Category: Mars

Mars Rover Captures 1st Sound of Dust Devil on Red Planet

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.—What’s a dust devil sound like on Mars? A NASA rover by chance had its microphone on when a whirling tower of red dust passed directly overhead, recording the racket. It’s about 10 seconds of not only rumbling gusts of up to 25 mph (40 kph), but the pinging of hundreds of dust…


Cost Effective Planet X-ray Developed: Deep Planetary Scan Examines Martian Core

Scientists from the Australian National University (ANU) have developed a new and cost-effective deep scanning technique that can provide a window into the interior of the planets in Earth’s solar system. The new approach uses only one on-planet instrument and has provided ANU seismologists with a scan of the Red Planet’s interior, including its core. Dynamo theory suggests that…


Film Review: ‘Good Night Oppy’:  Not Quite the Real Thing

PG | 1h 45min | Documentary, History, Science, Technology | 4 November 2022 (USA) For a movie so deeply steeped and rooted in science and adventure, the new Amazon documentary “Good Night Oppy” (GNO) is in relatively short supply of both. Unlike the sublime, just-the-facts masterpiece “Apollo 11” (2019) or the criminally underrated, bare-bones sci-fi mood piece “Moon” (2009), “GNO” is…


2 NASA Spacecraft Detect Biggest Meteor Strikes at Mars

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.—Two NASA spacecraft at Mars—one on the surface and the other in orbit—have recorded the biggest meteor strikes and impact craters yet. The high-speed barrages last year sent seismic waves rippling thousands of miles across Mars, the first ever detected near the surface of another planet, and carved out craters nearly 500 feet…


NASA to Launch 2 More Choppers to Mars to Help Return Rocks

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.—NASA is launching two more mini helicopters to Mars in its effort to return Martian rocks and soil samples to Earth. Under the plan announced Wednesday, NASA’s Perseverance rover will do double duty and transport the cache to the rocket that will launch them off the red planet a decade from now. Perseverance…


Elon Musk Says ‘It’s a Fixer Upper of a Planet’: Can We Live on Mars?

Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk took to Twitter to add some thoughts on his goal to make life on Mars a reality. “Mars may be a fixer upper of a planet, but it has great potential,” Musk said in a tweet on July 15. When asked about his time frame for creating a self-sustaining civilization…


Extraordinary Planet Alignment Seen in Hong Kong Early Morning Sky

At Hong Kong time 4:47 a.m. on June 24, 2022, reporters observed a rare astronomical phenomenon of “eight-planet alignment” at the East Dam, Saigon, Hong Kong. Mercury, Venus, the Moon, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn could be clearly seen with naked eye, and the “five-planet alignment” could also be clearly photographed by cell phones, but Uranus…


For the First Time There’s a Rocket Capable of Establishing Permanent Mars and Moon Bases: Elon Musk

A rocket capable of establishing a permanent presence on the moon and Mars has been built for the first time in history, according to Elon Musk—the CEO of private space giant SpaceX and electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla Inc. What Happened In a Tuesday tweet, Musk wrote that “for the first time ever, there is a rocket capable of…


Musk Plans to Build 1000+ Starships to Transport 1 Million People to Mars: A Fleet of ‘Modern Noah’s Arks’

Tesla Inc. and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk aims to build 100 starships per year and send one million people to Mars by 2050. He believes close to a million people are needed on Mars to ensure enough population for the necessary work to survive on the Red Planet. Musk recently advocated building over 1000 Starships to send…


New Imagery From Mars Helicopter’s Furthest Flight

Imagery has come down from Mars capturing a recent flight in which the rotorcraft flew farther and faster than ever before. The Ingenuity Mars Helicopter’s black-and-white navigation camera provided video of its 25th flight, which took place on April 18. Covering a distance of 2,310 feet at a speed of 12 mph, it was the…