Martian Clouds Need Elevated Humidity than Earth for Cloud Creation, Study

In an attempt to understand the atmosphere of Mars, scientist from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) created artificial Martian atmospheric conditions in a three-story-tall cloud chamber in Germany.

The researchers created condition mimicking the Martian planet and the temperatures were adjusted according to the Martian atmosphere and the relative humidity to aid the formation of Martian Clouds. Scientists were surprised to find that the clouds were formed when the relative humidity is 190% which is more than that of the Earth.

The latest finding will help the scientists create more relevant models of the Martian Atmosphere. Early models of the Martian Atmosphere were created on the belief that clouds on Mars were created in a relative humidity similar to earth. It will also help the scientists better understand the mechanism of transportation of water through the atmosphere.

Dan Cziczo, the Victor P. Starr Associate Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry at MIT, said in an official statement said, “A lot of atmospheric models for Mars are very simple. They have to make gross assumptions about how clouds form: As soon as it hits 100 percent humidity, boom, you get a cloud to form. But we found you need more to kick-start the process.”

The experiment was conducted in Karlsruhe, Germany, at the Aerosol Interaction and Dynamics in the Atmosphere (AIDA) facility in 2012. The site was a former nuclear reactor site and has been converted into the largest cloud chamber in the world.

The facility was used to examine the atmospheric conditions on Earth. However it soon dawned upon Cziczo that with minor modifications the Martian Atmosphere can be created. For creating a Martian Atmosphere, the researchers first drained out all the

Source;http://www.pentagonpost.com

Supervolcanoes Rocked Early Mars

Massive "supervolcanoes" erupted across the northern face of Mars some 3.7 billion years ago, planetary scientists suggest. The eruptions likely blasted lava, sulfur, and ash across the red planet, altering its atmosphere and surface.

The planets of the inner solar system—Earth, Mars, Venus, and Mercury—started their lives as boiling-hot balls of rock, which cooled to feature thin crusts battered by asteroid and comet impacts. On Mars, that early crust was perhaps also punctured by supersize volcanoes with calderas more than 30 miles (50 kilometers) wide, a newly identified kind of volcanism on the red planet. (See"Mars: The Red Planet.")

"We began to find craters that weren't impact craters. So we started to wonder if what we were seeing was volcanic," says Joseph Michalski of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, lead author of the study, published today in Nature. "We can make a strong case that these were a kind of very large volcano."

Mars is already known for its volcanic features, notably Olympus Mons, a dormant volcano some 14 miles (22 kilometers) tall and 370 miles (600 kilometers) wide, the largest volcanic mountain in the solar system. (See "New Giant Volcano Below Sea Is Largest in the World.") However, the newly identified supervolcanoes would point to an early era on Mars when volcanic pools spread across its surface like fuming, open wounds.

Supervolcanoes Sighted

In the study, Michalski and his colleague, Jacob Bleacher of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, analyzed orbital images of the Arabia Terra highlands of northern Mars, reporting signs of at least four massive supervolcanoes stretching across the 2,800-mile (4,000-kilometer) plain.

These were not the familiar shield volcanoes, or mountains tipped by a narrow crater, that are widely seen on Earth and Mars, but broad depressions some 1.1 miles (1.8 kilometers) deep. These broad open plains of magma once would have vented massive amounts of ash and steam to the sky. The closest comparison on Earth might be the broad volcanic caldera beneath Yellowstone National Park, which has erupted three times over the last 2.1 million years.

"We think they would have had a profound effect on the early Martian atmosphere; we're talking more than three billion years ago," Michalski says.

The scientists point to basalt blocks and smooth lava plains surrounding the supervolcanoes that resemble those of caldera features on Earth to make their argument. Evidence from NASA's rover Opportunity shows that the Meridani Planum region of Mars is a broad plain suffused with sulfur that resembles the volcanic fallout that would be seen from supervolcanoes as well, Michalski says.

Scientific Caution

"Every decade or two someone proposes yet another otherwise previously unrecognized volcano on Mars," says space volcanology expert Larry Crumpler of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science in Albuquerque. He calls the supervolcano "an interesting new idea about Martian highlands volcanism where none had been proposed before."

However, both Crumpler and MIT's Maria Zuber (who calls the observations "well supported") caution that the supervolcanoes idea rests on interpretation of the Martian surface, which has a long history of misleading observers.

"Like most remote-sensing studies it relies principally on circumstantial evidence," Crumpler says. "Nonetheless, it postulates an intriguing direction for future research regarding what was the wettest period in Martian geologic history."

Wetter, Warmer Mars

The effect of greenhouse gases released by these supervolcanoes particularly intrigues Michalski, offering an avenue for investigating how warm Mars was in the early years of the solar system. Although warmer and wetter than today, the era of the supervolcanoes was likely still too early to figure in discussions of life on Mars, he adds. "A lot of people want to look at this from the 'life on Mars' angle, but I don't think that's what is important here," he says.

Zuber says that the supervolcanoes, if they do prove to have once littered the red planet, will only add to the picture that scientists have of the early Martian atmosphere. The massive Tharsis region of Mars, home to Olympus Mons and several other large dormant volcanoes, already has been accounted for in ancient climate studies, Zuber says, "so these [supervolcano] observations do not substantially modify the view of the planet's climatic evolution."

Source:http://news.nationalgeographic.com

U.S. Shutdown Puts NASA Mars Mission In Jeopardy

NASA's $650 million Mars MAVEN mission, due to launch on November 18, could be rescheduled for 2016 if it misses its launch window. NASA has been working on this mission for more than 10 years, with the aim of the mission to study Mars' upper atmosphere to see how it has changed with time. But with about 97 percent of NASA's workers currently on leave, the longer the shutdown lasts, the lesser the chances of an on-time launch.

Tom Jones, a former NASA astronaut who successfully completed four flights on the Space Shuttle before retiring, said to RT – 

"It’s frustrating because everyone has deadlines. Everyone has a schedule to keep and to be told to mark time and loose this time makes everyone feel that they’re not able to do their job. And people at NASA tend to be very dedicated, driven people, who want to make deadlines, who want to make projects go forward and so they find it frustrating just not to be able to work on them at all."

Bruce Jakosky, a government contractor directing the MAVEN mission, said –

"After a week, I'm really going to start to worry. I can still work. I'm focused on getting ready for science when we arrive at Mars. But the real work on the spacecraft has stopped. We are just under seven weeks to launch. We have tasks scheduled every day. Every day we're shutdown does hurt."

Jakosky also talked about how the delay in the MAVEN mission could have considerable ramifications in terms of NASA's research aims. 

"Our science is tied to the solar cycle. If we launch this year, we're seeing the sun when it's reasonably active. In 26 months, it will be at a solar minimum, which is a much less interesting time to be looking because there is less influence on the Mars atmosphere. The next time it will reach maximum will be in about 11 years. That launch period opens in 46 days, whether we're ready or not."

Source:http://www.neontommy.com

Early Mars atmosphere 'oxygen-rich'

Mars' atmosphere could have been rich in oxygen four billion years ago - well before Earth's air became augmented with the gas.

That is the suggestion put forward by the author of a study in Nature journal, which outlines an explanation for differences between Mars meteorites and rocks examined by a robot rover.

Dr Bernard Wood said the idea fits with the picture of a planet that was once warm, wet and habitable.

But other scientists were sceptical.

While the rise of atmospheric oxygen on Earth was probably mediated by life, Martian oxygen could have been produced through the chemical "splitting" of water.

Prof Wood and his colleagues from Oxford University looked at the chemical composition of Martian meteorites found on Earth and data from Nasa's Spirit rover, which examined surface rocks at Gusev Crater on Mars.

Both are igneous rocks (of volcanic origin), but they show major geochemical differences. For example, the Gusev Crater rocks are five times richer in nickel than the meteorites.

This had posed something of a puzzle, casting doubt on whether the meteorites were typical volcanic products of the Red Planet.

Young and old

"What we have shown is that both meteorites and surface volcanic rocks are consistent with similar origins in the deep interior of Mars, but that the surface rocks come from a more oxygen-rich environment, probably caused by recycling of oxygen-rich materials into the interior," Prof Wood explained.

"This result is surprising because while the meteorites are geologically 'young', around 180 million to 1.4 billion years old, the Spirit rover was analysing a very old part of Mars, more than 3.7 billion years old."

Whilst the researchers conceded that large regional variations in the geological composition of Mars could not be ruled out, they argue in their paper that these differences arose via subduction - in which rocks are recycled in the planet's interior.

Dr Wood, James Tuff and Jon Wade from Oxford propose that the Martian surface became "oxidised" early in its history, and that these surface rocks were drawn into the shallow interior and recycled back to the surface during volcanic eruptions around four billion years ago.

The meteorites, by contrast, are much younger volcanic rocks that emerged from deeper within Mars and so were less influenced by this process.

Although material can become oxidised in the presence of free oxygen gas - it is not essential for oxidation reactions to occur.

But Dr Francis McCubbin, from the University of New Mexico, who was not involved with the Nature study, told BBC News: "I did not reach the conclusion that their results imply an early oxygen-rich atmosphere on Mars, only that the upper mantle was more oxidised than the deep interior, which does not actually require any oxygen gas to accomplish."

"I agree with the overarching conclusions of this work that there are substantial redox gradients with depth on Mars, and this could be potentially very important for Mars' habitability because some organisms can take advantage of redox (reduction-oxidation) reactions and use them as an energy/food source.

He added: "Although not implicitly stated, the early oxidized magmatism would also favour the production of water, another ingredient that is key to habitability."

On alternative possibilities to atmospheric oxygen, Prof Wood told BBC News: "One is that Mars was an initially oxidised planet - that's pretty unlikely. There aren't any meteorites or other bodies in the Solar System that show this high state of oxidation.

"You don't need a lot of oxygen to cause this - you don't need to be at 20% concentration. It would depend on temperature and how much water was around. But you need free oxygen to do it.

"And the process didn't take place to any great extent on Earth at that time - which is interesting."

Prof Wood explained that, as oxidation was what gave Mars its distinctive colour, it is likely that the planet was "warm, wet and rusty" billions of years before Earth's atmosphere became oxygen-rich.

He added: "The principal way we would expect to get oxygen is through photolysis of water - water vapour in Mars' atmosphere interacting with radiation from the Sun breaks down to form hydrogen and oxygen.

"Most of that hydrogen and oxygen recombines back to water. But a small fraction of the hydrogen is energetic enough to escape from the planet. A small amount of hydrogen is lost leaving an oxygen excess.

"But the gravity on Mars is one third of that on Earth, so hydrogen would be lost more easily. So the oxygen build-up could be enhanced on Mars relative to Earth."

NASA presents an astonishing billion-pixel tour of Mars

It's a guided tour -- from about 150 million miles away.

A stunning panoramic image from the Curiosity rover offers an incredibly detailed look at the dusty, lonely landscape of the red planet. And thanks to NASA's computer science geniuses, you can take a guided tour of the rocky landscape from your couch. 

Here's how to get the most of it. 

First click in the Photosynth player and drag the image left or right for a 360-degree look at your desolate surroundings (remember to keep your eyes open for the Martian rat). Then click the double rectangle in the bottom center of the image to take the panoramic image full-screen for the full mind-blowing experience.

Now click the links at the right side of the screen for some highlights of the spots Curiosity has already investigated, as well as the sites yet to be visited.

Start your trip at Mount Sharp, a 3-mile high rocky peak that the rover will eventually trek its way to. Zoom in on the L-shaped series of laser blasts that the rover zapped into the landscape, or the tracks left by the rover itself on its lonely tour.

Check out Yellowknife Bay, the area Curiosity first drilled into, or Rocknest, where the rover took its first scoops of Martian soil. 

The image, the first NASA-produced shot to cross the one-billion pixel mark, combines nearly 900 exposures taken of the windblown patch of dirt called Rocknest by cameras onboard Curiosity and shows details of the landscape along the rover’s route to Mount Sharp on the horizon.

“It gives a sense of place and really shows off the cameras’ capabilities,” said Bob Deen of the Multi-Mission Image Processing Laboratory at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. “You can see the context and also zoom in to see very fine details.”

The images were taken on several different Mars days between Oct. 5 and Nov. 16, 2012. Raw single-frame images received from Curiosity are promptly posted on a public website:mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/

NASA details plan to capture passing asteroid and drag it into Moon’s orbit Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/nasa-details-plan-capture-asteroid-article-1.1354132#ixzz2UFvYCraY

The $100 million program will help us get to Mars, says the agency. But not all space scientists agree.

AP/NICK UT

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, right, talks with electric propulsion engineer John Brophy during a visit to Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

While no one has yet figured out how to catch a shooting star, NASA has set its sights on lassoing an asteroid so as to one day save the Earth from destruction.

Charles Bolden, the director of the U.S. space agency, visited the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. on Thursday and commented on NASA’s ambitious plan to intercept, redirect and explore an asteroid.

“This is the first chance humanity has to demonstrate with an asteroid of this size that we can move its orbit,” Bolden told the Los Angeles Times. “It will be tens of years before we can say we can protect the Earth from an impact. It won't happen in my lifetime as administrator, but this is the first step.”

RELATED: NASA’S KEPLER TELESCOPE MALFUNCTIONS AGAIN, THREATENING SPACE MISSION

While saving the world from a potential asteroid collision is, in itself, a worthy goal, Bolden said that another motivation behind the mission will be to further develop the technology to one day send humans to Mars.

“My ultimate goal as a human being is to get us to Mars,” Bolden told the Times.

President Obama included the asteroid capture mission as part of his 2014 NASA budget request, and allocated $100 million to do so by the year 2025. Still, finding the right asteroid may prove elusive.

RELATED: ASTRONAUTS AT INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION STAGE EMERGENCY SPACEWALK

NASA will need a space rock that is between 20 and 30 feet, and is traveling no faster than 1.5 miles per second if it hopes to successfully envelop it in what looks like a giant corrugated plunger.

Instead of venturing out deep into the solar system to find the perfect asteroid, NASA now plans to wait for a suitable candidate to wander close to Earth. Once bagged, the agency will drag the captured asteroid into the moon’s orbit, where astronauts will attempt to land on the rock’s surface and conduct experiments.

“When astronauts don their spacesuits and venture out for a spacewalk on the surface of an asteroid, how they move and take samples of it will be based on years of knowledge built by NASA scientists and engineers who have assembled and operated the International Space Station, evaluated exploration mission concepts, sent scientific spacecraft to characterize near-Earth objects and performed ground-based analog missions,” NASA says on its website.

Still, some scientists wonder whether spending $100 million on the asteroid mission makes sense if the ultimate goal is to land on Mars.

“To me, the connection between the asteroid retrieval mission, which involves proximity operations with a rock that would fit comfortably in this hearing room, I see no obvious connection between that and any of the technologies and capabilities required for Martian exploration,” Steve Squyers, a planetary scientist at Cornell University, told the House Subcommittee on Space 

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/nasa-details-plan-capture-asteroid-article-1.1354132#ixzz2UFveG898