.html#comments Fri, 04 Jan 2013 18:45:48 +0000 Maggie Koerth-Baker http://boingboing.net/?p=203935
NASA image of the Crab Nebula, a remnant of a supernova. Scientists think that Galactic Cosmic Radiation comes from places like this.

Space is full of radiation. It's impossible to escape. Imagine standing in the middle of a dust storm, with bits of gravel constantly swirling around you, whizzing by, pinging against your skin. That's what radiation is like in space. The problem is that, unlike a pebble or a speck of dirt, ionizing radiation doesn't bounce off human flesh. It goes right through, like a cannonball through the side of the building, leaving damage behind.

Last week, researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center published a study that suggests long exposures to galactic cosmic radiation — like the kind astronauts might experience on a trip to Mars — could increase the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.

Reading stories about that paper made me curious. We've now been sending people into space for more than 50 years. We've been able to track a generation of astronauts as they aged and died and we're constantly monitoring the people who travel in space today. Research like what was done at the University of Rochester is conducted on lab animals, mice and rats. It's meant to help us prepare for the future. But what do we know about the past? How has radiation affected the people who have already been to space? How is it affecting the people who are there now?

There is one key difference between the astronauts of today and those of the future. That difference is the Earth, itself.

Galactic cosmic radiation — also called galactic cosmic rays — is the kind of radiation that researchers are most worried about. It's made up particles, bits and pieces of atoms that were probably flung off from the aftermath of supernovas. The majority of this radiation, roughly 90%, is made up protons ripped from atoms of hydrogen. These particles travel around the galaxy at almost the speed of light.

And then they hit the Earth. This planet has a couple of defense mechanisms that protect us here on the ground from the impact of galactic cosmic radiation. First, Earth's magnetic field both pushes away some of the particles and blocks others completely. Then, the particles that make it through that barrier start to encounter the atoms that make up our atmosphere.

If you drop a big tower made of Legos down the stairs it will break apart, losing more pieces every time it hits a new step. That's a lot like what happens to galactic cosmic radiation in our atmosphere. The particles collide with atoms and break apart, forming new particles. Those new particles hit something else and also break apart. At each step, the particles lose energy. They get a little slower, a little weaker. By the time they "come to a stop" at the ground, they aren't the galactic powerhouses they once were. It's still radiation. But it's much less dangerous radiation. Just like it would hurt a lot less to be hit with one Lego block, than with a whole tower of them.

All of the astronauts we've sent into space so far have, at least partially, benefited from Earth's protective barriers, Francis Cucinotta told me. He's the director of the NASA Space Radiobiology Program, the go-to guy for finding out how radiation hurts astronauts. He says, with the exception of Apollo flights to the Moon, the human presence in space has happened within the Earth's magnetic field. The International Space Station, for instance, is above the atmosphere, but still well inside the first line of defense. Our astronauts aren't exposed to the full force of galactic cosmic radiation.

They're also exposed to it for a relatively limited amount of time. The longest spaceflight ever lasted a little over a year. And that matters, because the damage from radiation is cumulative. You simply can't rack up as much risk on a six month jaunt to the ISS as you could, theoretically, on a multi-year excursion to Mars.

But what's interesting, and concerning, is that even with those protections we do see signs of radiation damage to astronauts, Cucinotta told me.

The big thing is cataracts — changes in the lens of the eye that make it more opaque. With less light able to get into their eyes, people with cataracts lose some of their ability to see. In 2001, Cucinotta and his colleagues looked at data from the ongoing Longitudinal Study of Astronaut Health, and found that astronauts who had been exposed to higher doses of radiation (because they'd flown more missions in space, or because of the specifics of the missions they'd been on*) were more likely to develop cataracts than those who had been exposed to lower doses.

There's also probably an increased risk of cancer, though it's difficult to estimate how much, exactly. That's because we don't have human epidemiological data about the kind of radiation astronauts are exposed to. We know the rates of cancer for survivors of the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but that radiation isn't really comparable to the stuff in Galactic Cosmic Radiation. In particular, Cucinotta is concerned about particles known as HZE ions.

These particles are very heavy and very fast and we don't experience them here on the ground. They're the kind of things that get filtered out and broken down by Earth's defense systems. But HZE ions can cause more damage, and different kinds of damage, than the radiation scientists are really familiar with. We know this because scientists actually compare samples of astronauts' blood before and after a spaceflight.

Cucinotta calls this pre-flight calibration. Scientists take a blood sample from an astronaut before the launch. While the astronaut is in space, the scientists divide that blood sample up and expose it to various levels of gamma rays — the kind of damaging radiation we're used to dealing with on Earth. Then, when the astronaut comes back, they compare those gamma ray-affected samples to what has actually happened to the astronaut while in space. "You see about a two-to-three fold difference across the population of astronauts," Cucinotta told me.

One example of how HZE ions are different: They seem to be able to affect cells they don't even touch. In non-human trials, these non-targeted effects can happen in cells up to a millimeter away from the cells that have actually been irradiated and we don't really know what that means yet. But it definitely changes the way we think about radiation risks, which is a model based on the assumption of a direct, linear connection between dose and risk. With HZE ions, that might not be true.

All of this explains why studies like the one published last week are going on. It's not that we're seeing horrible effects in astronauts who've been to space in the last half-century. Instead, there are two things those astronauts have shown us. First, there are genetic changes and damage happening even within the relatively safe confines we've traveled thus far. Second, there is a hell of a lot we don't know about how radiation exposure and risk works in outer space. It's almost like we can smell gas in our house, but we don't yet know whether there's a serious leak, or we just left a stove burner on for a couple minutes.

If our future really does lie in the stars, then this is a mystery we're going to have to figure out.

FURTHER READING:
• The new paper on Galactic Cosmic Radiation and Alzheimer’s disease
• An introduction to the space radiation environment
• NASA primer on cosmic rays
• A 2006 essay in The Lancet, written by Francis Cucinotta, about cancer risk and Galactic Cosmic Rays
• Cucinotta's 2001 paper on cataracts in astronauts
• A 2004 NASA Science News piece that also explores cataracts in astronauts

Last week, an American and a Russian — Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko — were selected to spend a year living continuously in space, aboard the International Space Station. Only four other people have done this before. All them were Russian, so Scott Kelly is going to break the American record for time spent in space.

The mission won't start until 2015, and it's part of a much longer term goal — sending people to Mars. We know that spending time in space does take a toll on the human body. For instance, hanging out without gravity means you aren't using your muscles, even the ones that you'd use to support your own weight on Earth. Without use, muscles deteriorate over time. Bone density also drops. Basically, after a few months in space, astronauts return to Earth as weak as little kittens. Which is, to say the least, a less than ideal situation for any future Mars explorers.

Having Kelly and Kornienko stay up for a year will give scientists more data on what happens to the human body in space, give them a chance to test out preventative treatments that could keep astronauts stronger, and allows them to see how the amount of time spent in space affects the amount of time it takes to physically recover from the trip. As an extra research bonus, Kelly is the identical twin brother of Mark Kelly, the astronaut married to former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Which means that there will be a built-in control to compare Kelly to when he comes back from his mission.

In honor of that upcoming experiment, here's an old video that will give you an idea of what we knew (and didn't know) back at the dawn of the space age. Science in Action was a TV show produced by the California Academy of Sciences. In this 1956 episode, they explore the then-still-theoretical physiology of space travel ... with a special guest appearance by Chuck Yeager!

Wikipedia page on the effects of space travel on the human body

Science in Action: Aero Medicine — Part 1 and Part 2 at the Prelinger Archives.

Just a few minutes ago, researchers with NASA's MESSENGER mission announced the publication of data that strongly suggests the poles of Mercury contain significant quantities of frozen water.

On the one hand, this is not exactly new news. The possibility of water on Mercury has been a topic of research for something like 20 years. And scientific discoveries tend to move in little mincing steps, not giant leaps, so there have been lots of previous announcements about evidence supporting the hypothesis of water of Mercury — including very similar announcements from the MESSENGER team in December 2011 and March 2012. Your life will not change in any significant way because there is frozen water on Mercury. You probably won't even make a note to tell your children where you were the day NASA announced that ice most likely existed there.

But that doesn't mean this news isn't damned exciting. And it doesn't mean that the scientists involved shouldn't be giddy about it. We are, after all, talking about a mission that sent a spacecraft into orbit around another planet and has quite likely found frozen water sitting on a landscape that is hot enough to melt lead. What's more, they think that ice is covered in places by a thin layer of some coal or tar-like organic material. That is huge news. It's going to change textbooks. And because the scientists think both the ice and the organic material got to Mercury via collisions with asteroids and comets, it's going to be an important part of our ongoing efforts to understand how life begins on planets like Earth.

All of this makes for a really nice, topical lead-in to an essay Robert Gonzalez published on iO9 today. It's totally reasonable to be frustrated by the recent whiplash of hearing that Curiosity discovered something "Earth-shattering" on Mars, only to have that announcement quickly revised to something "interesting" and/or "not insignificant". But, Gonzalez argues, it's also reasonable for scientists to look at something that is merely not insignificant from the public perspective and see it, from their own perspective, as groundbreaking. In fact, he says, we want more scientists who get excited about their work, not fewer.

Because here's the thing: I think it's a good thing when scientists are outwardly excited about their research. When someone like Grotzinger overstates the significance of a discovery, it reminds us that scientists are humans who are wholly invested in their work, and it makes their pursuits more relatable. I believe that the tendency among scientists to present themselves as dispassionate, robotlike, and wholly objective is boring and dishonest.

Granted, there are different ways to "expose one's humanity," and some are vastly preferable to others. Do we want researchers to engage in wholesale scientific fraud? Obviously not. But could scientists stand to be, for example, more outwardly enthusiastic about their work? Absolutely. Scientists, even the pompous ones, tend to undersell their findings, eschew "flowery" language, and feign complete objectivity — all under the banner of "good science."

But sometimes this approach is bullshit.

Cutting through the bullshit means allowing scientists to be people. More importantly, it means allowing them to not just tolerate that process of inch-by-inch discovery ... but actively geek out about it.

Gonzalez isn't trying to say that the researchers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory couldn't have been more clear with reporters. From what we know about this misunderstanding it's pretty clear that mistakes happened on both sides. He's also not supporting intentional over-hype of results.

Instead, he thinks (and I agree) that scientists shouldn't pretend they're emotionless about the stuff they love. In fact, when combined with careful communication, that emotion can actually be an important part of helping the public understand science. When you're enthusiastic about your work, you spread that enthusiasm. In my experience, the scientists who the best job of making their work clear to lay people are the ones who are obviously hyped up about what they're doing — even if what they're doing isn't ever going to be front-page, above-the-fold news.

Besides, I don't only want to know what history books will think is important. I want to know what science thinks is important. And listening to scientists is the best way to find that out.

Read Robert Gonzalez's essay on iO9

Read more about today's news from the MESSENGER mission to Mercury

What might the Curiosity rover find on Mars? So many cool things. Maybe friends that hug your face! Maybe Nixon's secret tapes! Or maybe even something less easily fit into song lyrics, like significant amounts of Martian methane.

This video, made by Cinesaurus, is a parody of "Dumb Ways to Die", an adorably demented public safety message from Australia's Metro Trains Melbourne. If you've not seen that yet, you should check it out as well.

The Curiosity rover comes complete with a mini chemistry lab. It's designed to analyze the composition of Martian soils and Martian air. And, right now, that particular piece of equipment is at the center of a giddy storm of activity. Curiosity has turned up something important — big enough for Curiosity's principal investigator to tell NPR, "This data is gonna be one for the history books."

What is it? NASA's not telling just yet. Right now, researchers are in the process of verifying said exciting data, in order to make sure they aren't deceiving themselves into thinking they've spotted something that isn't really there. That's pretty good policy, given the recent flap around over-hyped studies about Earth-like planets and arsenic-based life.

On the other hand, if you're trying to avoid overhyping something, might I suggest that "We have groundbreaking, world-changing data that we can't tell you about yet," is maybe not the best way to do it.

Stay tuned.

Ever since, we've contented ourselves with searching for indirect evidence — assessing the planet for signs that it might once have had the conditions necessary for life to happen. That's important, and it will make direct evidence of life more believable if we ever do find it, but it's not quite the same thing.

But now, DNA sequencing tools have become portable enough (and drilling technology has become powerful enough) that some scientists and Craig Ventner think we could send a probe to Mars which could find buried traces of actual DNA protected in the dirt and sequence that DNA on site.

It's also possible that life hitched a ride between Earth and Mars in their early days. Asteroid impacts have sent about a billion tonnes of rock careering between the two planets, potentially carrying DNA or its building blocks. That could mean that any genetic material on Mars is similar enough to DNA that we have a chance of finding it using standard tests.

Even if we don't, we can set up future sequencers to look for molecules that use alternative sugars or chemical letters in the genetic code. "We're not there yet, but it's not a fundamental limitation," says Chris Carr of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who works on the NASA-backed Search for Extraterrestrial Genomes.

Read the rest of the story at New Scientist

This video interview with Ashwin Vasavada, Deputy Project Scientist of the Mars Science Laboratory, is a nice overview of the what everybody's favorite currently operational Mars rover is looking for.

See those weird, black, spidery things dotting the dunes in this colorized photo taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2010? Yeah. Nobody knows what the hell those things are.

What we do know about them just underlines how incredibly unfamiliar Mars really is to us. First spotted by humans in 1998, these splotches pop up every Martian spring, and disappear in winter. Usually, they appear in the same places as the previous year, and they tend to congregate on the sunny sides of sand dunes — all but shunning flat ground. There's nothing on Earth that looks like this that we can compare them to. It's a for real-real mystery, writes Robert Krulwich at NPR. But there are theories:

Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey, from Hungary, from the European Space Agency have all proposed explanations; the leading one is so weird, it's transformed my idea of what it's like to be on Mars. For 20 years, I've thought the planet to be magnificently desolate, a dead zone, painted rouge. But imagine this: Every spring, the sun beats down on a southern region of Mars, morning light melts the surface, warms up the ground below, and a thin, underground layer of frozen CO2 turns suddenly into a roaring gas, expands, and carrying rock and ice, rushes up through breaks in the rock, exploding into the Martian air. Geysers shoot up in odd places. It feels random, like being surprise attacked by an monstrous, underground fountain.

"If you were there," says Phil Christensen of Arizona State University, "you'd be standing on a slab of carbon dioxide ice. All around you, roaring jets of carbon dioxide gas are throwing sand and dust a couple hundred feet into the air." The ground below would be rumbling. You'd feel it in your spaceboots.

Read the rest of Robert Krulwich's post — and check out some spectacular photos of the things — at NPR

Josh Stearns writes,

My four year old son painted this at school and told his teacher, “This is Mars. Mars is red. And there is a robot there taking pictures and sending them back to earth.”

Mars Curiosity, eat your heart out.

When a narrow stream, flowing downhill, meets a wide, significantly-flatter valley, you get an alluvial fan — a place where the flow of water spreads out, slows down, and leaves behind all the rocks and sediment it's no longer moving fast enough to carry. At least, that's how it works on Earth.

Once upon a time, it may have worked that way on Mars, too. Yesterday, NASA announced that the Curiosity rover had documented geology that looks very much like an alluvial fan and rocky deposits that also look very much like what would be left in an alluvial fan on Earth. You can see the comparison of some of those in the image above. In these Martian geological features — as in an Earth-bound stream bed — you find smooth, rounded pebbles and conglomerates, masses of pebbles cemented together over time. The rocks photographed by Curiosity are also too large to have been blown into this sort of arrangement by the wind.

All of this adds to the long string of evidence that Mars once had flowing water on its surface. In fact, reading up for this post, I was surprised to see how much evidence there actually is for this, some direct and some indirect, stretching all the way back to the Mariner 9 orbiter mission in the early 1970s. And, of course, there is water on Mars right now. It's just not flowing water. Previous probes have measured a small amount of water in the Martian atmosphere, and the planet's polar regions contain both frozen carbon dioxide and frozen water. Viking 2 took pictures of frost on the ground in the late 1970s, and in 2008, the Phoenix lander literally dropped out of the sky onto a patch of ice.

Frost on the surface of Mars, as photographed by Viking 2.

The bright spot near the lander's leg was later verified to be a patch of ice.

The new photos from Curiosity add to this growing body of evidence. Taken all together, it's pretty safe to assume that Mars was once a wetter place. Here's NPR's Bill Chappell:

"There is earlier evidence for the presence of water on Mars," the agency said in a press release, "but this evidence — images of rocks containing ancient streambed gravels — is the first of its kind."

Scientists have not yet estimated the age of the rocks, which may have been buried beneath the surface. Their age could be several billion years.

The next step will be to find a good spot to drill into the rock, NASA says. And they'll be looking for possible carbon deposits to determine whether the water on Mars once supported life.

Read the rest of the NPR story

Read astrobiologist Caleb Scharf's thoughts at the Life, Unbounded blog

Read Wikipedia's extensive entry on evidence for water on Mars

Check out this 2007 report prepared by the National Academies of Science, which discusses a strategy for looking for evidence of life on Mars. It includes a summary of evidence for water on the planet.

I'm sitting in on a NASA Jet propulsion laboratory teleconference for science journalists, with an update for the world on the Mars Curiosity rover's mission. Curiosity completes her "checkout" phase today. Including an "intermission" of 13 sols, and one remaining sol to inspect the rover's robotic arm, 26 sols have been devoted to so-called checkout duties. Today is sol 37. Rover is currently facing a Southeast direction. Temperatures on the rover are between 7 and 33 C. She has covered a little over a football field's distance on the surface of Mars. Ability to move the arm has been confirmed, and the ability of the rover to perform sampling is confirmed.

Curiosity has so far driven 109 meters from its original landing site, and engineers are driving her about 40 meters per sol. The first drilling into the surface of Mars is expected to occur about a month from now, following various surface activities (scraping rock surfaces, and so on).

Three speakers in the teleconference: Jennifer Trosper, JPL; Curiosity mission manager. Ralf Gellert, University of Guelph, in Guelph, Ontario, Canada; principal investigator for the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer instrument (or APXS) on Curiosity. Ken Edgett, Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego; principal investigator for the Mars Hand Lens Imager (or MAHLI) on Curiosity.

At the top of this blog post, the first Mars image of the day (larger size here):

Opening and Closing SAM. This set of images from NASA's Curiosity rover shows the inlet covers for the Sample Analysis at Mars instrument opening and closing, as the rover continues to check out its instruments in the first phase after landing. These images were taken by the Navigation camera on the 36th Martian day, or sol, of the rover's operations on Mars (Sept. 11, 2012). The rover's mast is casting a shadow over the deck. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Above, the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) on NASA's Curiosity rover, with the Martian landscape in the background.

The image was taken by Curiosity's Mast Camera on the 32nd Martian day, or sol, of operations on the surface (Sept. 7, 2012, PDT or Sept. 8, 2012, UTC). APXS can be seen in the middle of the picture. This image let researchers know that the APXS instrument had not become caked with dust during Curiosity's dusty landing. Scientists enhanced the color in this version to show the Martian scene as it would appear under the lighting conditions we have on Earth, which helps in analyzing the terrain.

JPL confirms that the APXS "Works great, good confirmation with the calibration target." And "There might be tweaking needed because of contamination," but scientists have all the tools they need working perfectly.

Tomorrow, a final set of checkouts, and special imaging events with cameras. Then, "drive, drive, drive," until the science team decides where to stop. Scientists packed a piece of Earth to take to Mars -- specifically, a chunk of New Mexico.

A sample of basaltic rock from a lava flow in New Mexico serves as a calibration target carried on the front of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity for the rover's Canadian-made Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) instrument. This image of the APXS calibration target was taken by the rover's Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) during the 34th Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity's work on Mars (Sept. 9, 2012). The image has been rotated to compensate for the tilted orientation of the camera when it was taken.

The prepared slab of well-characterized dark rock collected near Socorro, N.M., is held in a nickel mounting. The circular opening revealing the rock is about 1.4 inches (3.5 centimeters) in diameter. The Sol 34 imaging was part of characterization testing of the rover's arm and tools on the arm. A subsequent step commanded the arm-mounted APXS instrument to take a reading of the composition of the calibration target. Curiosity will use the target from time to time during the mission, checking the continuing performance and calibration of the APXS instrument.

APXS can identify chemical elements in rocks and soils. The spectrometer uses the radioactive element curium as a source to bombard the target with energetic alpha particles (helium nuclei) and X-rays. This causes each element in the target to emit its own characteristic X-rays, which are then registered by an X-ray detector chip inside the instrument's sensor head.

The rock in the calibration target is the hardest basalt of more than 200 types tested by the APXS team. Hardness was a desired attribute for preventing the target from breaking during the stresses of launch and landing. In addition, this basalt is low in sulfur, nickel and chlorine. Those elements are common in Martian dust. Thus, scientists using APXS will more easily detect and account for any Martian dust on the calibration target.

In the image below cropped from a larger scene by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), a penny with the first close-up images of Martian sand grains, seen right below Lincoln's ear (about 200 microns in size, or .2 mm) and one near the number 9 (about 100 microns, or .1 mm).

What science can we determine from this image? Edgett replies: The little sand grains on the penny are "just things that blew up on the penny during landing." They haven't been transported far, because if they were more round they'd have originated from a greater distance.

This is the first penny ever sent to Mars, and it was minted in the first year on which Lincoln's image was present on the coin.

One JPL scientist on the call, fumbling for a precise sol number as he describes an image, stops and says "Man, I am so tired." They've been on "Mars Time," following the daily solar cycles that Curiosity is on, and experiencing slow-motion sleep deprivation.

The most common type of rock on Mars is basalt, so that is what they're aiming for with the first gathering of samples in the days (and sols) to come.

And a little easter egg: The spaces in the tire treads in the image below are Morse Code for "J-P-L."

This view of the three left wheels of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity combines two images that were taken by the rover's Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) during the 34th Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity's work on Mars (Sept. 9, 2012). In the distance is the lower slope of Mount Sharp.

The camera is located in the turret of tools at the end of Curiosity's robotic arm. The Sol 34 imaging by MAHLI was part of a week-long set of activities for characterizing the movement of the arm in Mars conditions.

The main purpose of Curiosity's MAHLI camera is to acquire close-up, high-resolution views of rocks and soil at the rover's Gale Crater field site. The camera is capable of focusing on any target at distances of about 0.8 inch (2.1 centimeters) to infinity, providing versatility for other uses, such as views of the rover itself from different angles.

And above, a new image from Curiosity showing the open inlet where rock and soil samples will be funneled down for analysis. This photograph was captured by (MAHLI) on Curiosity's 36th Martian day, or sol, of operations on Mars (Sept. 11, 2012).

MAHLI was about 8 inches (20 centimeters) away from the mouth of the Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument when it took the picture. The entrance of the funnel is about 1.4 inches (3.5 centimeters) in diameter. The mesh screen is about 2.3 inches (5.9 centimeters) deep. The mesh size is 0.04 inches (1 millimeter). Once the samples have gone down the funnel, CheMin will be shooting X-rays at the samples to identify and quantify the minerals.

Engineers and scientists use images like these to check out Curiosity's instruments. This image is a composite of eight MAHLI pictures acquired at different focus positions and merged onboard the instrument before transmission to Earth; this is the first time the MAHLI performed this technique since arriving at Curiosity's field site inside Gale Crater. The image also shows angular and rounded pebbles and sand that were deposited on the rover deck during landing on Aug. 5, 2012 PDT (Aug. 6, 2012 EDT).

Like Burning Man, the ethos for rovers on Mars is "leave no trace." A journalist from Germany on the teleconference asks if the rover's activity will violate any internationally-agreed planetary protection agreements. A NASA headquarters spokesman says, "Curiosity is the cleanest rover NASA has ever sent to Mars. No prohibitions against planned drilling activity, based on what we expect the rover will do and where it will go."

]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/09/12/mars-curiosity-update.html/feed 17 http://boingboing.net/2012/09/11/in-letterspace-no-one-can-hea.html http://boingboing.net/2012/09/11/in-letterspace-no-one-can-hea.html#comments Wed, 12 Sep 2012 02:56:04 +0000 Glenn Fleishman http://boingboing.net/?p=180260

We spent $2.5 billion to put Helvetica Arial on Mars (and incidentally, an SUV-sized robotic science rover), and yet not a cent was devoted to kerning. The Curiosity rover carries a calibration target for its Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), an adjustable focus camera designed to take close-up pictures. It's one of 17 cameras on the rover, but it's the only one that has its own target for testing a photo against known colors, brightness, and scale. (​Update: ​The sundial on top of the rover has color swatches for the mast cameras.)

But as a former typesetter, I had to poke fun at the kerning in the word "Target", where the "a" in any design software would be neatly tucked underneath the "T". NASA is old-school in type, too, as this is Helvetica, not Helvetica Neue.​ (Update! Readers note this is Arial, as the angle terminators on the upper-case C give it away! Go, go, Microsoft fonts!)

The calibration target includes a 1909 penny as a homage to the practice of using a coin for scale in images. One of the scientists bought the penny from the first year Lincoln appeared on its front, and sent it on its merry mission. The target is now lightly dusted with Martian soil, but still useful for its purpose.

A full size image is available from NASA.

On Sol 32 (Sept. 7, 2012) the Curiosity rover used a camera located on its arm to obtain this self portrait. The image of the top of Curiosity's Remote Sensing Mast, showing the Mastcam and Chemcam cameras, was acquired by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI). The angle of the frame reflects the position of the MAHLI camera on the arm when the image was taken. The image was acquired while MAHLI's clear dust cover was closed.

That's from NASA's description of this great Curiosity self-portrait.

What really stuck out to me, though, was the use of "Sol 32". Sol is what you call a "day" on Mars. We use a different word because the length of time is also a bit different. One Martian Sol is equal to 24 hours, 39 minutes, and 35.244 seconds. Sol 32 isn't, itself, a date, but simply a record tracking the number of sols that Curiosity has been on Mars—starting with Sol 0, which was August 6th. Every mission to Mars since Viking has kept its own sol count, so you can't really use these sol dates to keep track of history except as it relates to a specific mission.

There have, however, been proposals for a standardized Martian calendar system with a starting point that all dates progress from. NASA includes a Mars Sol Date on its Mars24 Martian clock app. In this case, the count begins on Earth date December 29, 1873 at noon Greenwich Mean Time and MSD represents the number of sols that have happened since then.

Why December 29, 1873? The Mars24 explainer just says that this date was chosen because it precedes all the really good, detailed observations of how time worked on Mars—how fast the planet was spinning, how often it went around the Sun, what the orbits of its moons were like ... that kind of thing. In 1877, the orbit of Mars took it particularly close to Earth, allowing humans—and their increasingly good quality telescopes—to get a really nice view of the planet.

That still doesn't exactly explain the 1873 date, though. But, according to Wikipedia, it's also the birthday of Carl Lampland, an American astronomer. Among other achievements, Lampland would calculate temperatures on the Martian surface, finding a large difference between soltime temperatures, and those at night. That data gave scientists their first clue that Mars had a particularly thin atmosphere, compared to our own.

[Video Link] Above, HD video of the Mars Curiosity Rover's landing on Mars. And below, an image of her first drive. (via @tweetsoutloud)

]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/08/22/mars-curiosity-rover-hd-video.html/feed 28 http://boingboing.net/2012/08/22/sending-messages-from-mars-in.html http://boingboing.net/2012/08/22/sending-messages-from-mars-in.html#comments Wed, 22 Aug 2012 18:36:04 +0000 Xeni Jardin http://boingboing.net/?p=177660 writes in the Economist about how Curiosity sends messages home from Mars: "NASA'S Curiosity has the fastest modem on Mars. Since its only competition is an oldish bit of kit aboard Opportunity, one of two rovers dispatched in 2003, that is not saying much, at least in terms of what internet users on Earth have learned to expect. Curiosity's ability to capture images and other data easily outstrips its capacity to beam it all back home. Nonetheless, it delivers vastly more information from the red planet than any previous mission did." ]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/08/22/sending-messages-from-mars-in.html/feed 9 http://boingboing.net/2012/08/16/mars-curiositylfmao-parody-vi.html http://boingboing.net/2012/08/16/mars-curiositylfmao-parody-vi.html#comments Fri, 17 Aug 2012 01:40:12 +0000 Xeni Jardin http://boingboing.net/?p=176893

[Video Link]. This parody music video debuted this week on a new YouTube channel called Satire, and mashes up LMFAO's hit “Sexy and I Know It” with the NASA Curiosity mission and abundant JPL-love.

"It comes complete with shout-outs to Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson," reports the Washington Post, which dug into the story behind its creation. Half a million views so far, huh? Best NASA PSA ever.]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/08/16/mars-curiositylfmao-parody-vi.html/feed 22 http://boingboing.net/2012/08/16/about-mars-curiosity-rovers.html http://boingboing.net/2012/08/16/about-mars-curiosity-rovers.html#comments Thu, 16 Aug 2012 18:26:16 +0000 Xeni Jardin http://boingboing.net/?p=176837

What a beautiful video by Mark Rober, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory: "I was able to work on NASA JPL's Curiosity Mars Rover for 7 years. This video is an attempt to capture what it felt like to have 7 years of your life vindicated in the 7 minute landing. Honestly one of the coolest moments of my life so far.

(Via Adam Steltner)