Issue17: End of India's Mars Orbiter mission, New mission profile for Tianwen-3, InSight 'hears' meteoroid impacts, Hints of devasting floods & much more
Issue17: End of India's Mars Orbiter mission, New mission profile for Tianwen-3, InSight 'hears' meteoroid impacts, Hints of devasting floods & much more
Missions
Mangalyaan is no more! : Due to long eclipse in April, 2022, Mangalyaan lost communication with us as usual. During the recovery, propellant exhausted & it failed to achieve the desired attitude pointing. After a comprehensive study, ISRO announced that there's no possible solution and the Mars Orbiter Mission came to an end in September, 2022!
New mission profile for Tianwen-3 : Tianwen-3, China's Mars Sample Return mission will probably launch in 2028 and bring back samples from Mars by July, 2031. The mission will include two launches in the same year or with one-year gap. It's still unclear what exactly the two spacecraft will include individually but the main design is similar to NASA/ESA MSR's ex-plan.
Sun Zezhou, chief scientist of country's Mars Program, unveiled two mission plans: one plan gives 6 winter months for sample collection, given that the orbiter is already launched. While other gives 3 months for sample collection, launching the orbiter afterwards!
Dust storm around InSight: A large dust storm in the Southern hemisphere has reduced InSight's energy levels from 425 watt-hours per sol to 275 watt-hours per sol. Henceforth, team has decided to keep the seismometer off for two weeks!
Update on Tianwen-1 : 1480 GB of data released recently and the team is busy in studying the distribution of ions and neutral particles in near-Mars space environment & the relation between rock density and degree of surface erosion! While the Zhurong is in hibernation, the team won the international space award for first trio - orbiter, lander & rover - to reach Mars in single launch!
FOD on copter's leg: On September 17, 21, Ingenuity took its two more flights on the red planet. During the last flight, NavCam video shows Foreign Object Debris (FOD) attached to one of its legs & then fell down! It didn't affected the copter in any way but team want to discern the source of debris
Curiosity moving ahead: Curiosity is roving through the transition area of “Marker Band Valley” region which has intriguing textures and magnesium sulphates. A few days ago, rover collected sample 36, “Canaima” rock target by drilling to full depth!
Research & Observations
InSight ‘hears’ meteoroid impacts first time: InSight heard quakes of less than two magnitude in 2020 and 2021, caused by meteoroid impacts on the Martian surface! They've found three more impacts and expect to find more in four years of dataset!
Hints of devasting floods in ancient Utopia Planitia: Tianwen-1's radar data suggest the sediment transport due to two major floods in the late Hesperian period. Radar imager probe upto 100 meters below surface and revealed details of four horizontal layers from two different regions. Sediment layers at 30 and 80 meters deep nearly three billion years old, created by lot of water activity. While layers at 10 and 30 meters deep nearly 1.6 billion years old, created by lot of glacial activity! But we haven't found any evidence of liquid water upto 80 meter deep yet!
Percy investigating 'interesting' terrain: In the first campaign, we collected igneous rock samples and in the second campaign, we're collecting sedimentary rocks - a good contrast! So far, we've collected 4 samples in the river delta floor. Recently collected, sample “Skinner Ridge”, a sandstone that carried rock fragments from Jezero and sample “Wildcat Ridge”, a mudstone that contains organic molecules!
Imagery
After the launch of Mars Pathfinder on July 4, 1997, Mars always have an ‘alive’ robotic explorer, curious to know more about its past and current dressup!
Recommendation
On this World Space Week occasion, lets hear out what the chief scientists answer to the question “Is there life on Mars?”
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