OrbitalHub

NASA dicit:

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover used its Mastcam-Z camera system to shoot video of Phobos, one of Mars’ two moons, eclipsing the Sun. It’s the most zoomed-in, highest frame-rate observation of a Phobos solar eclipse ever taken from the Martian surface.

Several Mars rovers have observed Phobos crossing in front of the Sun over the past 18 years. Spirit and Opportunity made the first observations back in 2004; Curiosity in 2019 was the first to record video of the event. Each time these eclipses are observed, they allow scientists to measure subtle shifts in Phobos’ orbit over time. The moon’s tidal forces pull on the deep interior of the Red Planet, as well as its crust and mantle; studying how much Phobos shifts over time reveals something about how resistant the crust and mantle are, and thus what kinds of materials they’re made of.

Video credit: NASA

NASA dicit:

Seasons change even on Mars and NASA’s fleet of explorers are helping scientists learn more about the effects on the Red Planet. NASA’s Perseverance and Curiosity rovers provide daily weather reports by measuring conditions such as humidity, temperature, and wind speed on the surface. Orbiters including Odyssey, Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN), and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) survey the scope and scale of storms from above. Changing weather conditions can be challenging for the spacecraft. The Ingenuity Mars Helicopter recently increased its rotor speed from 2,537 rpm to 2,700 rpm to fly in a thinner summer atmosphere. Meanwhile, NASA’s InSight lander, which is studying Mars’ interior, recently measured one of the biggest, longest-lasting marsquakes the mission has ever detected.

Video credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/ASU/MSSS

NASA dicit:

Guided tour of Mars’ Jezero Crater from NASA’s Perseverance rover provides a glimpse of the Martian landscape from the rover’s highest vantage point yet in the “Séítah” region.

Perseverance Project Scientist Ken Farley points out highlights in this Martian panorama from the rover’s Mastcam-Z instrument, including mountains that make up the crater rim, remnants of an ancient river delta that could preserve signs of ancient life, volcanic rocks, and boulders likely carried into the crater by the river in the distant past. The enhanced-color panorama was created from images taken on November 28, 2021.

The color enhancement exaggerates small changes in color from place to place in the scene. This makes it easier for the science team to use their everyday experience to interpret the landscape. The sky on Mars would not actually look blue to a human explorer on the Red Planet, but pinkish.

Video credit: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

NASA dicit:

NASA’s Curiosity rover explores Mount Sharp, a 5-mile-tall (8-kilometer-tall) mountain within the basin of Gale Crater on Mars.

Curiosity landed nine years ago on August 5, 2012, with a mission to study whether different Martian environments could have supported microbial life in the ancient past, when long-lived lakes and groundwater existed within Gale Crater.

Video credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

NASA dicit:

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter takes off and lands in this video captured on April 19, 2021, by Mastcam-Z, an imager aboard NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover. This video features only the moments of takeoff and landing. As expected, the helicopter flew out of its field of vision but the shadow of it hovering is visible.

The Ingenuity Mars Helicopter was built by JPL, which also manages this technology demonstration project for NASA Headquarters. It is supported by NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate, and Space Technology Mission Directorate. NASA’s Ames Research Center and Langley Research Center provided significant flight performance analysis and technical assistance during Ingenuity’s development.

A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust).

Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.

Video credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS

NASA dicit:

NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter has made an unexpected discovery about a different planet – Mars. Juno scientists discovered that Martian dust may be the source of a sky phenomenon known as the zodiacal light.

Look up to the night sky just before dawn, or after dusk, and you might see a faint column of light extending up from the horizon. That glow is the zodiacal light, or sunlight reflected toward Earth by a cloud of tiny dust particles orbiting the Sun.

Astronomers have long thought that the dust is brought into the inner solar system by asteroids and comets. But now, a team of Juno scientists argues that the planet Mars may be the source. The discovery resulted from dust particles slamming into the Juno spacecraft during its journey from Earth to Jupiter. Juno’s expansive solar panels unintentionally became the biggest and most sensitive dust detector ever built. Impacts on the solar panels provided important clues to the origin and orbital evolution of the dust, resolving some of the mysterious variations observed in the zodiacal light.

Video credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Dan Gallagher (USRA): Lead Producer/Michael Lentz (USRA): Lead Animator/Kel Elkins (USRA):Lead Data Visualizer/Lonnie Shekhtman (ADNET): Writer/Rani Gran (NASA/GSFC): Public Affairs Officer/John Connerney (NASA/GSFC): Scientist/David Agle (JPL): Support/Aaron E. Lepsch (ADNET): Technical Support/Original musical score by Vangelis, used with permission.