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Nasa mission to map Mars interior will launch this weekend
Nasa’s latest mission to another planet is set to blast off on Saturday on a seven month voyage across the frigid depths of space to Mars, with the aim of mapping the planet’s interior for the first time. The InSight mission aims to drop a lander the size of a garden table on to Elysium Planitia, a broad, flat and largely rockless lava plain on the Martian equator, from where it will become the first robotic probe to survey the centre of the red planet.
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NASA launches mission to Mars
Mars is about to get its first thorough checkup since it formed billions of years ago, as NASA's InSight heads to the red planet after launching Saturday morning from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California "Three ... two ... one ... zero ... Lift off, of the Atlas V -- launching the first interplanetary mission from the West Coast and NASA's Insight, the first outer space robotic explorer to study the interior of Mars," a NASA announcer declared amid the rumble of takeoff at 7:05 a.m. ET, via NASA TV.
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NASA's InSight Mars Lander Launches to Probe Red Planet's Deep Interior
The agency's InSight Mars lander lifted off today (May 5) atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket, rising off a pad here at 7:05 a.m. EDT (1105 GMT, 4:05 a.m. local California time) and disappearing into the thick predawn fog moments later. "This is a big day. We're going back to Mars," NASA's new administrator Jim Bridenstine, who took charge of the agency last month, said in a congratulatory call to the InSight team after launch. "This is an extraordinary mission with a whole host of firsts." [Launch Photos: See NASA's InSight Soar Toward Mars]
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NASA is sending a helicopter to Mars to get a bird’s-eye view of the planet
When NASA launches its next rover to Mars, the vehicle will have a small helicopter along for the ride. NASA announced today that it will be sending a small autonomous flying chopper — aptly named the Mars Helicopter — with the upcoming Mars 2020 rover. The helicopter will attempt to fly through the Martian air to see if vehicles can even levitate on Mars, where the atmosphere is 100 times thinner than that of Earth.
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NASA Is Seriously Going to Fly a Helicopter on Mars, and This Is Why They're Not Crazy
Flying a helo in the hairline atmosphere of Mars is one of JPL's biggest challenges yet.
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Time Lapse Talk 18
Prairie Schooner Makers to Elon Musk: It won’t work if It’s not Practical. Elon My goal is to live on Mars. Not to be practical.
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Meteor from Mars Shows Planetary Genesis, 4 Billion Years Ago
A Martian meteor found in northwestern Africa that is more than 4 billion years ago came from Mars, and bears the traces of the tumultuous creation of the red planet. The chemical dating and analysis was performed by scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and is published in the journal Science Advances.
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Ancient meteorite found in Sahara desert reveals history of Mars
A tiny meteorite from Mars nicknamed “Black Beauty” has provided scientists with an unprecedented insight into ancient processes that shaped the red planet’s surface. Discovered in the Sahara desert and designated Northwest Africa (NWA) 7034, the Martian rock weighs no more than 320g – but its extreme age and unusual composition have fascinated researchers since it was unearthed in 2011.
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A miniature chemistry lab is headed to Mars to search for signs of life
The ExoMars Rover, scheduled to land on the red planet in two years, will contain a miniaturized chemistry lab onboard that can be used to search for signs of life. Not much bigger than a shoebox, the sophisticated Mars Organic Molecule Analyzer (MOMA) will contain a mass spectrometer that can detect and analyze organic molecules, such as amino acids, that could be the first evidence that life has existed on another planet.
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Is there life on Mars? Volcanic Mount Kilauea might hold the answer
Going to Hawaii is kind of like going to Mars—and a lot cheaper.
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NASA’s Cryosleep Chamber Could Help You Snooze Your Way to Mars
One of the most exciting space sleep projects is currently being developed at a company called SpaceWorks Enterprises. They’ve been working with NASA to develop a stasis chamber they say could keep astronauts asleep for 2 weeks at a time, and possibly longer.
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Sex on Mars is going to be risky, but it could create a new human subspecies
The idea of a colony of humans on Mars isn’t just science fiction anymore; NASA and space agencies around the world, along with independent scientists and researchers, are working hard to determine just what it would take for humanity to take root on the Red Planet. Getting there will be an immense challenge, as will setting up structures, creating sustainable sources of food, and battling the inhospitable elements, but sex might be the biggest risk of all.
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Opportunity Hunkers Down During Dust Storm
Science operations for NASA's Opportunity rover have been temporarily suspended as it waits out a growing dust storm on Mars. NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter first detected the storm on Friday, June 1. As soon as the orbiter team saw how close the storm was to Opportunity, they notified the rover's team to begin preparing contingency plans.
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What Has NASA's Curiosity Found on Mars? We'll Find Out Thursday
NASA's Curiosity rover has found organic molecules, the building blocks of life, in ancient rocks on Mars, and discovered that methane on the Red Planet follows a seasonal cycle. Read our full story here! NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has apparently found something intriguing on Mars, and the space agency will unveil the discovery today (June 7).
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NASA loses contact with its dust-choked Opportunity rover on Mars, but stay tuned
NASA’s Opportunity rover on Mars has lost touch with its handlers back on Earth, probably due to a low-power condition brought on by a chokingly thick dust storm. The storm is covering an area of 14 million square miles, or a quarter of the Red Planet, NASA said today in a mission update. The solar-powered rover has been in operation for nearly 15 years — but if its batteries dip below 24 volts of electrical charge, it’s programmed to put nearly all its systems into sleep mode and wait until the batteries are sufficiently charged up.
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Nasa fears its Mars rover is dead after battling a dust storm the size of North America
Nasa's Opportunity rover may be dead on Mars, engineers fear. The little robot has been travelling over the planet for the last 15 years, but has lost contact with its team on Earth. They fear that the rover might never wake back up, and its mission could come to an end. Opportunity ran into problems in recent days when a Martian storm that is covering a quarter of the planet swept over the rover. That blotted out the Sun's light, leaving it unable to charge its batteries.
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Elon Musk plans to sell ‘major’ stake in Tesla in ‘about 20 years’ to finance SpaceX’s Mars plans
Elon Musk has previously said that he will be “the last one to sell his Tesla stocks”, but the CEO now clarifies what it means in practice. He plans to sell a ‘major’ stake in Tesla in ‘about 20 years’ to finance SpaceX’s Mars colonization plans. Musk is in a unique position as the CEO of two multi-billion-dollar companies: Tesla and SpaceX.
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The most likely cradles for life inside our solar system
Scientists still believe it possible that extraterrestrial life could flourish in our own neighbourhood. This week, Nasa’s veteran Curiosity rover discovered complex organic matter that had been buried and preserved for more than 3bn years in sediments forming a lake bed. This means that if microbial life did land on Mars, it would be nourished.
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Astronaut Chris Hadfield says the rockets from NASA, SpaceX, and Blue Origin won't take people to Mars
Chris Hadfield, most widely known for his zero-gravity guitar-playing, has seen an impressive amount of space travel. Between his first spaceflight in 1995, his second in 2001, and a third in 2013, Hadfield has flown inside NASA space shuttles, a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, and the International Space Station. Hadfield, who's now retired, shares his expertise about rockets, spaceships, spacewalking, and Mars exploration in a new web course on the online platform MasterClass.
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Weather got you down? The entire planet of Mars is buried in a dust storm right now.
Mars is having a bit of a dustup. The entire surface is currently smothered in a “planet-encircling” dust storm that began two weeks ago, and swelled into a global event that forced NASA to suspend operations for the Opportunity rover. Mars is no stranger to dust storms, but this one isn’t a run-of-the-mill tempest. It’s far more gargantuan. These global storms occur only once every 5.5 years or so, swallowing up the entire planet in a cloud of red.
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