NASA Mars Rover Curiosity: New Mount Sharp panorama in transit

Curiosity rover panorama of Mount Sharp captured on June 6, 2014 (Sol 651) during traverse inside Gale Crater. Note rover wheel tracks at left. 

She will eventually ascend the mountain at the ‘Murray Buttes’ at right later this year. 

Assembled from Mastcam color camera raw images and stitched by Marco Di Lorenzo and Ken Kremer. 

Credit: NASA /JPL /MSSS /Marco Di Lorenzo

Within the past Martian day on Friday, June 6, NASA's rover Curiosity captured a stunning new panorama of towering Mount Sharp and the treacherous sand dunes below which she must safely traverse before reaching the mountains foothills, while in transit to her primary destination.

See our brand new Mount Sharp photo mosaic above – taken coincidentally by humanity's emissary on Mars on the 70th anniversary of D-Day on Earth.

Basically she's eating desiccated dirt while running a Martian marathon.

Having said 'Goodbye Kimberley' after drilling her third bore hole deep into a cold red slab of enticing bumpy textures of Martian sandstone in the name of science, our intrepid mega Rover Curiosity is trundling along with all deliberate speed towards the inviting slopes of sedimentary rocks at the base of mysterious Mount Sharp which hold clues to the habitability of the Red Planet.

The sedimentary layers of Mount Sharp, which reaches 3.4 miles (5.5 km) into the Martian sky, is the six wheeled robots ultimate destination inside Gale Crater because it holds caches of water altered minerals.

Such minerals could possibly mark locations that sustained potential Martian microbial life forms, past or present, if they ever existed.

The 1 ton robot is driving on a path towards the Murray Buttes which lies across the dunes on the right side of Mount Sharp as seen in our photo mosaic above, with wheel tracks on the left side.

She will eventually ascend the mountain at the 'Murray Buttes' after crossing the sand dunes.

Mars Rover Curiosity’s panoramic view departing Mount Remarkable and ‘The Kimberley Waypoint’ where rover conducted 3rd drilling campaign inside Gale Crater on Mars. 

The navcam raw images were taken on Sol 630, May 15, 2014, stitched and colorized. 

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Mars Rover Curiosity still has roughly another 4 kilometers of driving to go to reach the foothills of Mount Sharp sometime later this year.

Approximately four weeks ago, Curiosity successfully completed her 3rd drilling campaign since landing at the science waypoint region called "The Kimberley" on May 5, Sol 621, into the 'Windjana' rock target at the base of a 16 foot tall ( 5 Meter) hill called Mount Remarkable.

Mars was far wetter and warmer – and more conducive to the origin of life – billions of years ago.

The fresh hole drilled into "Windjana" was 0.63 inch (1.6 centimeters) in diameter and about 2.6 inches (6.5 centimeters) deep and resulted in a mound of dark grey coloured drill tailings piled around. It looked different from the initial holes drilled at Yellowknife Bay in the spring of 2013.

Composite photo mosaic shows deployment of NASA Rover Curiosity robotic arm and two holes after drilling into ‘Windjana’ sandstone rock on May 5, 2014, Sol 621, at Mount Remarkable as missions third drill target for sample analysis by rover’s chemistry labs. 

The Navcam raw images were stitched together from several Martian days up to Sol 621, May 5, 2014 and coloured. 

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Windjana lies some 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) southwest of Yellowknife Bay.

Curiosity then successfully delivered pulverized and sieved samples to the pair of onboard miniaturised chemistry labs; the Chemistry and Mineralogy instrument (CheMin) and the Sample Analysis at Mars instrument (SAM), for chemical and compositional analysis.

Before departing, Curiosity blasted the hole multiple times with her million watt laser on the Mast mounted Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument , leaving no doubt of her capabilities or intentions.

And she completed an up close examination of the texture and composition of 'Windjana' with the MAHLI camera and spectrometers at the end of her 7-foot-long (2 meter) arm to glean every last drop of science before moving on.

NASA Kepler finds a very wobbly planet - Kepler-413b Binary System

This illustration shows the unusual orbit of planet Kepler-413b around a close pair of orange and red dwarf stars. 

The planet's 66-day orbit is tilted 2.5 degrees with respect to the plane of the binary star's orbit. 

The orbit of the planet wobbles around the central stars over 11 years, an effect called precession. 

This planet is also very unusual in that it can potentially precess wildly on its spin axis, much like a child's top. 

Credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Feild (STScI)

Imagine living on a planet with seasons so erratic you would hardly know whether to wear Bermuda shorts or a heavy overcoat.

That is the situation on a weird, wobbly world found by NASA's planet-hunting Kepler space telescope.

The planet, designated Kepler-413b, precesses, or wobbles, wildly on its spin axis, much like a child's top.

NASA's planet-hunting Kepler space telescope

The tilt of the planet's spin axis can vary by as much as 30 degrees over 11 years, leading to rapid and erratic changes in seasons.

In contrast, Earth's rotational precession is 23.5 degrees over 26,000 years.

Researchers are amazed that this far-off planet is precessing on a human timescale.

Precession : the axis of rotation of a precessing body itself rotates around another axis.

Kepler 413-b is located 2,300 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus. It circles a close pair of orange and red dwarf stars every 66 days.

Constellation Cygnus

The planet's orbit around the binary stars appears to wobble, too, because the plane of its orbit is tilted 2.5 degrees with respect to the plane of the star pair's orbit.

As seen from Earth, the wobbling orbit moves up and down continuously.

Kepler finds planets by noticing the dimming of a star or stars when a planet transits, or travels in front of them.

Normally, planets transit like clockwork. Astronomers using Kepler discovered the wobbling when they found an unusual pattern of transiting for Kepler-413b.

Veselin Kostov

"Looking at the Kepler data over the course of 1,500 days, we saw three transits in the first 180 days—one transit every 66 days—then we had 800 days with no transits at all. After that, we saw five more transits in a row," said Veselin Kostov, the principal investigator on the observation.

Kostov is affiliated with the Space Telescope Science Institute (STSCI) and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md.

The next transit visible from Earth's point of view is not predicted to occur until 2020.

This is because the orbit moves up and down, a result of the wobbling, in such a great degree that it sometimes does not transit the stars as viewed from Earth.

Astronomers are still trying to explain why this planet is out of alignment with its stars. There could be other planetary bodies in the system that tilted the orbit.

Or, it could be that a third star nearby that is a visual companion may actually be gravitationally bound to the system and exerting an influence.

Peter McCullough

"Presumably there are planets out there like this one that we're not seeing because we're in the unfavourable period," said Peter McCullough, a team member with the Space Telescope Science Institute (STSCI) and Johns Hopkins University.

"And that's one of the things that Veselin is researching: Is there a silent majority of things that we're not seeing?"

Even with its changing seasons, Kepler-413b is too warm for life as we know it.

Because it orbits so close to the stars, its temperatures are too high for liquid water to exist, making it inhabitable.

It also is a super Neptune—a giant gas planet with a mass about 65 times that of Earth—so there is no surface on which to stand.

Chasing Venus: When the world came Together

In 1716, sixty-year old Sir Edmund Halley called on astronomers all over the world to leave their cozy observatories, travel to the edges of the known world, set up their telescopes, and turn their eyes toward the sunrise on the morning of June 6th, 1761, when the first Transit of Venus of the scientific age would march across the face of the sun.

In the eighteenth century, the solar system had a shape but not a size.

Captain Cook's 1792 Drawing

By timing the entrance and the exit of Venus across the sun from latitudes all over the world, Halley explained, astronomers could roughly calculate the distance between the Earth and the Sun — a “celestial yardstick” for measuring the universe, as Andrea Wulf calls it in her excellent book Chasing Venus: The Race to Measure the Heavens.

1882 Film of Venus transit

 It was the first worldwide scientific collaboration of its kind, a mathematical olympiad six hours in duration, with years of planning and seconds that counted.

Today, more than 250 years after this grand experiment that required astronomers all over the world to gather together and look to the sky at the exact same moment, we will experience the last transit of our lifetime (unless modern medicine makes us survive to December 2117, when the next one will take place).

NASA ScienceCasts: The 2012 Transit of Venus - YouTube

ScienceCasts: ISS Transit of Venus - YouTube

High above Earth, astronaut Don Pettit is about to become the first human to witness and photograph a transit of Venus from space. His images and commentary will be streamed to Earth during the crossing.

2012 Transit of Venus | HD Video NASA - YouTube

Although we’d all like to think technological advances will keep the old bod going strong until 2117, better not to leave such things to chance and find yourself a solar telescope by June 5th, when Venus will pass the Sun.

The best thing about this event is that you won’t have to whip over to the windy plains of Siberia or somewhere equally inconvenient to see it since it should be visible on all seven continents for seven hours.

As with any solar event, it’s a definite no-no to stare at our star without the proper protection, so NASA suggests nothing short of a #14 welder’s glass or if there’s a local astronomy club in the area, see if they have a solar telescope available for the big day.

NASA SDO Image: Solar Moon Transit

A NASA spacecraft has captured stunning footage of Tuesday's (Feb. 21) partial solar eclipse, which left our star looking briefly like a huge celestial Pac-Man.

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) was watching Tuesday morning when the new moon crossed part of the sun's face in a partial eclipse that was visible only from space. 

SDO snapped a video and photos of the solar eclipse from its lofty perch 22,000 miles (36,000 kilometers) above Earth.

Kepler Telescope launch - 6th March 2009

The search for Life continues. The Kepler Telescope launch
(Click picture for New Scientist story and NASA video)