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Mars Mission
ISRO on Saturday successfully demonstrated a new technology with Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator (IAD) that it said is a game-changer with multiple applications for future missions including to Mars and Venus. An IAD, designed and developed by ISRO's Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), was successfully test flown in a 'Rohini' sounding rocket from Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station (TERLS). The IAD was initially folded and kept inside the payload bay of the rocket, according to the Bengaluru-headquartered Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). At around 84 km altitude, the IAD was inflated and it descended through atmosphere with the payload part of sounding rocket. The pneumatic system for inflation was developed by ISRO's Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre (LPSC), it said. The IAD has systematically reduced the velocity of the payload through aerodynamic drag and followed the predicted trajectory. "This is the first time that an IAD is designed specifically for spe
The United Arab Emirate's Mars Mission (EMM) and NASA's MAVEN probe have found "patchy" proton auroras in Mars' skies, providing new insights into the red planet's atmosphere. An aurora is a natural light display in a planet's sky, predominantly seen in high-latitude regions such as the northern lights, or the aurora borealis, seen from the Earth. The new aurora found by the team is formed when the solar wind directly impacts Mars' upper atmosphere and emits ultraviolet light as it slows down. It was discovered in snapshots of the dayside disk obtained by the Emirates Mars Ultraviolet Spectrometer (EMUS), which observes the planet's upper atmosphere. When the aurora occurs, small regions of the planet become much brighter, signifying intense localised energy in the atmosphere. "Our discovery of these patchy proton aurora adds a new kind of event to the long list of those currently studied by EMM and challenges our existing views of how the proton aurora on Mars' dayside are formed
NASA's Perseverance Mars rover successfully collected its first pair of rock samples, and scientists already are gaining new insights into the region.After collecting its first sample, named "Montdenier" on September 6, the team collected a second, "Montagnac," from the same rock on September 8, according to a release by NASA.Analysis of the rocks from which the Montdenier and Montagnac samples were taken and from the rover's previous sampling attempt may help the science team piece together the timeline of the area's past, which was marked by volcanic activity and periods of persistent water."It looks like our first rocks reveal a potentially habitable sustained environment," said Ken Farley of Caltech, project scientist for the mission, which is led by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California."It's a big deal that the water was there a long time."The rock that provided the mission's first core samples is basaltic in composition and may be the product of lava ...
NASA's newest Mars rover has successfully collected its first rock sample for return to Earth, after last month's attempt came up empty. The Perseverance rover's chief engineer, Adam Stelzner, called it a perfect core sample. "I've never been more happy to see a hole in a rock," he tweeted Thursday. A month ago, Perseverance drilled into much softer rock, and the sample crumbled and didn't get inside the titanium tube. The rover drove a half-mile to a better sampling spot to try again. Team members analyzed data and pictures before declaring success. Perseverance arrived in February at Mars' Jezero Crater believed to be the home of a lush lakebed and river delta billions of years ago in search of rocks that might hold evidence of ancient life. NASA plans to launch more spacecraft to retrieve the samples collected by Perseverance; engineers are hoping to return as many as three dozen samples in about a decade.