NASA Mars Curiosity Rover: Potential signs of ancient life in Mars rover photos

A rock bed at the Gillespie Lake outcrop on Mars displays potential signs of ancient microbial sedimentary structures. 

Credit: NASA

A careful study of images taken by the NASA rover Curiosity has revealed intriguing similarities between ancient sedimentary rocks on Mars and structures shaped by microbes on Earth.

The findings suggest, but do not prove, that life may have existed earlier on the Red Planet.

The photos were taken as Curiosity drove through the Gillespie Lake outcrop in Yellowknife Bay, a dry lakebed that underwent seasonal flooding billions of years ago.

Mars and Earth shared a similar early history. The Red Planet was a much warmer and wetter world back then.

On Earth, carpet-like colonies of microbes trap and rearrange sediments in shallow bodies of water such as lakes and costal areas, forming distinctive features that fossilize over time.

These structures, known as microbially-induced sedimentary structures (or MISS), are found in shallow water settings all over the world and in ancient rocks spanning Earth's history.

Nora Noffke, a geobiologist at Old Dominion University in Virginia, has spent the past 20 years studying these microbial structures.

Last year, she reported the discovery of MISS that are 3.48 billion years old in the Western Australia's Dresser Formation, making them potentially the oldest signs of life on Earth.

In a paper published online last month in the journal Astrobiology (the print version comes out this week), Noffke details the striking morphological similarities between Martian sedimentary structures in the Gillespie Lake outcrop (which is at most 3.7 billion years old) and microbial structures on Earth.

The distinctive shapes include erosional remnants, pockets, domes, roll-ups, pits, chips and cracks, which on Earth can extend from a few centimeters to many kilometers.

Although Noffke makes a tantalizing case for possible signs of ancient life on Mars, her report is not a definitive proof that these structures were shaped by biology.

Getting such confirmation would involve returning rock samples to Earth and conducting additional microscopic analyses, a mission that isn't scheduled anytime in the near future.

"All I can say is, here's my hypothesis and here's all the evidence that I have," Noffke says, "although I do think that this evidence is a lot."

"The fact that she pointed out these structures is a great contribution to the field," says Penelope Boston, a geomicrobiologist at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology.

"Along with the recent reports of methane and organics on Mars, her findings add an intriguing piece to the puzzle of a possible history for life on our neighboring planet."

A Careful Analysis
"I've seen many papers that say 'Look, here's a pile of dirt on Mars, and here's a pile of dirt on Earth,'" says Chris McKay, a planetary scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center and an associate editor of the journal Astrobiology. "And because they look the same, the same mechanism must have made each pile on the two planets.'"

McKay adds: "That's an easy argument to make, and it's typically not very convincing. However, Noffke's paper is the most carefully done analysis of the sort that I've seen, which is why it's the first of its kind published in Astrobiology."

Overlay of sketch on photograph from above to assist in the identification of the structures on the rock bed surface. 

Image credit: Noffke (2105). Credit: ASTROBIOLOGY, published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.

The images on which Noffke drew are publicly available on the Mars Science Laboratory page on NASA's website.

"In one image, I saw something that looked very familiar," Noffke recalls. "So I took a closer look, meaning I spent several weeks investigating certain images centimeter by centimeter, drawing sketches, and comparing them to data from terrestrial structures, and I've worked on these for 20 years, so I knew what to look for."

Noffke compared the rover pictures to images taken at several sites on Earth, including modern sediment surfaces in Mellum Island, Germany; Portsmouth Island, USA; and Carbla Point, Western Australia; as well as older fossils of microbial mats in Bahar Alouane, Tunisia; the Pongola Supergroup in Africa; and the Dresser Formation in Western Australia.

The photos showed striking morphological similarities between the terrestrial and Martian sedimentary structures.

The distribution patterns of the microbial structures on Earth vary depending on where they are found. Different types of structures are found together in different types of environments.

For instance, microbial mats that grow in rivers will create a different set of associations than those that grow in seasonally flooded environments.

The patterns found in the Gillespie Lake outcrop are consistent with the microbial structures found in similar environments on Earth.

What's more, the terrestrial structures change in a specific way over time. As the microbial mats form, grow, dry up, crack and re-grow, specific structures become associated with them.

Here again, Noffke found that the distribution pattern in Martian rocks correspond with microbial structures on Earth that have changed over time. Taken together, these clues strengthen her argument beyond simply pointing out the similarities in shape.

In her paper, she also describes alternative processes through which these could have formed. For instance, the chips, pits and cracks could be the product of erosion by salt, water, or wind.

"But if the Martian structures aren't of biological origin," Noffke says, "then the similarities in morphology, but also in distribution patterns with regards to MISS on Earth would be an extraordinary coincidence."

Potential MISS erosional remnant on Mars (top); edge of a microbial mat–overgrown erosional remnant on Portsmouth Island, USA (middle); erosional remnant of a modern MISS on Mellum Island, Germany (bottom). 

Credit: Mars: NASA; Earth: Nora Noffke

"At this point, all I'd like to do is point out these similarities," she adds. "Further evidence must be provided to verify this hypothesis."

More information: The paper is available online: online.liebertpub.com/doi/pdf/… 0.1089/ast.2014.1218

Memory Reformat Planned for Opportunity Mars Rover

NASA's Mars rover Opportunity captured this view southward just after completing a 338-foot (103-meter) southward drive, in reverse, on Aug. 10, 2014. 

The foreground of this view from the rover's Navcam includes the rear portion of the rover's deck. 

The ground beyond bears wind-blown lines of sand. Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech. 

Curiosity Rover, Opportunity;s big brother is still going strong on Mars.

An increasing frequency of computer resets on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has prompted the rover team to make plans to reformat the rover's flash memory.

The resets, including a dozen this month, interfere with the rover's planned science activities, even though recovery from each incident is completed within a day or two.

Flash memory retains data even when power is off. It is the type used for storing photos and songs on smart phones or digital cameras, among many other uses.

Individual cells within a flash memory sector can wear out from repeated use. Reformatting clears the memory while identifying bad cells and flagging them to be avoided.

"Worn-out cells in the flash memory are the leading suspect in causing these resets," said John Callas of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, project manager for NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Project.

"The flash reformatting is a low-risk process, as critical sequences and flight software are stored elsewhere in other non-volatile memory on the rover."

The project landed twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity on Mars in early 2004 to begin missions planned to last only three months. Spirit worked for six years, and Opportunity is still active. Findings about ancient wet environments on Mars have come from both rovers.

The project reformatted the flash memory on Spirit five years ago to stop a series of amnesia events Spirit had been experiencing. The reformatting planned for early next month will be the first for Opportunity.

Even after the rover has been active for more than a decade and is currently about 125 million miles (about 200 million kilometers) from JPL, the rover team can still perform this type of upkeep.

Preparations include downloading to Earth all useful data remaining in the flash memory and switching the rover to an operating mode that does not use flash memory.

Also, the team is restructuring the rover's communication sessions to use a slower data rate, which may add resilience in case of a reset during these preparations.

NASA Curiosity Rover: Long-lived rover sets off-world driving record

This natural colour view from NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity shows "Lunokhod Crater," which lies south of Solander Point on the west rim of Endeavour Crater. 

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech /Cornell /Arizona State Univ.

NASA's Opportunity Mars rover, which landed on the Red Planet in 2004, now holds the off-Earth roving distance record after accruing 25 miles (40 kilometers) of driving.

The previous record was held by the Soviet Union's Lunokhod 2 rover.

"Opportunity has driven farther than any other wheeled vehicle on another world," said Mars Exploration Rover Project Manager John Callas, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

"This is so remarkable considering Opportunity was intended to drive about one kilometer and was never designed for distance but what is really important is not how many miles the rover has racked up, but how much exploration and discovery we have accomplished over that distance."

A drive of 157 feet (48 meters) on July 27 put Opportunity's total odometry at 25.01 miles (40.25 kilometers).

This month's driving brought the rover southward along the western rim of Endeavour Crater.

The rover had driven more than 20 miles (32 kilometers) before arriving at Endeavour Crater in 2011, where it has examined outcrops on the crater's rim containing clay and sulfate-bearing minerals.

The sites are yielding evidence of ancient environments with less acidic water than those examined at Opportunity's landing site.

If the rover can continue to operate the distance of a marathon, 26.2 miles (about 42.2 kilometers), it will approach the next major investigation site mission scientists have dubbed "Marathon Valley."

Observations from spacecraft orbiting Mars suggest several clay minerals are exposed close together at this valley site, surrounded by steep slopes where the relationships among different layers may be evident.

The Russian Lunokhod 2 rover, a successor to the first Lunokhod mission in 1970, landed on Earth's moon on Jan. 15, 1973, where it drove about 24.2 miles (39 kilometers) in less than five months, according to calculations recently made using images from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) cameras that reveal Lunokhod 2's tracks.

Irina Karachevtseva at Moscow State University of Geodesy and Cartography's Extraterrestrial Laboratory in Russia, Brad Jolliff of Washington University in St. Louis, Tim Parker of JPL, and others collaborated to verify the map-based methods for computing distances are comparable for Lunokhod-2 and Opportunity.

This chart illustrates comparisons among the distances driven by various wheeled vehicles on the surface of Earth's moon and Mars. 

Of the vehicles shown, the NASA Mars rovers Opportunity and Curiosity are still active and the totals for those two are distances driven as of May 15, 2013.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

"The Lunokhod missions still stand as two signature accomplishments of what I think of as the first golden age of planetary exploration, the 1960s and '70s," said Steve Squyres of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and principal investigator for NASA's twin Mars rovers, Opportunity and Spirit.

"We're in a second golden age now, and what we've tried to do on Mars with Spirit and Opportunity has been very much inspired by the accomplishments of the Lunokhod team on the moon so many years ago. It has been a real honour to follow in their historical wheel tracks."

As Opportunity neared the mileage record earlier this year, the rover team chose the name Lunokhod 2 for a crater about 20 feet (6 meters) in diameter on the outer slope of Endeavour's rim on Mars.

ESA ExoMars: Mars Landing Site selection

The ESA ExoMars "longlist". Two proposals were received for Mars' Mawrth Vallis, but these were virtually the same

The ESA has published the "longlist" of eight sites it is considering as a destination for the ExoMars rover.

The 300kg vehicle will be put on the surface of the Red Planet in January 2019 to search for evidence of past or present life.

It should operate for at least seven months and will carry a drill to probe up to 2m underground.

The sites are generally clustered in a relatively tight zone close to the equator. They are: Hypanis Vallis, Shalbatana (Simud) Vallis, Mawrth Vallis, Oxia Planum (x2), Coogoon Valles, Oxia Palus and Southern Isidis.

The ExoMars Landing Site Selection Working Group is meeting now in Madrid to begin the process of downselection.

The teams that proposed these locations will make their case during the Spanish gathering (two, virtually identical proposals were received for Mawrth Vallis).

It is hoped to have a shortlist of no more than four locations in June or July. These will then be intensively studied, calling on new high-resolution pictures and mineralogical data acquired by satellites in orbit at Mars.

A final decision is likely to be announced in 2017. This will probably take the form of a first choice and a back-up.

We've been talking about ExoMars for a long time. The project has had several ups and downs, but it is now moving positively in the right direction.

The venture is a joint undertaking with the Russians, who, as well as providing the launch rocket in May 2018, and some of the instrumentation, will also build the landing system.

This will see the rover enter the Martian atmosphere in 2019 in a protective shell, deploying parachutes and retro-rockets to reduce the descent velocity.

The robotic vehicle will arrive at the surface on a legged lander, driving down a ramp to begin its grand traverse.

Everything hinges on a safe touchdown, of course. However, scientifically, it's vital ExoMars goes to the right place.

I have used two maps on this page to help explain how the final decision will be made.

They are both Mercator projections of Mars which will be familiar from Earth maps that also pull the 360-degree globe on to a flat surface.

For reference, I've marked the locations of the two current American rovers - Curiosity and Opportunity - on the top map.

Choosing a site is a trade-off between what's scientifically desirable and what's achievable with the available engineering.

ExoMars wants to search for life markers. Its best chance of finding these will be to go to places where there is abundant evidence for long-duration, or frequently reoccurring, water activity.

This will exist on the old terrains of Mars i.e. ones that are billions of years old.

These are places where you would hope to roll across recently exposed fine-grained sediments; the kind of clay-bearing mudstones that Curiosity has been enjoying in Gale Crater.

JAXA ALOS Image: Heart of the Atacama from orbit

The Japanese Advanced Land Observation Satellite (ALOS), captured this image on 30 May 2010.

Credit: JAXA/ESA

This ALOS satellite image shows the heart-shaped Miscanti lake and smaller Miñiques lake in northern Chile.

The lakewater is brackish – meaning that it's saltier than freshwater, but not as much as seawater.

This is due to the salinity in the soil. Chile's largest salt flat, the Salar de Atacama, lies to the west (not pictured).

Two partially snow-covered volcanoes can be seen above and below the lakes on the right, while plains stretch out to the west in a nearly vegetation-free environment.

The area pictured is part of the Atacama Desert, which runs along part of South America's central west coast.

It is considered one of the driest places on Earth, as moisture from the Amazon Basin is blocked by the Andes to the east, as well as from the Pacific Ocean by the Chilean Coastal Range to the west.

Pacific Ocean currents and wind circulation also play a major role in the desert climate.

Because of the Atacama plateau's high altitude, low cloud cover and lack of light pollution, it is one of the best places in the world to conduct astronomical observations and home to two major observatories.

The European ESO ALMA Observatory is located on the Atacama Plateau.

Some areas of the desert have been compared to the planet Mars, and have been used as a location for filming scenes set on the red planet.

Just last year, ESA tested a self-steering rover in the Atacama, which was selected for its similarities to martian conditions.

Russia's NORD device may travel to Mars 2020

NORD will help Mars 2020 rover figure out how humans can best use the red planet's resources and which parts of Mars are the most suitable habitats for humans in terms of minerals.

A device created by Russian scientists is bidding for a chance to travel to Mars aboard NASA's Mars 2020 rover.

In about five months or so, it will be clear whether NORD, the brainchild of the Moscow-based Space Research Institute, will participate in the mission.

NASA launched a competition for Mars 2020 research proposals in September. By now, the application submission is already over.

Mars 2020 is due to succeed its elder brother, Curiosity MSL, which has been exploring the red planet since August 2012. The new rover will be based heavily on the design of Curiosity.

The landing system and the chassis will be recreated without any additional engineering. This, NASA says, will reduce technical risks and make the project cheaper.

The main aim of the Curiosity mission was to find traces of past life-supporting environments on Mars. The goal has been achieved. Mars 2020 will look for traces of past life in those once-habitable environments.

Curiosity is equipped with DAN, a Russian-made neutron detector. DAN, or Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons, measures the energy of neutrons leaking from the ground.

It can detect water content as low as one-tenth of one percent as deep as 20 inches.

If water is present, liquid or frozen, hydrogen atoms slow the neutrons down.

These slower neutrons are measured by DAN.

"NORD has no generator. We replaced it with a gamma spectrometer designed to measure natural radiation on Mar's surface and analyze the chemical composition of Martian soil in areas explored by the rover," Igor Mitrofanov, an IKI laboratory chief, told reporters.

NORD will help Mars 2020 rover figure out how humans can best use the red planet's resources and which parts of Mars are the most suitable habitats for humans in terms of minerals.

The rock and soil samples collected by Nord will be stored inside Mars 2020 for several years until a new spacecraft arrives and takes them over.

It will then have to blast off to Earth - a complicated task, much more difficult than even blasting off from Moon, as it requires a rocket powerful enough to escape Mars' gravity.

Australia: Rover the Robotic Cow Herder

A four-wheeled robot known as Rover has been successfully tested as a cattle herder in Australia, easily moving a herd from a field to a dairy, researchers say.

The cows, accepting the presence of the robot, were not disturbed by it and the herding process was calm and effective, a team from Sydney University said.

University engineers adapted Rover from a robot already being used to monitor fruit and trees on farms, modifying it so it could be put in a field with cows.

"The research is in its very early stages but robotic technologies certainly have the potential to transform dairy farming," a member of the Faculty of Veterinary Science at Sydney University, Kendra Kerrisk told reporters

Because the robot moved at a slow and steady speed it allowed cows to move at their own natural speed, which is important in avoiding lameness among cattle, she said.

While the Sydney prototype is operated by a human, it's believed future versions could be fully automated, the researchers said, bringing considerable help to dairy farmers.

"When we have discussed this concept with farmers they have been extremely excited and we have had a flurry of calls and emails asking how they can get hold of one," Kerrisk said.

Mars rover Opportunity heads uphill

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity captured this southward uphill view after beginning to ascend the northwestern slope of "Solander Point" on the western rim of Endeavour Crater. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover has begun climbing "Solander Point," the northern tip of the tallest hill it has encountered in the mission's nearly 10 Earth years on Mars.

Guided by mineral mapping from orbit, the rover is exploring outcrops on the northwestern slopes of Solander Point, making its way up the hill much as a field geologist would do.

The outcrops are exposed from several feet (about 2 meters) to about 20 feet (6 meters) above the surrounding plains, on slopes as steep as 15 to 20 degrees.

The rover may later drive south and ascend farther up the hill, which peaks at about 130 feet (40 meters) above the plains.

"This is our first real Martian mountaineering with Opportunity," said the principal investigator for the rover, Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.

"We expect we will reach some of the oldest rocks we have seen with this rover—a glimpse back into the ancient past of Mars."

The hill rises southward as a ridge from Solander Point, forming an elevated portion of the western rim of Endeavour Crater.

The crater spans 14 miles (22 kilometers) in diameter. The ridge materials were uplifted by the great impact that excavated the crater billions of years ago, reversing the common geological pattern of older materials lying lower than younger ones.

Key targets on the ridge include clay-bearing rocks identified from observations by the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars, which is on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

The observations were specially designed to yield mineral maps with enhanced spatial resolution.

This segment of the crater's rim stands much higher than "Cape York," a segment to the north that Opportunity investigated for 20 months beginning in mid-2011.

ESA MARS Rover: Atacama Desert the site of a Mars simulation

In early October 2013, the Atacama Desert became the site of a Mars simulation for a week, as a team of scientists and engineers visited the area to test out their prototype Mars rover.

The test site is located close to European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Paranal Observatory and was selected due to its harsh climate and its physical resemblance to the red planet.

Additionally, the Atacama Desert is known for its virtually sterile soil, largely due to the lack of moisture in the region: this makes the area particularly suitable for simulating the lifeless Martian environment.

The recent trials in Chile have featured a rover named Bridget (provided by EADS Astrium, Stevenage in the UK), which is part of the SAFER field trials (Sample Acquisition Field Experiment with a Rover).

ESA’s 2018 ExoMars mission is acting as the reference mission for the trial.

The project aims to give the science team first-hand experience of remotely operating a rover, and acquiring field data from the three instruments during a field trial.

The rover operation will be run so as to be as near to a real mission as possible for the science team and the remote control centre.

Parallel testing is taking place from the UK’s remote control centre based at the Satellite Applications Catapult Centre in Harwell.

The three instruments on trial are CLUPI (a close-up imager), which is the equivalent of a geologist’s hand lens used for examining the fine details of rocks, a PanCam (panoramic camera) emulator called AUPE-2, and a ground penetrating radar called WISDOM, which will provide a detailed view of the Martian subsurface structure.

NASA AMES: ISS Astronaut Drives K10 Robotic Rovers on Earth

Credit: NASA Ames Research Center

NASA's K10 rover at the Ames Research Center in Moffett Field,Calif., performs a surface survey with its cameras and laser system, and then deployed a simulated polymide antenna while being controlled by an astronaut in space during a June 2013 test.

NASA Mars Opportunity discovers clays favourable to Martian biology

The pale rock in the upper center of this image, about the size of a human forearm, includes a target called “Esperance,” which was inspected by NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity.

Data from the rover’s alpha particle X-ray spectrometer (APXS) indicate that Esperance’s composition is higher in aluminum and silica, and lower in calcium and iron, than other rocks Opportunity has examined in more than nine years on Mars. 

Preliminary interpretation points to clay mineral content due to intensive alteration by water. 

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/Arizona 

Now nearly a decade into her planned 3 month only expedition to Mars, NASA's longest living rover Opportunity, struck gold and has just discovered the strongest evidence to date for an environment favourable to ancient Martian (organic) biology – and she has set sail hunting for a motherlode of new clues amongst fabulous looking terrain.

Barely two weeks ago in mid-May 2013, Opportunity's analysis of a new rock target named "Esperance" confirmed that it is composed of a "clay that had been intensely altered by relatively neutral pH water – representing the most favorable conditions for biology that Opportunity has yet seen in the rock histories it has encountered," NASA said in a statement.

The finding of a fractured rock loaded with clay minerals and ravaged by flowing liquid water in which life could have thrived amounts to a scientific home run for the golf cart sized rover!

"Water that moved through fractures during this rock's history would have provided more favorable conditions for biology than any other wet environment recorded in rocks Opportunity has seen," said the mission's principal investigator Prof. Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.

Opportunity accomplished the ground breaking new discovery by exposing the interior of Esperance with her still functioning Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT) and examining a pristine patch using the microscopic camera and X-Ray spectrometer on the end of her 3 foot long robotic arm.

The robot made the discovery at the conclusion of a 20 month long science expedition circling around a low ridge called "Cape York" – which she has just departed on a southerly heading trekking around the eroded rim of the huge crater named "Endeavour."

"Esperance was so important, we committed several weeks to getting this one measurement of it, even though we knew the clock was ticking."

Esperance stems from a time when the Red Planet was far warmer and wetter billions of years ago.

Close-Up of ‘Esperance’ After Abrasion by Opportunity 

This mosaic of four frames shot by the microscopic imager on the robotic arm of NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity shows a rock target called “Esperance” after some of the rock’s surface had been removed by Opportunity’s rock abrasion tool, or RAT. 

The component images were taken on Sol 3305 on Mars (May 11, 2013). 

The area shown is about 2.4 inches (6 centimeters) across. 

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/USGS

NASA Mars Rover Opportunity examines clay clues in rock Esperance

The pale rock in the upper center of this image, about the size of a human forearm, includes a target called "Esperance," which was inspected by NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity.

Data from the rover's Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) indicate that Esperance's composition is higher in aluminum and silica, and lower in calcium and iron, than other rocks Opportunity has examined in more than nine years on Mars.

Preliminary interpretation points to clay mineral content due to intensive alteration by water. 

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/Arizona State Univ.

NASA's senior Mars rover, Opportunity, is driving to a new study area after a dramatic finish to 20 months on "Cape York" with examination of a rock intensely altered by water.

The fractured rock, called "Esperance," provides evidence about a wet ancient environment possibly favorable for life.

Steve Squyres

The mission's principal investigator, Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., said, "Esperance was so important, we committed several weeks to getting this one measurement of it, even though we knew the clock was ticking."

The mission's engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., had set this week as a deadline for starting a drive toward "Solander Point," where the team plans to keep Opportunity working during its next Martian winter.

"What's so special about Esperance is that there was enough water not only for reactions that produced clay minerals, but also enough to flush out ions set loose by those reactions, so that Opportunity can clearly see the alteration," said Scott McLennan of the State University of New York, Stony Brook, a long-term planner for Opportunity's science team.

This map of a portion of the western rim of Endeavour Crater on Mars shows the area where NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity worked for 20 months, "Cape York," in relation to the area where the rover team plans for Opportunity to spend its sixth Martian winter, "Solander Point."

This rock's composition is unlike any other Opportunity has investigated during nine years on Mars—higher in aluminum and silica, lower in calcium and iron.

The next destination, Solander Point, and the area Opportunity is leaving, Cape York, both are segments of the rim of Endeavour Crater, which spans 14 miles (22 kilometers) across.

The planned driving route to Solander Point is about 1.4 miles (2.2 kilometers).

Cape York has been Opportunity's home since the rover arrived at the western edge of Endeavour in mid-2011 after a two-year trek from a smaller crater.

"Based on our current solar-array dust models, we intend to reach an area of 15 degrees northerly tilt before Opportunity's sixth Martian winter," said JPL's Scott Lever, mission manager.

Scott McLennan

"Solander Point gives us that tilt and may allow us to move around quite a bit for winter science observations."

Northerly tilt increases output from the rover's solar panels during southern-hemisphere winter.

Daily sunshine for Opportunity will reach winter minimum in February 2014. The rover needs to be on a favourable slope well before then.

This mosaic of four frames shot by the microscopic imager on the robotic arm of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity shows a rock target called "Esperance" after some of the rock's surface had been removed by Opportunity's rock abrasion tool, or RAT. 

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech /Cornell /USGS

The first drive away from Esperance covered 81.7 feet (24.9 meters) on May 14.

Three days earlier, Opportunity finished exposing a patch of the rock's interior with the rock abrasion tool.

The team used a camera and spectrometer on the robotic arm to examine Esperance.

JPL's Scott Lever, mission manager

The team identified Esperance while exploring a portion of Cape York where the Compact Reconnaissance Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) had detected a clay mineral.

Clays typically form in wet environments that are not harshly acidic.

For years, Opportunity had been finding evidence for ancient wet environments that were very acidic.

The CRISM findings prompted the rover team to investigate the area where clay had been detected from orbit.

There, they found an outcrop called "Whitewater Lake," containing a small amount of clay from alteration by exposure to water.

"There appears to have been extensive, but weak, alteration of Whitewater Lake, but intense alteration of Esperance along fractures that provided conduits for fluid flow," Squyres said.

"Water that moved through fractures during this rock's history would have provided more favourable conditions for biology than any other wet environment recorded in rocks Opportunity has seen."

Scientists Bounce Laser Beams Off Lunokhod 1: Old Soviet Moon Rover

Laser beams shot to the moon from Grasse (MéO) station in Calern, France successfully targeted the reflector on the Soviet Union's old Lunokhod 1 rover, which trekked across the moon's landscape more than four decades ago.

Lunokhod 1 was the first remote-controlled rover ever to land on another celestial body. The wheeled vehicle was carried to the lunar surface by a spacecraft called Luna 17, touching down in the Sea of Rains on Nov. 17, 1970.

Among its instruments, the rover toted a French-built laser retroreflector consisting of 14 corner cubes that can reflect laser light beamed from Earth.

Attempts to contact the rover after the lunar night that began on Sept. 14, 1971, were unsuccessful, apparently due to a component failure on the rover.

Lunokhod 1's days of rambling around the moon formally ended on Oct. 4, 1971, after 11 lunar day-night cycles (322 Earth days).

Read the full paper here: Laser Ranging to the Lost Lunokhod-1 Reflector:  http://arxiv.org/abs/1009.5720

NASA Mars Rover Opportunity: Place for Quiet Period of Operations

This location, called 'Big Nickel,' is the last in-situ (contact) target before the rover departs from Cape York, once solar conjunction is concluded.

Solar conjunction is when the Sun comes between Earth and Mars, which occurs about once every 26 months.

During this time there will be diminished communications to Opportunity.

The team will suspend sending the rover new commands between April 9 and April 26.

The rover will continue science activities using a long-term set of commands to be sent beforehand. No new images are expected to be returned during this time.

On Sol 3255 (March 21, 2013), after completing the investigation of the 'Newberries' at the location called 'Kirkwood,' Opportunity drove over 82 feet (25 meters) straight north toward the location called 'Big Nickel.'

On Sol 3257 (March 23, 2013), the rover completed the approach to 'Big Nickel' with a 13-foot (4-meter) drive.

To reach a specific surface target, Opportunity performed a modest, 0.8 inch (2-centimeter) bump on Sol 3260 (March 26, 2013).

With the rover precisely positioned, the plan ahead is to sequence the robotic arm to collect a Microscopic Imager (MI) mosaic of the target, called 'Esperance' and place the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) for an overnight integration.



On Sols 3255, 3256 and 3257 (March 21, 22 and 23, 2013), Opportunity benefitted from some dust cleaning of the solar arrays, improving energy production.

As of Sol 3260 (March 26, 2013), the solar array energy production was 590 watt-hours with an atmospheric opacity (Tau) of 0.760 and an improved solar array dust factor of 0.654.

Total odometry is 22.15 miles (35.65 kilometers).

NASA's Mars Curiosity Rover: Discovers Weird 'Hood Ornament'

A close-up of a shiny, wind-sculpted rock photographed by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity on Jan. 30, 2013. 

CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has photographed a shiny, metallic-looking object that bears a passing resemblance to a door handle or a hood ornament.

However, the Curiosity rover has not stumbled onto evidence of an ancient civilization that took the family van to Olympus Mons for vacation.

The object is simply a rock that the wind has sculpted into an interesting shape, scientists said.

Curiosity scientists stated that "The shiny surface suggests that this rock has a fine grain and is relatively hard."

"Hard, fine-grained rocks can be polished by the wind to form very smooth surfaces."

A shiny-looking Martian rock is visible in this image taken by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity's Mast Camera (Mastcam) during the mission's 173rd Martian day, or sol (Jan. 30, 2013).

CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems

NASA Curiosity Rover Collects First Martian Bedrock Sample

At the center of this image from NASA's Curiosity rover is the hole in a rock called "John Klein" where the rover conducted its first sample drilling on Mars. 

The drilling took place on Feb. 8, 2013, or Sol 182, Curiosity's 182nd Martian day of operations. 

Several preparatory activities with the drill preceded this operation, including a test that produced the shallower hole on the right two days earlier, but the deeper hole resulted from the first use of the drill for rock sample collection. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.

NASA's Curiosity rover has, for the first time, used a drill carried at the end of its robotic arm to bore into a flat, veiny rock on Mars and collect a sample from its interior. This is the first time any robot has drilled into a rock to collect a sample on Mars.

The fresh hole, about 0.63 inch (1.6 centimeters) wide and 2.5 inches (6.4 centimeters) deep in a patch of fine-grained sedimentary bedrock, can be seen in images and other data Curiosity beamed to Earth Saturday. The rock is believed to hold evidence about long-gone wet environments. In pursuit of that evidence, the rover will use its laboratory instruments to analyze rock powder collected by the drill.

"The most advanced planetary robot ever designed is now a fully operating analytical laboratory on Mars," said John Grunsfeld, NASA associate administrator for the agency's Science Mission Directorate. "This is the biggest milestone accomplishment for the Curiosity team since the sky-crane landing last August, another proud day for America."

For the next several days, ground controllers will command the rover's arm to carry out a series of steps to process the sample, ultimately delivering portions to the instruments inside.

"We commanded the first full-depth drilling, and we believe we have collected sufficient material from the rock to meet our objectives of hardware cleaning and sample drop-off," said Avi Okon, drill cognizant engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Rock powder generated during drilling travels up flutes on the bit. The bit assembly has chambers to hold the powder until it can be transferred to the sample-handling mechanisms of the rover's Collection and Handling for In-Situ Martian Rock Analysis (CHIMRA) device.

Before the rock powder is analyzed, some will be used to scour traces of material that may have been deposited onto the hardware while the rover was still on Earth, despite thorough cleaning before launch.

"We'll take the powder we acquired and swish it around to scrub the internal surfaces of the drill bit assembly," said JPL's Scott McCloskey, drill systems engineer. "Then we'll use the arm to transfer the powder out of the drill into the scoop, which will be our first chance to see the acquired sample."

"Building a tool to interact forcefully with unpredictable rocks on Mars required an ambitious development and testing program," said JPL's Louise Jandura, chief engineer for Curiosity's sample system. "To get to the point of making this hole in a rock on Mars, we made eight drills and bored more than 1,200 holes in 20 types of rock on Earth."

Inside the sample-handling device, the powder will be vibrated once or twice over a sieve that screens out any particles larger than six-thousandths of an inch (150 microns) across. Small portions of the sieved sample will fall through ports on the rover deck into the Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument and the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument. These instruments then will begin the much-anticipated detailed analysis.

The rock Curiosity drilled is called "John Klein" in memory of a Mars Science Laboratory deputy project manager who died in 2011. Drilling for a sample is the last new activity for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Project, which is using the car-size Curiosity rover to investigate whether an area within Mars' Gale Crater has ever offered an environment favorable for life.

NASA MARS Rover Opportunity: Investigating Light-toned Veins in Rock Outcrop

Mars Rover Opportunity is on the inboard edge of "Cape York" on the rim of Endeavour Crater, now engaged in in-situ (contact) science investigation of veins in the light-toned outcrop "Whitewater Lake," a place the rover visited previously.

On Sol 3187 (Jan. 10, 2013), the rover bumped a little over a meter to reach the vein targets in the outcrop, named "Ortiz." On Sol 3189 (Jan. 12, 2013), Opportunity, using her robotic arm, collected a large Microscopic Imager (MI) mosaic of the vein targets.

This was followed by the placement of the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) for an overnight integration. On Sol 3191 (Jan. 14, 2013), the rover collected more MI mosaics of a target offset from the first and completed this with placing the APXS on the new target.

Opportunity started exhibiting memory symptoms this month similar to events seen with Spirit in 2009. This is not a health and safety concern, but can cause loss of some data intended for downlink.

It can be avoided for more important data by downlinking before any rover nap. The suspect cause is corruption in the flash file system used by the rover for non-volatile telemetry storage.

The project implemented a detection diagnostic on Sol 3189 (Jan. 12, 2013) to flag the occurrence of these events in separate non-volatile memory. No events have occurred since Sol 3183 (Jan. 6, 2013), and the rover remains in good health.

NASA MARS Curiosity Rover Image

Titan: The rover boat that could explore Saturn's moon

Mars may grab all the headlines, but the Red Planet isn't the only Earth-like body in our solar system.

Saturn's moon Titan has long sparked the interest of scientists because its surface is covered in lakes, and rivers — which are filled with liquid methane.

Now, a group of engineers have submitted their plans for a new kind of rover — a floating space boat to rival NASA's Curiosity.

The Titan Lake In-situ Sampling Propelled Explorer, or TALISE, would succeed the ESA's Huygens probe, which touched down on Titan in 2005 after a seven-year journey.

TALISE would weigh about 100 kilograms (220.5 lbs), and would be equipped with an assortment of scientific instruments including a magnetometer, a panoramic camera, an acoustic sounder and a Light Detection And Ranging (LiDAR) system.

It would move across the surface of the liquid hydrocarbons using either smooth wheels, paddle wheels, or screw drives – all three systems are currently being considered.

Earlier ideas that were ultimately rejected included tank tracks, above- and below-surface propellers, and a hovercraft design.

After landing, TALISE will explore and collect data from the liquid methane makeup of the lakes found on the moon's surface.

SENER, a private aerospace company, is working in collaboration with Spain's Centro de Astrobiologia to develop a propulsion system that would allow TALISE to navigate on both land and sea, using a combination of wheels and paddles.

Nasa Mars Curiosity Rover - Matthew Wallace on - YouTube

In this video from a Royal Aeronautical Society lecture on 17 July, Matt Wallace, MSL Flight System Manager, from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, describes the Mars Curiosity Rover mission.

The Rover is set to touch down on Mars on 6 August, where it will search for signs of life on the Red Planet. In this lecture, Wallace describes the technical challenges, the Rover’s design and answers questions from the informed specialist audience.