During an extremely rare fly-by, comet Siding Spring zoomed by Mars on October 19th in an event that scientists bill as being once-in-a-lifetime. The event could help astronomers better understand what occurred during the earliest days of our solar system. Siding Spring flew as close as 87,000 miles to the Martian surface at 2:27 PM EDT-approximately one third of the distance between Earth and … [Read more...]
NASA Spacecraft Seeking Answers to Lost Water Approaches Mars
After a long 10 month journey to the red planet, a NASA spacecraft will enter Mars’s orbit on Sunday in order to investigate how the planet lost its water. The spacecraft traveled 422 million miles from Earth and will experience a do-or-die burn of its braking rockets scheduled to start at 9:37 PM EDT/0137 GMT. MAVEN’s (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) thruster burns will hopefully give … [Read more...]
NASA Search for Life on mars led by Brisbane Woman
The NASA team that will be searching for life on Mars will be led by one of the top 10 scientific minds of the world, Dr. Abigail Allwood, described as an extraordinarily brilliant woman. Working at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, Dr. Allwood is the main investigator for the 2020 Mars Rover program that NASA is preparing. The Brisbane scientist is the first non-US … [Read more...]
Mars rover self-designed by UB Team to compete at NASA contest
The students at the University at Buffalo (UB) participated in a NASA contest held this week at its Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. For the competition, the teams had to build a rover that could cross a series of hurdles in NASA Johnson’s Rockyard, a test area that simulates Mars. The participants had designed and assembled their own robotic vehicle similar to Mars rover that also … [Read more...]
NASA releases selfies sent by Curiosity rover
US space agency NASA has released lateast pictures of Mars and its surface alongwith some of the selfie of Curiosity. The rare images, clicked by Curiosity on April 27 and 28, were assembled by space blogger Jason Major. The latest selfie of Curiosity rover shows its ‘face’ i.e. the eye-like navigation cameras and the workhorse Mastcam. The pictures were taken by a camera mounted on an arm … [Read more...]
NASA ‘s rover Opportunity makes big water finding on 10th anniversary
In a major achievement for NASA’s Opportunity Rover, that celebrates its 10th anniversary today, the Mars rover has discovered concrete evidence about presence of fresh water on the red planet. The Opportunity rover was launched on the flat plains of Mars ten years ago on January 24, 2004. After its landing, the rover rolled into an impact crater about whose existence the scientists were not … [Read more...]
