NASA Mars orbiter passes big data milestone

Artist concept of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Credit: NASA/JPL

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has overhauled understanding of the Red Planet since 2006, has passed 200 terabits in the amount of science data returned.

The data returned by the mission alone is more than three times the total data returned via NASA's Deep Space Network for all the other missions managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., over the past 10 years.

While the 200 terabits number includes all the data this orbiter has relayed to Earth from robots on the surface of Mars, about 99.9 percent of the volume has come from the six science instruments aboard Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

The 200 terabits are equivalent to the data volume in three nonstop months of high-definition video. The number does not include the engineering data that specialists operating the orbiter from JPL and Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, use for monitoring its health and performance.

The spacecraft pours data Earthward using a dish antenna 10 feet (3 meters) across and a transmitter powered by 215 square feet (20 square meters) of solar cells.

Multiple sessions each day with giant dish antennas of the Deep Space Network in California, Spain and Australia enable Earth to receive such a torrent of data from the orbiter.

"The sheer volume is impressive, but of course what's most important is what we are learning about our neighbouring planet," said JPL's Rich Zurek, the project scientist for the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

The orbiter's instruments have examined Mars from subsurface to atmosphere in unprecedented detail.

One instrument has provided images revealing features as small as a desk in surface areas equivalent to one-third of the United States (1.92 percent of Mars' surface).

Another has covered areas equivalent to about 82 percent of Earth's land area (83.6 percent of Mars' surface), with resolution showing features smaller than a tennis court.

These cameras have viewed many areas repeatedly, providing three-dimensional information from stereo and revealing several types of landscape changes over time.

Other instruments identify surface minerals, probe underground layers, examine cross-sections of the atmosphere and track weather globally.

Sand dunes such as those seen in this image have been observed to creep slowly across the surface of Mars through the action of the wind. 

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

"The mission has taught us about three very different periods of Mars history," Zurek said.

Its observations of the heavily cratered terrains of Mars, the oldest on the planet, show that different types of ancient watery environments formed water-related minerals.

Some of these would have been more favourable for life than others.

In more recent times, water appears to have cycled as a gas between polar ice deposits and lower-latitude deposits of ice and snow.

Extensive layering in ice or rock probably took hundreds of thousands to millions of years to form.

The present climate is also dynamic, with volatile carbon dioxide and, possibly, flows of briny water forming dark streaks that are observed to appear in the warmest seasons and places and fade in colder weather.

"Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has shown that Mars is still an active planet, with changes such as new craters, avalanches and dust storms," Zurek said. "Mars is a partially frozen world, but not frozen in time."

Each of the 200 trillion bits of science data from the orbiter has followed a complex path, aided by sophisticated software to make it feasible for a small team to handle tens of billions of new bits daily and get the data products to the appropriate scientists.

ESA EXOMARS: Tests self-steering Rover in Chile's ‘Mars’ desert

ESA assembled a top engineering team, then challenged them to devise a way for rovers to navigate on alien planets.

Six months later, a fully autonomous vehicle was charting its course through Chile’s Mars-like Atacama Desert.

May’s full-scale rover field test marked the final stage of a StarTiger project code-named ‘Seeker’.

Standing for ‘Space Technology Advancements by Resourceful, Targeted and Innovative Groups of Experts and Researchers’, StarTiger involves a multidisciplinary team gathered at a single site, working against the clock to achieve a technology breakthrough.

 “Our expert team met at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the UK,” explained Gianfranco Visentin, head of ESA’s Automation and Robotics section.

“Their challenge was to demonstrate how a planetary rover – equipped with state-of-the-art autonomous navigation and decision-making software – could traverse 6 km of Mars-like environment and come back where it started.”

Mars rovers cannot be remotely ‘driven’. It takes radio signals up to 40 minutes to make a round trip between Mars and Earth. Instead, rovers are given instructions to carry out autonomously.

“ESA’s ExoMars rover, due to land on Mars in 2018, will have state-of-the-art autonomy,” added Gianfranco.

“However, it will not travel more than 150 m per individual ‘Sol’ – a martian day – or much more than 3 km throughout its mission.

NASA MARS HiRISE: Which Crater Came First?

This image shows two craters, both approximately the same diameter (not quite 3 kilometers, or about 1.8 miles), but quite different in appearance otherwise.

The slightly smaller crater to the south seems to have a sharper rim and steeper sides than its partner to the north, which also appears to contain more small craters inside it and along its rim.

The interior of the northern crater, in particular its south-facing wall, appears to have a similar texture to the ejecta around the southern crater.

This is the second image in a stereo pair (the first is ESP_019346_1690), so we have an anaglyph of these craters.

Although it would require a digital terrain model and more analysis to be certain, in the anaglyph it appears that the southern crater has a higher rim and a deeper center than the northern crater.

All these signs point to the northern crater being quite a bit older than the southern crater, rather than the two craters forming in the same impact event. For an example of two craters that might have formed at the same time (see ESP_020894_1395).

Compare the similarity of those two craters with the disparate appearance of the ones in this image.

This is a stereo pair with ESP_019346_1690.

NASA Mars HiRISE Image: Late Springtime Defrosting of Northern Dunes

This observation shows dunes in the Martian north polar sand sea (commonly referred to as the "north polar erg") in the process of defrosting.

Every winter, dunes and other surfaces at these northern latitudes are coated with several tens of centimeters of carbon dioxide frost and ice, plus a minor amount of water frost.

Details of this process are particularly visible this subimage. The white material is fine grained frost.

The dark, splotchy tones on the dunes may be deposits of particulates deposited from carbon dioxide "geysers" or relatively thick deposits of carbon dioxide ice. The more brownish colors represent defrosted areas. Polygonal patterns on the surface of the dunes are probably cracks in overlying carbon dioxide ice.

Landslides on the dunes' lee slopes are apparent,with a morphology consistent with fluidization from carbon dioxide frost. This and other areas of the north polar region are being investigated by HiRISE to compare to changes in past years.

Read more about Mars Seasonal changes

Nasa Mars Reconaissance Orbiter: Sand Pit Funnel, outlet of Lava Tube

Sunlight casts a crescent shadow on the floor of an underground cavern in a recently released picture of a Martian "skylight."

This round opening likely leads to a lava tube, which is created when lava solidifies on the surface but keeps flowing underground. Eventually the lava drains away, leaving an empty cave.

Snapped by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the picture revealed that the skylight is 115 feet (35 meters) across.

The shadow helped scientists calculate that the cave floor is about 65 feet (20 meters) below the surface.

MARS: Dusty, Acidic Glaciers Could Explain Layered Deposits

A number of recent publications have suggested that the sulfate-bearing ILDs formed by groundwater upwelling, where subsurface water breaches the surface during occasional upwelling events. 

This process has been invoked to explain most of the sulphate-bearing deposits on Mars.

Researchers from the Planetary Science Institute (PSI) and NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) have proposed a new hypothesis to explain a class of enigmatic geologic features on Mars that have puzzled scientists for decades.

The new results, published recently in the journal Geology, suggest that large sedimentary deposits in the Valles Marineris termed Interior Layered Deposits (ILDs) may have formed in a cold, dry ancient Martian climate as the remnants of massive dust-rich glaciers that may have once filled this canyon system.

"Icy weathering might be a major part of the geologic story on Mars," said PSI Research Scientist Joseph Michalski, "The planet has been in a cold, frozen state for a long time. In the distant past, it was also cold, but volcanoes were much more active, periodically pumping huge amounts of sulfur into the atmosphere, which could have ultimately ended up trapped within ice alongside plentiful dust."

Valles Marineris is a 3,000 kilometer-long tectonic trough system on Mars, which reaches depths of approximately eight kilometers (five miles) below the surrounding terrain.

Inside the canyon are vast mounds of layered sediments of enigmatic origins. Since their discovery by the Mariner 9 spacecraft about 40 years ago, the ILD deposits found within the Valles Marineris have escaped explanation.

Their setting within the trough and canyon system has prompted some previous researchers to suggest that the ILDs formed from volcanic processes because the faulting and rifting that formed the canyon could easily lead to thinning of the crust, high heat flow, and ascent of magma.

However, in the late 1990s, the Thermal Emission Spectrometer instrument showed that the deposits contain gray hematite, similar to deposits explored at Meridiani Planum by the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity and shortly after, a French team of researchers produced intriguing new results that further complicated the interpretations of ILDs on Mars.

They showed that the deposits contain sulfate minerals - which are typically found in desert playa or shallow sea environments on Earth and are not dominant phases in volcanic terrain.

One big part of the problem is the size of the altered, layered sediments that rise several kilometers from the canyon floor in places.

Proposed ideas have included the suggestion that the canyon once housed a vast system of deep lakes but, the canyon is not topographically constrained on all sides, so it is difficult to imagine how a lake could have existed there without spilling into the low topography to the north.

NASA MARS HiRise: Edge of North Polar Erg

This scene is from early spring in the northern hemisphere of Mars.

These dunes are covered with a layer of seasonal carbon dioxide ice (dry ice).

Bluish cracks in the ice are visible across the top of some of the dunes.

Dark fan-shaped deposits around the edges of the dunes are at spots where the ice has sublimated (gone directly from ice to gas) and the ice layer has ruptured, allowing the sand from the dune to escape out from under the ice. The sand is then free to be blown by the wind.

This image is one product from an observation by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera taken on Sept. 30, 2011, at 73.3 degrees north latitude, 355.1 degrees east longitude. Other image products from the same observation are at http://www.uahirise.org/ESP_024265_2535 .

HiRISE is one of six instruments on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The University of Arizona, Tucson, operates the orbiter's HiRISE camera, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration Rover and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter projects for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UA

MARS HiRISE: Presentation HiSlides 19th Oct 2011

The slide shown is from a short HiRise presentation. It is labelled The Millipedes of Mars and is part of the dune structures visible to HiRise.  

You can download the slides in different formats, shown below.

NB: They are for personal or school use, and are available in Keynote, PowerPoint and PDF format. The presentation size is 1024 x 768.

Right click the link and save to your local or network drive.

Keynote (7MB)

PowerPoint (6MB)

PDF (6MB)

MARS HiRISE: Spectacular Richardson Crater Dunes

Richardson Crater is well-known among Mars scientists for its spectacular dunes.

These dunes are located around -72 degrees in latitude; if they were on Earth they'd be well south of the Antarctic Circle!

Because of their extreme southern positioning, they endure dramatic temperature changes over the course of the Martian year.

The HiRISE team attempts to monitor this area as these dunes get covered by seasonal frost in the fall and defrost in the spring, taking multiple images over the same locations in order to better understand the structure and evolution of these beautiful landforms.

This image was taken close to the Southern hemisphere autumnal equinox, the end of Southern hemisphere Summer and beginning of autumn.

Unlike that observed on Earth, the frost seen on the Richardson Crater dunes is composed of carbon dioxide, and sublimates (goes directly from a solid to a gas) rather than melts.

At the time of this image, the frost has likely disappeared to its greatest extent and will begin to re-acummulate soon.

Wide, dark streaks are visible extending from the crests of the dunes, likely due to movement of material as the dunes defrosted or to wind transportation of surface particles.

Numerous dust devil tracks are still visible as thin, dark, criss-crossing marks, although these will gradually be covered by carbon dioxide frost as Southern hemisphere winter sets in.

The subimage is approximately 1 kilometer (about 0.62 miles) across.

To see the previous image taken at this same location, taken in early Southern Hemisphere Spring as the dunes were thawing, see ESP_011785_1075.

To take a look at other impressive dunes from various locations within Richardson Crater, see ESP_012774_1080, PSP_004230_1080, and ESP_012985_1075.

HiRISE: Concentric Structures in Meridiani Planum

This image shows a number of unusual, quasi-circular structures from 300 to 600 meters in diameter that apparently formed within bright flows in Meridiani Planum.

The strange structures were observed earlier in MOC image E12-01295.

They are located near the equator, about 300 kilometers West of the MER rover Opportunity.

New details can be seen in the HiRISE image that yield clues to the origin of these mysterious features.

The dark rings seen within the concentric structures appear rougher than their surroundings.

The bright material in which they formed is densely fractured, suggesting that it is quite brittle.

Several small impact craters found within the bright unit produced sprays of dark ejecta, suggesting that the bright surface layer may be only a few meters thick.

A compositional and morphological boundary separates the contorted central region of the unit from the smooth margins.

A full interpretation awaits detailed analysis, but these observations suggest that the lobate bright unit may have been produced by an ancient flow of water-saturated fluvial sediments.

The circular structures within the flow could have formed by desiccation, as the sediments dried out and contracted, similar to mud cracks but on a much larger scale. Or they may have formed by a process of diapirism, if a solid crust formed on the surface of the drying sediments that was denser than the water-saturated slurry below.

On Earth, slurries of sand and water that are pressurised by the weight of the overburden can rise to the surface to form "injectites," eruptions of sand and water that can reach heights of hundreds of meters.

Whether they were formed by desiccation or injection, these unusual features record a unique moment in the distant past of Mars.

NASA MARS: Sand Dunes of Proctor Crater

Large sand dunes on the floor of Proctor Crater on Mars.

The above picture was taken by HiRISE camera on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), a robot spacecraft currently in orbit around Mars.

The dark rippled dunes likely formed more recently than the lighter rock forms they appear to cover, and are thought to slowly shift in response to pervasive winds.

The dunes arise from a complex relationship between the sandy surface and high winds on Mars. Similar dunes were first seen in Proctor Crater by Mariner 9 more than 35 years ago.

NASA Image of the the Day - Gallery

NASA Image of the the Day - Gallery

Dunes of Mars
Dunes of sand-sized materials have been trapped on the floors of many Martian craters. This is one example, from a crater in Noachis Terra, west of the giant Hellas impact basin. The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured this view on Dec. 28, 2009