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Mars Exploration Rover

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Mission is an unmanned Mars exploration mission that sent two robotic rovers Spirit and Opportunity to explore the Martian surface and geology.

Note: The above text is excerpted from the Wikipedia article "Mars Exploration Rover", which has been released under the GNU Free Documentation License.

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Balancing Risk and Reward in Planetary Exploration

Oct. 25, 2022 — Researchers have developed a new approach to balancing the risks and scientific value of sending planetary rovers into dangerous ...

Porous, Ultralow-Temperature Supercapacitors Could Power Mars, Polar Missions

Mar. 10, 2021 — NASA's Perseverance Rover recently made a successful landing on Mars, embarking on a two-year mission to seek signs of ancient life and collect samples. Because Mars is extremely cold -- ...

Meet the Martian Meteorite Hunters

July 22, 2021 — A team is paving the way for future rovers to search for meteorites on Mars. The scientists are using an extensive meteorite collection to test the spectral instruments destined for the ExoMars rover ...

Sound Recording Made of Dust Devils (Tiny Tornadoes of Dust, Grit) on Mars

Dec. 13, 2022 — When the rover Perseverance landed on Mars, it was equipped with the first working microphone on the planet's surface. Scientists have used it to make the first-ever audio recording of an ...

Powerful Electrical Events Quickly Alter Surface Chemistry on Mars, Other Planetary Bodies

Dec. 15, 2020 — On Earth, dust particles are viewed mainly in terms of their physical effects, like erosion. But, in exotic locales from Mars to Venus to Jupiter's icy moon Europa, electrical effects can affect ...

A Novel System for Slip Prevention of Unmanned Rovers

Nov. 15, 2023 — Planetary rovers, which help humanity explore other planets, can deviate from their targeted paths or get stuck due to slipping on loose soil. To combat this problem, researchers have developed a ...

The Sands of Mars Are Green as Well as Red, Rover Perseverance Discovers

Aug. 25, 2022 — The accepted view of Mars is red rocks and craters as far as the eye can see. That's much what scientists expected when they landed the rover Perseverance in the Jezero Crater, a spot chosen ...

NASA's Mars Perseverance Rover Provides Front-Row Seat to Landing, First Audio Recording of Red Planet

Feb. 22, 2021 — New video from NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover chronicles major milestones during the final minutes of its entry, descent, and landing (EDL) on the Red Planet on Feb. 18 as the spacecraft ...

NASA's Perseverance Drives on Mars' Terrain for First Time

Mar. 5, 2021 — The first trek of NASA's largest, most advanced rover yet on the Red Planet marks a major milestone before science operations get under ...

Touchdown! NASA's Mars Perseverance Rover Safely Lands on Red Planet

Feb. 18, 2021 — The largest, most advanced rover NASA has sent to another world touched down on Mars Thursday, after a 203-day journey traversing 293 million miles (472 million kilometers). About the size of a car, ...

Space & Time News

December 9, 2023

Ancient Stars Made Extraordinarily Heavy Elements

Dec. 7, 2023 — How heavy can an element be? An international team of researchers has found that ancient stars were capable of producing elements with atomic masses greater than 260, heavier than any element on the periodic table found naturally on Earth. The ...

An Astronomical Waltz Reveals a Sextuplet of Planets

Nov. 29, 2023 — Astronomers have found a key new system of six transiting planets orbiting a bright star in a harmonic rhythm. This rare property enabled the team to determine the planetary orbits which initially appeared as an unsolvable ...

Astronomers Discover Disc Around Star in Another Galaxy

Nov. 29, 2023 — In a remarkable discovery, astronomers have found a disc around a young star in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a galaxy neighboring ours. It's the first time such a disc, identical to those forming planets in our own Milky Way, has ever been found ...

Telescope Array Detects Second Highest-Energy Cosmic Ray Ever

Nov. 23, 2023 — In 1991, an experiment detected the highest-energy cosmic ray ever observed. Later dubbed the Oh-My-God particle, the cosmic ray’s energy shocked astrophysicists. Nothing in our galaxy had the power to produce it, and the particle had more energy ...

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When Is an Aurora Not an Aurora?

Dec. 8, 2023 — While auroras occur at high latitude, the associated phenomena Steve and the picket fence occur farther south and at lower altitude. Their emissions also differ from aurora. A physics graduate ...

Scholars Say It's Time to Declare a New Epoch on the Moon, the 'Lunar Anthropocene'

Dec. 8, 2023 — According to anthropologists and geologists, it's time to acknowledge humans have become the dominant force shaping the moon's environment by ...

Giant Doubts About Giant Exomoons

Dec. 7, 2023 — The extrasolar planets Kepler-1625b and Kepler-1708b are supposedly the home worlds of the first known exomoons. A new study now comes to a different ...

Stellar Winds Regulate Growth of Galaxies

Dec. 6, 2023 — Galactic winds enable the exchange of matter between galaxies and their surroundings. In this way, they limit the growth of galaxies, that is, their star formation rate. Although this had already ...

Interpreting the Afterglow of a Black Hole's Breakfast

Dec. 4, 2023 — An entirely new way to probe how active black holes behave when they eat has been discovered by an international team of ...

Limitations of Asteroid Crater Lakes as Climate Archives

Dec. 5, 2023 — In southern Germany just north of the Danube, there lies a large circular depression between the hilly surroundings: the Nördlinger Ries. Almost 15 million years ago, an asteroid struck this spot. ...

Unlocking Neutron Star Rotation Anomalies: Insights from Quantum Simulation

Dec. 5, 2023 — A collaboration between quantum physicists and astrophysicists has achieved a significant breakthrough in understanding neutron star glitches. They were able to numerically simulate this enigmatic ...

Astronomers Determine the Age of Three Mysterious Baby Stars at the Heart of the Milky Way

Dec. 5, 2023 — Through analysis of high-resolution data from a ten-meter telescope in Hawaii, researchers have succeeded in generating new knowledge about three ...

Can Signs of Life Be Detected from Saturn's Frigid Moon?

Dec. 5, 2023 — Researchers have shown unambiguous laboratory evidence that amino acids transported in the ice plumes of Saturn's moon, Eceladus, can survive impact speeds of up to 4.2 km/s, supporting their ...

Tracking Undetectable Space Junk

Dec. 4, 2023 — Satellite and spacecraft operators may finally be able to detect small pieces of debris orbiting Earth using a new approach. Colliding pieces of space debris emit electric signals that could help ...