There have been 40 Missions to Mars over the past 50 years. [Infographic]

Credit: Sean McNaughton and Samuel Velasco, National Geographic and 5W Infographics


Almost 200 launches and their destinations detailed in one image.



Full size: http://bit.ly/15LeQi2

Mars Rover Curiosity Detects No Methane in Martian Gas Samples at Ground Level: Hope of Life on Mars Fades.

Researchers using an unusually sensitive gas detector aboard the Mars Curiosity robot rover reported that they can't find any methane in the thin Martian air, dealing a blow to hopes that life today might be lurking in the soil of the cold, arid world.

"Methane on Mars would be an exciting find because most of the methane on Earth comes from life-related processes," such as microbial activity or organic decay, said planetary scientist Malynda Chizek at New Mexico State University who studies the planet's atmosphere. "Everyone wants to be the one who discovers life on Mars."

Upon the first close inspection at ground level on Mars, however, the crucial methane gas was nowhere to be found by Mars Rover Curiosity.

More Mars probes, including India's first mission to the planet and a $1 billion European effort with Russia, are poised to search for methane there in the years ahead. In light of the new finding, some researchers now doubt these efforts will find any evidence of the life-related gas.

Since 2003, astronomers using Earth-based telescopes and readings from a European satellite orbiting Mars have reported detecting periodic plumes of methane on Mars—up to 50 parts per billion in the air. Although often challenged by other researchers, those readings raised expectations among astrobiologists that microbes might be at work on the planet.

Mean while back on the planet Earth: Professor Steven Benner "Life on Earth came from elements that arrived from Mars on a Martian meteorite,.”

An element believed to be crucial to the origin of life would only have been available on the surface of the Red Planet, it is claimed. Geochemist Professor Steven Benner outlined his theory that the “seeds” of life probably arrived on Earth in meteorites blasted off Mars by impacts or volcanic eruptions.

All living things are made from organic matter, but simply adding energy to organic molecules will not create life. Instead, left to themselves, organic molecules become something more like tar or asphalt, said Prof Benner told the conference. He described the oxidised mineral form of the element molybdenum, believed to be a catalyst that fostered the development of organic molecules into the first living structures.

“It’s only when molybdenum becomes highly oxidised that it is able to influence how early life formed,” said Prof Benner, from The Westheimer Institute for Science and Technology in the USA. “This form of molybdenum couldn’t have been available on Earth at the time life first began, because three billion years ago the surface of the Earth had very little oxygen, but Mars did. “It’s yet another piece of evidence which makes it more likely life came to Earth on a Martian meteorite, rather than starting on this planet.”

He added: “Certain elements seem able to control the propensity of organic materials to turn to tar, particularly boron and molybdenum, so we believe that minerals containing both were fundamental to life first starting. “Analysis of a Martian meteorite recently showed that there was boron on Mars; we now believe that the oxidised form of molybdenum was there too.”

Study: Life On Earth May Have Started On Mars American Voices • Opinion • ISSUE 49•36 • Sep 3, 2013 5315337According to scientist Steven Benner, conditions on Mars 3 billion years ago were more conducive than those on Earth to creating one of the earliest molecules of life, RNA, and that meteorites may have transported these molecules to Earth’s surface. What do you think?

NASA’s Mars Rover Curiosity begins extended exploration on trip to Mount Sharp

NASA’s rover Curiosity begins extended exploration on Mars

NASA's Mars Curiosity rover is beginning a long-awaited, 5-mile-long journey across the terrain of the red planet to begin exploring a rocky area known as Mount Sharp, 11 months after the rover arrived on the planet's surface, according to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “With drives on July 4 and July 7, NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has departed its last science target in the 'Glenelg' area and commenced a many-month overland journey to the base of the mission's main destination, Mount Sharp,” NASA reported in a July 8 announcement.

Curiosity has already checked off its main mission goal, finding that a site called Yellowknife Bay was indeed habitable billions of years ago. The car-size rover — which is nuclear- rather than solar-powered — has embarked on a months-long trek to the base of a 3.4-mile-high (5.5 km) mountain called Mount Sharp.

NASA's long-lived Opportunity Mars rover has reached the site where it will wait out its sixth Red Planet winter.

Opportunity — which touched down on Mars in January 2004 just after its twin, Spirit, arrived on the planet — is studying rocks at the foot of a location called Solander Point, whose north-facing slope will allow the robot to tilt its solar panels toward the sun during the coming southern Martian winter.

"We made it," Opportunity project scientist Matt Golombek, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a statement. "The drives went well, and Opportunity is right next to Solander Point. We know we could be on that north-facing slope with a one-day drive, but we don't need to go there yet.

The days are getting shorter in Mars' southern hemisphere, and the amount of sunlight available to the solar-powered Opportunity will reach a minimum in mid-February 2014 (the southern winter solstice occurs on Feb. 14).

Still Rocking and Rolling afer ONE YEAR on Mars! :Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California can still produce a pretty compelling movie

Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)uploaded a video that shows what the past year has been like for the Curiosity rover in under 2 minutes. Black and white video of dirt being drilled and analyzed might not be interesting to many; however, Curiosity is slowly traveling towards the planet's own Mount Sharpe, yet the landscape looks like many of the deserts on Earth. It's rocky, barren, and bathed in a bright and expansive sky. Watch the video here with a heavy Rock and Roll sound track... and it might take your breath away. (Space.com version with music) http://youtu.be/p83pSCm5ZMU

Mars Rover Curiosity was captured by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) on its way to Mount Sharp

Mars Rover Curiosity  was captured by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) on its way to Mount Sharp

Mars Rover Curiosity Rover captured by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) as it makes its way to Mount Sharp, leaving a weaving set of tracks in its wake. The image released today by NASA scientists, shows Rover making its way across the planet, leaving tracks back to a dark, blast spot on the surface of Mars. That spot called the 'Bradbury Landing' is where Mars Rover Curiosity landed on Mars, named after the late science fiction author Ray Bradbury.

Mars rover Curiosity captures 1.3-gigapixel panorama of the Red Planet

"The image, titled Billion-Pixel View from Curiosity at Rocknest, was assembled from almost 900 photos captured by Curiosity between October 5 and November 16 last year. 850 photos came from Mastcam 100, the 100mm (telescopic) camera atop Curiosity’s mast, with 21 supplementary images provided by Mastcam 34 (the wide-angle camera that sits next to Mastcam 100) and 25 black-and-white frames from Curiosity’s Navigation Camera. Because the photos were captured over a number of days, you can see quite a few variations caused by the angle of the Sun and the dusty atmosphere. As an interesting aside, it’s fun to note that each Mastcam is only equipped with a 2-megapixel sensor — proof that the megapixel myth is indeed a myth. 1.3 billion pixels, in case you were wondering, is 1.3 gigapixels — or 1,300 megapixels."


You can spin and zoom in on a 360-degree panorama of the Curiosity rover's surroundings at Rocknest on Mars, thanks to an interactive Photosynth viewer. A guided tour points you to some of the hot spots. Click on the image to go to the viewer, or try out the embedded version at Extreme Tech which goes into auto mode and flies across the middle photo panel, zooming in on the highlighted features displayed in the side panel captions:  http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/159902-curiosity-captures-1-3-gigapixel-panorama-of-mars

PASADENA, Calif. -- A billion-pixel view from the surface of Mars, from NASA's Mars rover Curiosity, offers armchair explorers a way to examine one part of the Red Planet in great detail.

The first NASA-produced view from the surface of Mars larger than one billion pixels stitches together nearly 900 exposures taken by cameras onboard Curiosity and shows details of the landscape along the rover's route.
The 1.3-billion-pixel image is available for perusal with pan and zoom tools at: http://mars.nasa.gov/bp1/ and a scaled down version (~159MB) is available for direct download here: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA16919 .


The full-circle scene surrounds the site where Curiosity collected its first scoops of dusty sand at a windblown patch called "Rocknest," and extends to Mount Sharp on the horizon.

"It gives a sense of place and really shows off the cameras' capabilities," said Bob Deen of the Multi-Mission Image Processing Laboratory at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "You can see the context and also zoom in to see very fine details."


Deen assembled the product using 850 frames from the telephoto camera of Curiosity's Mast Camera instrument, supplemented with 21 frames from the Mastcam's wider-angle camera and 25 black-and-white frames -- mostly of the rover itself -- from the Navigation Camera. The images were taken on several different Mars days between Oct. 5 and Nov. 16, 2012. Raw single-frame images received from Curiosity are promptly posted on a public website at: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/ . Mars fans worldwide have used those images to assemble mosaic views, including at least one gigapixel scene.

The new mosaic from NASA shows illumination effects from variations in the time of day for pieces of the mosaic. It also shows variations in the clarity of the atmosphere due to variable dustiness during the month while the images were acquired.

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory project is using Curiosity and the rover's 10 science instruments to investigate the environmental history within Gale Crater, a location where the project has found that conditions were long ago favorable for microbial life.
Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, built and operates Curiosity's Mastcam. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington and built the Navigation Camera and the rover.

More information about the mission is online at: http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/ .

You can follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter at: http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity and http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity .

For more information about the Multi-Mission Image Processing Laboratory, see: http://www-mipl.jpl.nasa.gov/mipex.html .