India's MOM Arrives in Orbit of Mars: Mars Orbiter Mission cost less than the movie "Gravity."

In June, India’s prime minister Narendra Modi claimed that, at a cost of just $74 million, the Mars Orbiter Mission was less expensive than production of the Oscar-winning science fiction film “Gravity,” which cost a reported $100 million to make. For comparison, NASA’s most recent Mars probe, Maven, which made orbit on Sunday, ran up a cost of about $671 million and the European Space Agency’s 2003 mission's price tag was roughly $386 million.

India’s space agency has honed its ability to make do with limited resources over the years out of “sheer necessity,” according to the Wall Street Journal. In addition to operating on a comparatively paltry budget, many international agencies refused to share expertise with ISRO’s scientists after the country began conducting nuclear weapons tests.

While some critics question whether a nation that is home to a third of the world’s poorest people should be spending roughly a billion dollars per year on space exploration, India counters that the program drives innovation and fuels employment in the country. Modi hopes the mission will help establish India as the world leader in cheap space exploration.

NEW DELHI — India became the first Asian nation to reach the Red Planet when its indigenously made unmanned spacecraft entered the orbit of Mars on Wednesday — and the first nation in the world to successfully reach Mars on its first attempt.

The spacecraft called “Mangalyaan,” or “Mars-craft” in Hindi, which was launched last November, slowed down just enough to reach orbit early Wednesday, securing India a place in the elite global space club of Martian explorers.

Images of beaming scientists clapping and hugging each other at the command center in the southern city of Bangalore were shown live in a nationally televised broadcast after a breathless, nail-biting countdown during the spacecraft’s final leg.

Over an hour after reaching the orbit, the space agency received the first photographic data of the red planet’s terrain which were transmitted via an antenna located in Canberra, Australia.

Calling it the “national pride event,” the Indian Space Research Organization also showed it live on Facebook and Twitter.

Officials at the space agency said that for the past two months, scientists worked more than 12 hours a day brainstorming every possible problem and coming up with exhaustive recovery options.

MOM has built-in intelligence, autonomy and a stand-by control system to prevent a breakdown in communication, said M. Pitchaimani, deputy director of the control center at the Indian Space Research Organization.

“Many countries have failed in their first attempt. India got success the first time itself,” said Pitchaimani in a telephone interview. “But this has come after intense study of others’ failures and the reasons for failure, and building our satellite accordingly. We also had gained from their accumulated knowledge about the gravity field of the planet and we built robust instruments based on that data.”

More than half of the 51 Mars missions launched globally have failed. India’s successful mission follows those of the United States, Europe and Russia. But India’s mission cost a fraction of NASA’s $670 million Maven, which entered Mars orbit Sunday. The Curiosity Rover, which touched down on Mars in 2012, cost nearly $2 billion.

By comparison, India’s $72 million Mars orbiter is the cheapest interplanetary mission ever. Modi said that India’s Mars mission cost less than what it took to make the famous Hollywood space movie “Gravity.”

“We kept it low cost, high technology. That is the Indian way of working,” Sandip Bhattacharya, assistant director of B.M. Birla Planetarium in the northern city of Jaipur, said in a telephone interview. “ . . . Our goal was to reach Mars and send few pictures and scientific data. Now in the coming years, this will give us leverage to plan for newer Mars missions in a more aggressive manner with heavier payload with larger exploration goals.”

  Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi hailed India’s low-cost space technology, saying a rocket which launched four foreign satellites into orbit had cost less to make than the Hollywood film “Gravity.”

India’s domestically-produced Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) blasted off Monday morning from the southern spaceport of Sriharikota, carrying satellites from France, Germany, Canada and Singapore.
“India has the potential to be the launch service provider of the world and must work towards this goal,” Modi said from the site, one month after coming to power at the head of a right-wing government.
Satellite launch industry revenues totalled $2.2 billion in 2012, according to the US Satellite Industry Association, and India is keen to expand its modest share of this market as a low-cost provider.
“I have heard about the film Gravity. I am told the cost of sending an Indian rocket to space is less than the money invested in making the Hollywood movie,” Modi added.
The budget of the British-American 3D sci-fi thriller, starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, was about $100 million, according to industry website IMDb.
Last year, India launched a bid to become the first Asian nation to reach Mars with a mission whose price tag was the envy of space programmes world-wide.
The total cost at INR 4.5 billion ($73 million) was less than a sixth of the $455 million earmarked for a Mars probe launched shortly afterwards by US space agency NASA.
Experts say the secret is India’s ability to copy and adapt existing space technology for its own needs, and the abundance of highly-skilled engineers who earn a fraction of their foreign counterparts’ wages.
Modi said the country must be proud of its space programme, developed in the face of “great international pressure and hurdles”
Western sanctions on India after the nation staged a nuclear weapons test in 1974 gave a major thrust to the space programme because New Delhi needed to develop its own missile technology.

he Mars Curiosity rover is searching for clouds amidst criticisms by a NASA panel that the mission lacks scientific focus.

NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover finds Iron Meteorite called "Lebanon."

This rock encountered by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover is an iron meteorite called "Lebanon," similar in shape and luster to iron meteorites found on Mars by the previous generation of rovers, Spirit and Opportunity.  Lebanon is about 2 yards or 2 meters wide (left to right, from this angle). The smaller piece in the foreground is called "Lebanon B."

This view combines a series of high-resolution circular images taken by the Remote Micro-Imager (RMI) of Curiosity's Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument with color and context from rover's Mast Camera (Mastcam).  The component images were taken during the 640th Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity's work on Mars (May 25, 2014).

The imaging shows angular shaped cavities on the surface of the rock. One possible explanation is that they resulted from preferential erosion along crystalline boundaries within the metal of the rock.  Another possibility is that these cavities once contained olivine crystals, which can be found in a rare type of stony-iron meteorites called pallasites, thought to have been formed near the core-mantle boundary within an asteroid.

Iron meteorites are not rare among meteorites found on Earth, but they are less common than stony meteorites. On Mars, iron meteorites dominate the small number of meteorites that have been found. Part of the explanation could come from the resistance of iron meteorites to erosion processes on Mars.

ChemCam is one of 10 instruments in Curiosity's science payload. The U.S. Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory, in Los Alamos, New Mexico, developed ChemCam in partnership with scientists and engineers funded by the French national space agency (CNES), the University of Toulouse and the French national research agency (CNRS). More information about ChemCam is available at http://www.msl-chemcam.com .  The rover's MastCam was built by and is operated by Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL/CNES/IRAP/LPGNantes/CNRS/IAS/MSSS

NASA's Curiosity Rover's current location as of May 15

NASA's Curiosity Rover's current location as of May 15.

NASA's Curiosity Rover's current location as of May 15.  NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

 

Curiosity Drills Windjana Martian Rock

 Curiosity rover drills a rock sample for analysis. Photo Credit: NASA/JET PROPULSION LABORATORY

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is set to drill into a rock for the third time on the red planet to collect a sample for analysis. Over the weekend, the rover used a wire-bristle-brush to clear away dust from a slab of sandstone that has been given the name "Windjana," after a gorge in Western Australia. The rover will drill into the area “in order to understand the chemistry of the fluids that bound these grains together to form the rock,” said Melissa Rice of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, a Curiosity science team member. In the coming days, the rover will conduct a preparatory “mini-drill” operation to check the area for readiness, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a statement. The hammering drill on Curiosity collects powdered sample material from rocks and then delivers portions to laboratory instruments onboard. The first two Martian rock samples inspected this way, which were taken last year about 2.5 miles from the rover’s current location, yielded evidence of an ancient lakebed environment with conditions favorable for microbial life billions of years ago, NASA says

Asteroid Impact Glass May Reveal Ancient Life on Mars

In a new study, scientists have analyzed ancient materials preserved astonishingly in glass generated by an asteroid's collision with the Earth.

According to BBC News, the scientists published their new study in the journal Geology. The samples were found in the Pampas in Argentina and represent a new way of looking into the environmental history of other planets, Mars in particular.

NASA Plans Mars Human Exploration in 2030s

William H. Gerstenmaier, NASA’s associate administrator for human exploration and operations, likened the steps the agency is taking to the Mercury and Gemini programs, both of which were building blocks toward putting men on the Moon with the Apollo missions.

Wednesday, before the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation subcommittee, Gerstenmaier said NASA is taking steps to “that will allow us to make sustained progress toward a human presence on the surface of Mars.” "There is real hardware in manufacture for the path to Mars," Gerstenmaier told senators. In 2017, for example, the agency plans an unmanned test of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion multi-purpose crew vehicle, which will be used to take astronauts to Mars. These initial steps toward Mars are comprised of “Earth-reliant” missions, such as the International Space Station, landing on an asteroid in lunar orbit, and finally, a “Mars-ready” mission. During the first stage, NASA, along with international partners and private entities, will conduct research on how to keep space crews safe and productive on long duration spaceflights. The joint effort will also explore how to transport cargo and crew affordably into low Earth orbit. The second major stepping stone was approved by House subcommittee yesterday. That mission calls for NASA to redirect an asteroid into lunar orbit, land astronauts on the asteroid, and return them safely to Earth. “We're going to grab a piece of the solar system, we're going to deflect it around the moon and insert it into a distant retrograde orbit around the moon where our crews can go visit," said Gerstenmaier. The mission he said would develop skills and techniques needed to “push the human presence into the solar system.”

NASA Mars Rover Curiosity Photo of Mars Light on Martian Mountain : "Curiosity takes cosmic ray hit"

Doug Ellison from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a man who would very much like to find evidence of life on Mars considering what it would do for JPL's budget,  tweeted that the image appears to be the result of Curiosity taking a cosmic ray hit, rather than a sign of little green men.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has a Mission to Mars with ExoMars in 2018 Planned.

Image from yesterday's opening of the Mars yard in Stevenage, UK. The Mars yard will be used put the #ExoMars rover through its paces ahead of its mission to the Red Planet in 2018.

Mars Gully Formed 3 Years Ago

A substantial new gully channel has been discovered on Mars in images captured by the $40 million High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera mounted on the NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The most interesting fact is that the gully channel was not present on Martian land three years ago, which scientists concluded has been formed in past three years. According to NASA, Mars gully is commonly found in the mid-latitudes of Mars by carbon dioxide frost, especially in Southern highlands. Scientists claimed that such sort of events generally take place during winters with little presence of liquid water. NASA officials added that although gully on Mars looks like river channels here on earth, they are not actually formed out of flowing water. They added that carbon dioxide plays key role in formation of many gullies on Martian surface. The MRO has been orbiting the Mars since 2006 and has been fitted with 10-feet dish antennas and number of scientific instruments like spectrometer for exploring the Martian surface. Some other Martian features, known as Recurring Slope Lineae (RSL), have also been spotted by MRO which did not seem associated with liquid. Researchers said if water does flow across the surface of present-day Mars from time to time, the planet would be a likelier bet to host life as we know it.

Mars Rover Curiosity is driving backwards to prove it can be done if needed.

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover caught its own shadow in this image taken just after completing a backward drive of 329 feet (100.3 meters) on the 547th Martian day, or sol, of the rover's work on Mars (Feb. 18, 2014). NASA/JPL-Caltech

The 1-ton Curiosity rover covered 329 feet (100 meters) in reverse on Tuesday (Feb. 18). The maneuver — carried out over relatively smooth and benign ground — was designed to test out a strategy for reducing wear on the robot's six metal wheels, which have accumulated dings and holes at an increasing rate over the last few months, NASA officials said."We wanted to have backwards driving in our validated toolkit because there will be parts of our route that will be more challenging," Curiosity project manager Jim Erickson, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a statement.

"The Martian" by Andy Weir... "For the record, I didn't die on Sol-6... I might be the first human being to die on Mars...."

He got the idea for "The Martian" in 2009, and spent three years working out the details of the story. He drew on a real NASA proposal for a Mars mission called Mars Direct, which involves sending supplies in unmanned ships to Mars ahead of the crew, then sending astronauts in a lighter, faster ship. He'd been rebuffed by literary agents in the past, so he decided to put the novel on his website free of charge rather than to try to get it published. A few fans asked him to sell the story on Amazon so that they could download it to e-readers. Mr. Weir had been giving his work away, but he began charging a modest amount because Amazon set the minimum price at 99 cents. He published the novel as a serial on the site in September 2012. It rose to the top of Amazon's list of best-selling science-fiction titles. He sold 35,000 copies in three months. Agents and publishers and movie studios started circling. Mr. Weir signed with literary agent David Fugate, who sent 'The Martian' to Julian Pavia at Crown, pitching it as "Apollo 13" meets "Castaway" and Crown bought it last March for six figures. The same week Crown pounced, Twentieth Century Fox optioned film rights, beating out several other studios and producers. Fox hired screenwriter Drew Goddard, who wrote the sci-fi film "Cloverfield," to adapt and direct "The Martian."

READ MORE ABOUT "The Martian"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/andy-weir-delivers-with-the-martian/2014/02/11/e648d37c-934e-11e3-b3f7-f5107432ca45_story.html

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304558804579375161461671196?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304558804579375161461671196.html

http://www.avclub.com/review/the-martian-makes-the-tale-of-an-engineer-stranded-201074

UPDATE: I am now 60% through "The Martian" by Andy Weir... a $9 Kindle version which tells me percentages and not pages read. When I first started teaching decades ago, I imagined a semester long book project for my IPC students about a trip to Mars and with it all the Physics, Chemistry, (and yes Biology) that would involve. Like most being science teachers, I was fresh, new, and naive. Now retired. That project was never accomplished. Lots of trials and research, but nothing truly engaging or inspiring. Andy Weir's first novel, "The Martian", deserves your attention as a common reading book project for a second semester, rite of Spring, wake'em up project. I have tried Heinlein and Bova and Robinson in the past but Weir is a fresh, well written, and very thought provoking read. The hard science topics are both obvious and well presented to the reader... any science teacher will be excited by potential of classroom and lab activities it invokes. Live or Die on Mars, Martin Watney's tale is compelling... only 40% more to go til I find out how it all comes out. You can read the first chapter and the author presentation at Space.com here: http://www.space.com/24721-chapter-one-of-the-martian.html

The Winter Olympics on Mars in 3D

A new 3D image photo from NASA's Curiosity rover shows the car-sized robot at the lip of a small Martian sand dune, debating whether or not to drive over the obstacle on its way to a huge Red Planet mountain.

AstroBiology Magazine: Lichen Life on Mars. What is possible?

The lichen chosen for the experiment, called P. chlorophanum, has proven itself a survival champion even before the Mars simulation. Researchers removed lichen samples for testing from its home atop the rocky Black Ridge in Antarctica's North Victoria Land — a frozen, dry landscape not unlike that of many places on Mars.

Reported in AstroBiology Magazine:

Humans cannot hope to survive life on Mars without plenty of protection from the surface radiation, freezing night temperatures and dust storms on the red planet. So they could be excused for marveling at humble Antarctic lichen that has shown itself capable of going beyond survival and adapting to life in simulated Martian conditions.

The mere feat of surviving temperatures as low as -51 degrees C and enduring a radiation bombardment during a 34-day experiment might seem like an accomplishment by itself. But the lichen, a symbiotic mass of fungi and algae, also proved it could adapt physiologically to living a normal life in such harsh Martian conditions — as long as the lichen lived under "protected" conditions shielded from much of the radiation within "micro-niches" such as cracks in the Martian soil or rocks.

"There were no studies on adaptation to Martian conditions before," said Jean-Pierre de Vera, a scientist at the German Aerospace Center's Institute of Planetary Research in Berlin, Germany. "Adaptation is very important to be investigated, because it tells you more about the interactions of life in relation to its environment."
READ MORE : http://www.astrobio.net/exclusive/5932/lichen-on-mars http://www.astrobio.net/exclusive/5932/lichen-on-mars

NASA's Opportunity rover landed on Mars in 2014 and was initially slated for a 90-day mission. Ten years and 24.07 miles later

NASA's Opportunity rover landed on Mars in 2014 and was initially slated for a 90-day mission. Ten years and 24.07 miles later (that's pretty far for a slow-moving rover), it's still fully operational and conducting science experiments on the Red Planet.

"It is Mars One's goal to establish a human settlement on Mars. Human settlement of Mars is the next giant leap for humankind. Exploring the solar system as a united humanity will bring us all closer together. "

The Mars One shortlist is out, and sadly, most were disappointed. Out of over 200,000 applicants seeking to take part in a 2025 mission to colonize Mars, only 1,000 or so were selected. From that pool, ultimately only two dozen able bodied guys and gals will be tapped to rocket 34 million miles (at its closest orbit) into space – a journey that would take at least five months. Reuters via MSN News on Friday said the whole mission will be funded by – what else but – reality television. “The challenge with 200,000 applicants is separating those who we feel are physically and mentally adept to become human ambassadors on Mars from those who are obviously taking the mission much less seriously,” mission co-founder and Mars One CEO Bas Lansdorp said. The selectees include men and women from 107 countries, with most coming from the U.S. Nearly 300 candidates are from the U.S., 75 are from Canada, and 62 are from India. The mission has the attention, and technical backing, of NASA, Lansdorp reports. Industry experts, including former NASA engineers and a member of the NASA Advisory Council, will be advising the mission throughout its advancement. After the final team is in place, members will begin training as full-time salaried employees of Mars One. “The training will likely happen in the U.S. and the candidates will be like any other expat in the country," Lansdorp said, referring to those from countries outside the U.S. "Hopefully they’ll be able to bring their families over, too. This will be like any other job, except the goal of the job is more ambitious.” Of course, the project has its skeptics – lots of them. "I respect their interest and wish them well, but I really just don't take them seriously," John Spencer, the founder of the Space Tourism Society, told ABC News. "You need billions of dollars to do a Mars mission." Head over to Mars-One.com for more mission critical info.

An odd-looking bit of rock mysteriously appeared in front of Opportunity rover, waiting out the Martian winter, taken by Opportunity Mars rover on Sol (Martian day) 3540 or January 8 Earth time, according to NASA’s website.

Left: a photo taken 3528 days after the Opportunity rover arrival to Mars. Right: the exact same spot 12 Mars days later. Notice the difference? NASA JPL scientists did too: "It's about the size of a jelly doughnut. It was a total surprise, we were like 'wait a second, that wasn't there before, it can't be right. Oh my god! It wasn't there before!' We were absolutely startled."

An odd-looking bit of rock mysteriously appeared in front of Opportunity rover in the beginning of January as the rover, waiting out the Martian winter, has not moved since the end of November, according to NASA. The rock suddenly appeared on photographs taken by Opportunity Mars rover on Sol (Martian day) 3540 or January 8 Earth time, according to NASA’s website. Photographs previously taken on Sol 3536 showed no trace of the rock. The body was named 'Pinnacle Island', according to Opportunity’s Pancam database descriptions.