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April 02, 2015

Curiosity Sniffs Out History of Martian Atmosphere
Pasadena CA (JPL) Apr 02, 2015
NASA's Curiosity rover is using a new experiment to better understand the history of the Martian atmosphere by analyzing xenon. While NASA's Curiosity rover concluded its detailed examination of the rock layers of the "Pahrump Hills" in Gale Crater on Mars this winter, some members of the rover team were busy analyzing the Martian atmosphere for xenon, a heavy noble gas. Curiosity's Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) experiment analyzed xenon in the planet's atmosphere. Since noble gases are chemically ... read more

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Warm or cold? Mars' history takes a watery new twist A new, six-year analysis of water on Mars suggests that the Red Planet has lost the equivalent of an ocean's worth of water over the past four billion years. However, the question of whether Mars wa ... more		Curiosity Eyes Prominent Mineral Veins on Mars Two-tone mineral veins at a site NASA's Curiosity rover has reached by climbing a layered Martian mountain offer clues about multiple episodes of fluid movement. These episodes occurred later than t ... more		Media Spun Up on NASA Cutting-edge Mars Landing Technology NASA's Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) project will be flying a rocket-powered, saucer-shaped test vehicle into near-space from the Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai, Hawaii, ... more
				Flash Reformatted and Marathon Completed The Opportunity mission is now the first human enterprise to exceed marathon distance of travel on another world. Opportunity is on the west rim of Endeavour Crater near 'Marathon Valley', a p ... more		Comet dust: Planet Mercury's 'invisible paint' A team of scientists has a new explanation for the planet Mercury's dark, barely reflective surface. In a paper published in Nature Geoscience, the researchers suggest that a steady dusting of carbo ... more

Human 2 Mars Conference Mat 5-7 2015 - Washington DC

Nuclear Decommissioning Conference Europe May 2015

Stop blaming the moon "It must be a full moon" is a common refrain when things appear more hectic than usual. The moon is even blamed when things get crazy at hospital emergency rooms or birth wards. "Some nurses ascribe ... more		Goddard releases open source core flight software suite to public The Innovative Technology Partnerships Office at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, announced the release of its core Flight System (cFS) Application Suite to the public. The ... more		Sidekick autonomy software guides YFQ-42A test mission for CCA program Infleqtion lists shares on NYSE as neutral atom quantum firm Top Chinese gaming companies continue to challenge		New Horizons Sampling 'Space Weather' on Approach to Pluto As NASA's New Horizons spacecraft approaches the Pluto system, its space plasma (also called charged particle) instruments - SWAP and PEPSSI - have already been taking measurements and assessing the ... more
				Saturn Spacecraft Returns to the Realm of Icy Moons A dual view of Saturn's icy moon Rhea marks the return of NASA's Cassini spacecraft to the realm of the planet's icy satellites. This follows nearly two years during which the spacecraft's orbits ca ... more		Earthlike 'Star Wars' Tatooines may be common Luke Skywalker's home in "Star Wars" is the desert planet Tatooine, with twin sunsets because it orbits two stars. So far, only uninhabitable gas-giant planets have been identified circling such bin ... more

Rover Amnesia Event Follows Latest Memory Reformatting The team operating NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity learned Thursday that the long-lived rover experienced a brief amnesia event related to its flash memory, the first since a reformatting ... more		MESSENGER Completes 4,000th Orbit of Mercury On March 25, the MESSENGER spacecraft completed its 4,000th orbit of Mercury, and the lowest point in its orbit continues to move closer to the planet than ever before. The orbital phase of the MESS ... more		Solar-driven ionosphere charges may nudge stressed faults toward rupture Stable black carbon in mangrove soils boosts coastal climate role Low crystallinity iron minerals show promise for chromium cleanup and carbon storage		Artificial hand able to respond sensitively using smart metal wires Engineers at Saarland University have taken a leaf out of nature's book by equipping an artificial hand with muscles made from shape-memory wire. The new technology enables the fabrication of flexib ... more
Chinese scientists mull power station in space The battle to dispel smog, cut greenhouse gases and solve the energy crisis is moving to space. Chinese scientists are mulling the construction of a solar power station 36,000 kilometers above groun ... more		Cluster satellite catches up One of the four Cluster satellites has shifted its orbit to ensure a safe reentry when the time comes, as well as providing a rare opportunity to study how a satellite's exhaust plume interacts with ... more		Scuttling satellites to save space It takes a lot of ingenuity - not to mention a massive quantity of sheer force - to get satellites into orbit. Now space engineers are applying comparable ingenuity to the challenge of getting their ... more		Soft, energy-efficient robotic wings Dielectric elastomers are novel materials for making actuators or motors with soft and lightweight properties that can undergo large active deformations with high-energy conversion efficiencies. Thi ... more

	Soyuz Installed at Baikonur, Expected to Launch Wednesday The Soyuz-2.1A carrier rocket has been successfully installed at the launch site at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and is scheduled for launch on October 29, the press service of the Russian ... more		Tiny bio-robot is a germ suited-up with graphene quantum dots As nanotechnology makes possible a world of machines too tiny to see, researchers are finding ways to combine living organisms with nonliving machinery to solve a variety of problems. Like oth ... more

AALTO plans Zephyr stratospheric hub in northern Australia and seeks local payload partners

Ancient guano drove Chincha coastal power

UAH lands first DARPA award for biological sciences department

A new spin on Saturn's peculiar rotation		Help Name New Features on Pluto		NASA plans to bring boulder into moon orbit		Curiosity Rover Finds Biologically Useful Nitrogen on Mars		Next Steps on Journey to Mars: Progress on Asteroid Initiative
NASA Reformats Memory of Longest-Running Mars Rover		NASA's Opportunity Mars Rover Passes Marathon Distance		Ancient Martian lake system records 2 water-related events		Snake robots learn to turn by following the lead of real sidewinders		Europa's Elusive Water Plume Paints Grim Picture For Life

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NASA rover completes 11-year Mars marathon

Want to snag a satellite? Try a net

Mars has nitrogen, key to life: NASA

India's frugal Mars mission extended by six months

Planets in the habitable zone around most stars, calculate researchers

Spacecraft Power Systems

Robot finds bodily posture may affect memory and learning

Our Solar System May Have Once Harbored Super-Earths

Search for extraterrestrial intelligence extends to new realms

Mars One's CEO Bas Lansdorp answers questions about mission feasibility

Ground broken for Space Fence installation

China completes second test on new carrier rocket's power system

Unusual Asteroid Suspected of Spinning to Explosion

Name the features on Pluto and its moon Charon

Robotic materials: Changing with the world around them

Robotic SPACE Explorers Need Smarts to Survive

USAF funds sense-and-avoid technology development

Titan's Atmosphere Created As Gases Escaped Core

Hover Campaign Promises Bird's-Eye View of Mercury's Surface

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