California, U.S.A. — The mission team for NASA’s long-lived Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity will be awarded the Haley Space Flight Award. The team will receive the award Sept. 12 during the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Space 2012 Conference and Exposition in Pasadena, California.

The award is presented for outstanding contributions by an astronaut or flight test personnel to the advancement of the art, science or technology of astronautics. Past recipients include Alan Shepherd, John Glenn, Thomas Stafford, Robert Crippen, Kathryn Sullivan and the crew of space shuttle mission STS-125, which flew in 2009 on the last shuttle mission to NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.

The award citation praises this project’s “new techniques in extraterrestrial robotic system operations to explore another world and extend mission lifetime.” Mars Exploration Rover Project Manager John Callas of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, will accept the award for the team.

“On behalf of the many hundreds of scientists and engineers who designed, built and operate these rovers, it is a great honor to accept this most prestigious award,” Callas said. “It is especially gratifying that this comes right as Opportunity is conducting one of the most significant campaigns in the eight-and-a-half years since landing. We still are going strong, with perhaps the most exciting exploration still ahead.”

In its eighth year operating on Mars, Opportunity is surveying a crater-rim outcrop of layered rock in search of clay minerals that could provide new information about a formerly wet environment. Spirit worked for more than six years — until 2010 — 24 times longer than its original three-month prime mission.

In just the past two months, Opportunity has driven about a third of a mile (more than 525 meters), extending its total overland travel distance to 21.76 miles (35 kilometers). Recent drives along the inner edge of the Cape York segment of the western rim of Endeavour Crater have brought the rover close to a layered outcrop in an area where clay minerals have been detected from orbit. These minerals could offer evidence of ancient, wet conditions with less acidity than the ancient, wet environments recorded at sites Opportunity visited during its first seven years on Mars.

Opportunity’s position overlooking 14-mile-wide (22-kilometer-wide) Endeavour Crater is about 5,200 miles (8,400 kilometers) from where Curiosity, NASA’s next-generation Mars rover, landed inside Gale Crater a month ago.

JPL manages the Mars Exploration Rover Project for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

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Pasadena, U.S.A. — NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity has begun driving from its landing site, which scientists announced today they have named for the late author Ray Bradbury. Making its first movement on the Martian surface, Curiosity’s drive combined forward, turn and reverse segments. This placed the rover roughly 20 feet (6 meters) from the spot where it landed August 6th.

NASA has approved the Curiosity science team’s choice to name the landing ground for the influential author who was born 92 years ago today and died this year. The location where Curiosity touched down is now called Bradbury Landing. “This was not a difficult choice for the science team,” said Michael Meyer, NASA program scientist for Curiosity. “Many of us and millions of other readers were inspired in our lives by stories Ray Bradbury wrote to dream of the possibility of life on Mars.”

The drive confirmed the health of Curiosity’s mobility system and produced the rover’s first wheel tracks on Mars, documented in images taken after the drive. During a news conference at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., the mission’s lead rover driver, Matt Heverly, showed an animation derived from visualization software used for planning the first drive. “We have a fully functioning mobility system with lots of amazing exploration ahead,” Heverly said.

Curiosity will spend several more days of working beside Bradbury Landing, performing instrument checks and studying the surroundings, before embarking toward its first driving destination approximately 1,300 feet (400 meters) to the east-southeast.”

Curiosity is a much more complex vehicle than earlier Mars rovers. The testing and characterization activities during the initial weeks of the mission lay important groundwork for operating our precious national resource with appropriate care,” said Curiosity Project Manager Pete Theisinger of JPL. “Sixteen days in, we are making excellent progress.”

The science team has begun pointing instruments on the rover’s mast for investigating specific targets of interest near and far. The Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument used a laser and spectrometers this week to examine the composition of rocks exposed when the spacecraft’s landing engines blew away several inches of overlying material.

The instrument’s principal investigator, Roger Weins of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, reported that measurements made on the rocks in this scoured-out feature called Goulburn suggest a basaltic composition. “These may be pieces of basalt within a sedimentary deposit,” Weins said.

Curiosity began a two-year prime mission on Mars when the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft delivered the car-size rover to its landing target inside Gale Crater on August 5 PDT (August 6 EDT). The mission will use 10 science instruments on the rover to assess whether the area has ever offered environmental conditions favorable for microbial life.

In a career spanning more than 70 years, Ray Bradbury inspired generations of readers to dream, think and create. A prolific author of hundreds of short stories and nearly to 50 books, as well as numerous poems, essays, operas, plays, teleplays, and screenplays, Bradbury was one of the most celebrated writers of our time.

His groundbreaking works include “Fahrenheit 451,” “The Martian Chronicles,” “The Illustrated Man,” “Dandelion Wine,” and “Something Wicked This Way Comes.” He wrote the screenplay for John Huston’s classic film adaptation of “Moby Dick,” and was nominated for an Academy Award. He adapted 65 of his stories for television’s “The Ray Bradbury Theater,” and won an Emmy for his teleplay of “The Halloween Tree.”

JPL manages the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The rover was designed, developed and assembled at JPL.

More information about Curiosity is online at: http://www.nasa.gov/msl

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Beverly Hills, CA – The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and NASA will explore cutting-edge film techniques and virtual voyages using animation on Tuesday, July 10, at 7:30 PM at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. Hosted by five-time Oscar-nominated producer Frank Marshall, “Capturing the Final Frontier” will feature film clips and conversations with such filmmakers as Oscar-winning visual effects supervisor Scott Farrar and leading NASA animators and scientists. This list of prominent names in the field of film and science include Eric De Jong, Principal Investigator of the Solar System Visualization Project; Bobbie Faye Ferguson, The Director of Multimedia at the Department of Homeland Security and former NASA Public Affairs Multimedia Manager; Tom Jacobson, Producer of “Mission to Mars;” Dave Lavery, NASA Program Executive of Solar System Exploration; Dan Maas, the Art and Technical Leader of “Roving Mars;” Lisa Malone, Director of Public Affairs at NASA’s John F. Kennedy Space Center; Toni Myers, the Director of “Hubble 3D;” Dr. Frank Summers, an Astrophysicist for the Hubble Space Telescope Science Institute; and Bert Ulrich, Liason for the Multimedia Film and TV Collaborations at NASA’s Headquarters.

Presented by the Academy’s Science and Technology Council, the event will take a journey through the space program’s breakthroughs in animation with NASA “Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s” Eric De Jong, who began his career creating Voyager animations. The evening features a look at Mars rover Curiosity graphics in anticipation of its landing on the Red Planet in August 2012.

NASA animators and image specialists regularly take these visual concepts a step further by joining forces with Hollywood filmmakers to create new wonders for the big screen.”Capturing the Final Frontier” will examine some of these collaborations, exploring the documentary films “Hubble 3D” (2010) and “Roving Mars” (2006) along with feature films “Mission to Mars” (2000) and the Oscar-nominated “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” (2011).

Tickets for “Capturing the Final Frontier” are $5 for the general public and $3 for Academy members and students with a valid ID, and may be purchased online at www.oscars.org, in person at the Academy box office, or by mail.

Image Courtesy of  Scott Beale

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Washington, U.S.A – NASA-funded research on Mars meteorites that landed on Earth shows strong evidence that very large molecules containing carbon, which is a key ingredient for the building blocks of life, can originate on the Red Planet. These macromolecules are not of biological origin, but they are indicators that complex carbon chemistry has taken place on Mars.

Researchers from the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington who found reduced carbon molecules now have better insight into the chemical processes taking place on Mars. Reduced carbon is carbon that is bonded to hydrogen or itself. Their findings also may assist in future quests for evidence of life on the Red Planet. The findings are published in Thursday’s online edition of Science Express.

“These findings show that the storage of reduced carbon molecules on Mars occurred throughout the planet’s history and might have been similar to processes that occurred on the ancient Earth,” said Andrew Steele, lead author of the paper and researcher from Carnegie. “Understanding the genesis of these non-biological, carbon-containing macromolecules on Mars is crucial for developing future missions to detect evidence of life on our neighboring planet.”

Finding molecules containing large chains of carbon and hydrogen has been one objective of past and present Mars missions. Such molecules have been found previously in Mars meteorites, but scientists have disagreed about how the carbon in them was formed and whether it came from Mars. This new information proves Mars can produce organic carbon.

“Although this study has not yielded evidence that Mars has or once may have supported life, it does address some important questions about the sources of organic carbon on Mars,” said Mary Voytek, director of NASA’s Astrobiology Program at the agency’s Headquarters in Washington. “With the Curiosity rover scheduled to land in August, these new research results may help Mars Science Laboratory scientists fine-tune their investigations on the surface of the planet by understanding where organic carbon may be found and how it is preserved.”

Scientists have theorized that the large carbon macromolecules detected on Martian meteorites could have originated from terrestrial contamination from Earth or other meteorites, or chemical reactions or biological activity on Mars.

Steele’s team examined samples from 11 Martian meteorites from a period spanning about 4.2 billion years of Martian history. They detected large carbon compounds in 10 of them. The molecules were found inside grains of crystallized minerals.

Using an array of sophisticated research techniques, the team was able to show that at least some of the macromolecules of carbon were indigenous to the meteorites themselves and not contamination from Earth.

The team next looked at the carbon molecules in relation to other minerals in the meteorites to see what kinds of chemical processing these samples endured before arriving on Earth. The crystalline grains encasing the carbon compounds provided a window into how the carbon molecules were created. Their findings indicate that the carbon was created by volcanic activity on Mars and show that Mars has been doing organic chemistry for most of its history.

In a separate paper published by American Mineralogist, Steele and his team report their findings on the same meteorite announced in 1996 to contain possible — but subsequently discounted — relics of ancient biological life on Mars. Called ALH84001, the meteorite was found to also contain organic macromolecules of non-biological origin.

The Steele team’s research indicates that Mars does have a pool of reduced carbon. Their findings should help scientists involved in current and future Mars missions distinguish non-biologically formed carbon molecules from potential life.

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NASA (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration) may decide to withdraw from the ExoMars Program due to hefty budget cuts.

Recently, President Barack Obama filled out the 2013 Federal Budget Request, which will be released today. NASA received a massive blow to its budget, prompting its administrators to debate which programs should be cut. A decision weighed between exploring the planets in our solar system or adventuring out into the cosmos. In the end, several programs for planets were cut. Mars was hit the most. According to Associated Press, the current budget for Mars missions is $518.7 million, and more than $200 million has been slashed.

“To me, it’s totally irrational and unjustified,” Edward Weiler, who is formerly NASA’s associate administrator for science, says to MSNBS.com. Weiler quit because he, according to MSNBC, tried to prevent Mars from being in the pool for the cuts. “We are the only country on this planet that has the demonstrated ability to land on another planet, namely Mars. It is a national prestige issue.”

The ExoMars Program is a collaboration of NASA and the ESA (European Space Agency). Their goal, according to the website, is to “search for evidence of past and present life on Mars.” Two missions have been planned thus far. The first, led by the ESA, is to send a satellite launched by NASA to Mars in 2016 that will search for traces of methane in the atmosphere.

The second plans to send, in 2018, two rovers (one American and one European), which will drill into the red planet’s surface. This mission will be both led and launched by NASA, who will have provided the materials and technical attributes. NASA promised to provide $1.4 billion for both missions.

If NASA truly withdraws, ESA will look to involve Roscosmos, the Russian Federal Space Agency. They worry, however, that Roscosmos does not have the same technical skills and assets as NASA. Furthermore, ESA would have to deal with the fact that the program will have lost a large amount of money – the missions would be hindered and delayed.

NASA has been in a bind with costs, using much their budget, for example, to replace the $8 billion James Webb Space Telescope with their current successful Hubble Space Telescope. The James Webb Space Telescope, which was originally estimated to cost $3 billion, would be more than a hundred times powerful than Hubble.

“Even in these times of fiscal restraint, President Obama has laid out an ambitious plan of exploration and discovery for NASA that includes robotic missions to Mars as well as the ultimate goal of a human mission,” NASA HQ in Washington tells BBC. “It would not be appropriate to comment on specifics of the president’s budget before it is released on 13 February.”

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Earlier this month, NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) once again found groundbreaking evidence that water once existed on Mars. The rover, Opportunity, has discovered a long, thin vein of gypsum deposit, found on the edge of the crater, Endeavor.

In January 2004, NASA sent the twin rovers, Opportunity and Spirit, to Mars as a part of the Mars Exploration Rover Mission to find clues that water once existed. Opportunity and Spirit discovered gypsum to be as much of a common mineral on Mars as it is on Earth. Gypsum, which is used as drywall and as an ingredient for plaster, is found evaporated in sedimentary environments, particularly in saline water beds (or seawater) containing high amounts of dissolved calcium sulfate (CaSO₄).

Since their landing on Mars, the rovers found, in the northern sand dunes, numerous pieces of gypsum, which were blown by winds and, hence, mixed with other minerals and materials. These dunes are similar to the White Sands National Monument located in New Mexico, where the sands are comprised of gypsum crystals. This discovery is one of the few that proves that water existed on Mars, but from where the gypsum originates baffles scientists.

Sometime in early 2010, Spirit had discontinued its mission due to being stuck and its eventual inability to communicate. Opportunity, on the other hand, has remained alive and active, and eventually found the gypsum deposit, slightly jutting out from the bedrock. The vein is approximately 2 cm wide and 50 cm long.

Although this discovery may seem redundant with the ones made in the past, it turns out that this strand of gypsum is more significant than the pieces found in dunes. Not only does it appear to have formed in place, but the deposit tells us that water once flowed through a crevice long ago.

“That can’t be said for other gypsum seen on Mars or for other water-related minerals Opportunity has found,” remarks Steve Squyres, a planetary scientist at Cornell University. “It’s not uncommon on Earth, but on Mars, it’s the kind of thing that makes geologists jump out of their chairs.”

Opportunity and Spirit have analyzed most Martian areas to be acidic – and definitely not suitable for life. However, the spot in which the gypsum deposit was found does contain the substances that cause acidity. Thus, the water may have been more neutral. Not only is the vein a sure sign that Mars once did have water, it also proves that the red and dusty planet may have been more habitable than we thought.

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