Latest news with #MarsSurface
Daily Mail
4 days ago
- Science
- Daily Mail
Life on Mars? Mysterious 'mushroom' is spotted on the Red Planet in photo snapped by NASA's Curiosity rover
Scientists have spent decades scouring the Martian surface for any signs of life. Now, a photo snapped by NASA 's Curiosity rover has sparked speculation that the hunt might finally be over. A picture taken from the Martian surface appears to show a 'mushroom' growing on the Red Planet. The strange discovery has led some alien hunters to declare: ' been found!' The photo was taken by the Curiosity rover on September 19, 2013, but was spotted in the archives by UFO hunter Scott Waring. Mr Waring says: 'This object has a curved bottom part of a stem, same as those on Earth. 'I'm not sure how or why NASA could overlook such a NASA's mission is to find life on other planets and moons.' However, scientists say there is a much simpler explanation. NASA's Curiosity rover was launched to Mars in 2011 with the goal of discovering whether the planet had the right conditions to support microscopic life. To help this search, the rover is equipped with multiple cameras, a drill to gather rock samples, and sets of tools to analyse the chemical compositions of samples. However, despite a decade of searching, Curiosity has never found any evidence that Mars is or ever was home to any form of alien life. But that hasn't stopped wild speculation following many of the rover's discoveries. Following his discovery of this archived image, Mr Waring claims that the rocky structure is a mushroom that has 'clearly pushed up out of the Mars dirt.' He adds: 'NASA should have poked it, bumped it, knocked it over, cut it open with their tools on Curiosity rover or at least use that million dollar laser they burn rocks and dirt with.' And Mr Waring isn't the only one who agrees. Commenters on social media flocked to share their support for his claims. One wrote: Looks like a mushroom to me! NASA know far more about MARS than they let on.' While another boldly claimed: 'What people fail to realize is if life is found on just one other planet in the solar system, then that basically means there is life everywhere in the Universe mathematically.' However, scientists are not convinced by this supposed evidence. Dr Gareth Dorrian, a planetary physicist from the University of Birmingham, told MailOnline that this is simply a 'flat roughly disc-shaped rock sitting atop a smaller stone at the bottom.' 'My best guess would be they were not originally in that position, but like two rocks lying in the desert, one just below the surface and the other on the surface above it,' he explained. 'Over time the wind could gradually blow the sand and dust away and the top one would gradually settle onto the bottom one.' Dr Dorrian points out that wind-driven processes like this on Earth often produce remarkable and strange formations. Alternatively, these 'mushrooms' could be geological structures called concretions, which formed billions of years ago when there was liquid water on Mars. As water flows through sediment, it dissolves the minerals and rearranges them in a more compact form to leave behind a solid block. Since these are harder than the surrounding rock, they are often left standing above the surface. Just like the hoodoo rock spires of the American southwest, these structures often take on a mushroom-like shape as the wind carves away the softer bedrock to leave a thin 'stem'. Part of the reason that Curiosity didn't stop to take any more measurements, as Mr Waring suggests, is that these are common on the Martian surface. Additionally, Dr Dorrian points out that, even if there were life on Mars, the chances of a living organism being found on the Martian surface are extremely low. The atmospheric pressure at the Martian surface is roughly equivalent to that found 20 miles above the surface of Earth, meaning the atmosphere is very thin. This allows a constant stream of ultraviolet and particle radiation in the form of cosmic rays to bombard the surface. Dr Dorrian says: 'This unhealthy combination of radiation is well known to damage complex molecules like DNA and would quickly sterilise the surface where this image was taken.' As if that wasn't bad enough, Dr Dorrian notes that temperature above ground would make it impossible for any organism to survive. Temperatures swing from a comfortable 20°C (68°F) during the day to -100°C (-148°F) at night, well below the freezing point of water and far colder than anywhere on Earth. 'No known forms of life can simultaneously tolerate these extremes of temperatures, radiation levels, and low atmospheric pressure, including mushrooms,' says Dr Dorrian. 'If life does exist on Mars, it is more likely to be found below ground, such as in underground reserves of water, where it would be shielded from the harsh environment at the surface.' That means this photograph almost certainly shows a common and naturally occurring rock formation, rather than life growing in an impossibly harsh environment.
Digital Trends
23-05-2025
- Science
- Digital Trends
Perseverance's new selfie is cool, but its hunt for life in ancient rocks is even cooler
It's not only Instagram users and holiday makers snapping selfies — even robots are getting in on the action. This new image from the NASA Perseverance rover shows a selfie that's out of this world, captured as the rover collected its latest sample of martian rock. Taken on May 10, the selfie was devised to celebrate the rover's 1,500th day on Mars. As a day on Mars is just a little bit longer than an Earth day, at around 24 hours and 39 minutes, NASA measures its Mars missions in 'sols' or martian days. As well as being a fun image for scientists and the public to enjoy, it gives the engineering team on the ground the chance to check the look and the status of the rover as it has been exploring since it landed in February 2021. Recommended Videos You can see plenty of red dust covering the rover, as the surface of Mars is covered in a dusty material called regolith which gives the planet its famous red color. Dust can be quite the challenge for Mars missions, as it gets everywhere when it is whipped up by huge dust storms and can cause problems by gumming up electronics and covering solar panels. But fortunately for Perseverance, the rover may look a little grubby on the outside but its essential functions are all still working well. 'After 1,500 sols, we may be a bit dusty, but our beauty is more than skin deep,' said Art Thompson, Perseverance project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. 'Our multi-mission radioisotope thermoelectric generator is giving us all the power we need. All our systems and subsystems are in the green and clicking along, and our amazing instruments continue to provide data that will feed scientific discoveries for years to come.' Even with all the instruments working correctly, though, getting the rover to take a selfie isn't a quick job. The image was captured using Perseverance's WATSON (Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering) camera, which is located at the end of its robotic arm. As the rover was working on capturing the selfie, it also caught an unexpected photobomber: a wind feature called a dust devil which popped up in the background. 'To get that selfie look, each WATSON image has to have its own unique field of view,' explained Megan Wu, a Perseverance imaging scientist from Malin Space Science Systems. 'That means we had to make 62 precision movements of the robotic arm. The whole process takes about an hour, but it's worth it. Having the dust devil in the background makes it a classic. This is a great shot.' With its celebrations well in hand, the rover is now moving on to investigate a new area of Mars: a region called 'Krokodillen' after a Norwegian mountain ridge. This area is particularly exciting because it is thought to contain some of the oldest rocks on Mars, which could help to unlock the secrets of how the solar system formed. Here on Earth, our planet has a system of tectonics in which parts of the planet's crust are gradually pulled down toward the mantle when they meet at a fault line. That means that the rocks on Earth are essentially recycled in an ongoing cycle of melting down toward the planet's interior then rising up and cooling to become part of the surface. That's why there are very few extremely old rocks on Earth. On Mars, however, it's a different story. Mars doesn't have plate tectonics, so very old rocks can stay on its surface for billions of years. Some of these are up to 4 billion years old, or even older, so studying them can help scientists learn about how the rocky planets formed in our solar system around 4.5 billion years ago. To study these very old rocks, though, Perseverance needs to find them first. There are thought to be extremely old rocks along the edge of the huge crater in which the rover landed, called Jezero. The Jezero Crater is almost 30 miles across, likely created by a huge meteorite impact billions of years ago. When this object slammed into the martian surface, it threw up large amounts of material like huge chunks of rock which landed nearby and are still there to this day. That means that by looking along the rim of the crater, Perseverance can search for these ancient chunks of rocks and use its instruments to study them. That can also help to answer one particularly important question that scientists want to understand, which is how long there was water on Mars. They know that, although Mars is dry and arid today, it once had plentiful liquid water on its surface. It may even have looked a lot like Earth at one point — and we know that water is essential for the formation of life. What scientists don't agree on is exactly how long there was water on Mars, and whether it would have been around for long enough to give potential life the chance to develop there. So knowing exactly when Mars lost is water is a key part of understanding the planet and whether it could ever have supported life. To that end, Perseverance will be keeping a lookout for clay minerals which form in the presence of water, perhaps even formed before the impact which created the crater. These could contain potential indications of life, called biosignatures, such as organic compounds. 'If we find a potential biosignature here, it would most likely be from an entirely different and much earlier epoch of Mars evolution than the one we found last year,' said NASA scientist Ken Farley. 'The Krokodillen rocks formed before Jezero Crater was created, during Mars' earliest geologic period, the Noachian, and are among the oldest rocks on Mars.'
CBS News
21-05-2025
- Science
- CBS News
NASA's Mars Perseverance rover captures new selfie featuring a Martian dust devil
The latest selfie by NASA's Mars Perseverance rover has captured an unexpected guest: a Martian dust devil. Resembling a small pale puff, the twirling dust devil popped up 3 miles behind the rover during this month's photo shoot. Dust devils, a combination of air and dust, are common on Mars. Released Wednesday, the selfie is a composite of 59 images taken by the camera on the end of the rover's robotic arm, according to NASA. This image provided by NASA shows Perseverance taking a selfie on May 10, 2025. NASA via AP It took an hour to perform all the arm movements necessary to gather the images, "but it's worth it," said Megan Wu, an imaging scientist from Malin Space Science Systems, which built the camera. "Having the dust devil in the background makes it a classic," Wu said in a statement. The picture — which also shows the rover's latest sample borehole on the surface — marks 1,500 sols, or Martian days, for Perseverance. That's equivalent to 1,541 days on Earth. Perseverance is covered with red dust, the result of drilling into dozens of rocks. Perseverance, which landed on Mars in 2021, is collecting samples for an eventual return to Earth from Jezero Crater, an ancient lakebed and river delta that could hold clues to any past microbial life. Last month, released images showed a Martian dust devil consuming a smaller one on the surface of the red planet.
RNZ News
15-05-2025
- Science
- RNZ News
NASA's Perseverance rover films first auroras from the surface of Mars
By Ellen Phiddian NASA's Perserverance rover has photographed images of an aurora from the surface of Mars. Photo: AFP / NASA/JPL-CALTECH/MSSS Auroras on Mars don't look quite like they do on Earth - but they still produce a weird and fascinating light show. NASA's Perseverance rover has snapped pictures of a visible-light aurora from the Martian surface. It is the first time an aurora has been observed from the surface of a planet other than Earth, and the first time visible auroras have been seen on Mars. The weak green light was photographed in March last year, with the pictures just released in a new study published in Science Advances. Auroras on Earth are formed by particles from the Sun interacting with the planet's magnetic field. But auroras have also been observed on nearly every other planet in the Solar System. The light show was first detected around Mars 20 years ago from space. Unlike Earth, Mars does not have a global magnetic field - instead, its magnetism is patchy and varies across the planet's surface. This means its auroras are caused by slightly different phenomena. One type of aurora Mars sees, called a solar energetic particle (SEP) aurora, comes from super-energised particles from the Sun hitting the Martian atmosphere directly. These have been observed in ultraviolet light before, from NASA's MAVEN instrument that orbits around Mars. But when the Sun emitted a solar flare and a coronal mass ejection (CME) in the direction of Mars last year, a team of researchers spotted an opportunity to see the auroras from the planet's surface. They scrambled to ready the Perseverance rover, which is trundling through Mars' Jezero crater. The team used computer models to predict when and where the aurora would be visible in the Martian sky, and what colour and intensity of light they could expect the rover to spot. They expected particles from the CME would react with oxygen atoms in the Martian atmosphere, causing a faint glow in a very precise shade of green. Elise Knutsen, a physicist at the University of Oslo and lead author of the study, said the team needed to pick a strong CME to test their models. "When we saw the strength of this one, we estimated it could trigger an aurora bright enough for our instruments to detect," Dr Knutsen said. Days after the solar flare, two instruments on Perseverance recorded the exact shade of green in Mars' sky the researchers had predicted. Hannah Schunker, a physicist at the University of Newcastle who was not involved in the research, called the study a "neat observation". "It's a nice test of the Martian atmosphere models - and also a little more indirectly, it can be used to test our models of the coronal mass ejections," Dr Schunker said. The first visible-light image of a green aurora on Mars, left, taken by NASA's Perseverance rover. A comparison image, right, shows the night sky without the aurora but featuring the Martian moon Deimos. Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS/SSI Disappointingly for future space travellers, it's unlikely the aurora would be as dazzling as those seen on Earth. "Even on Earth, when we observe auroras, they often look quite different to the beautiful images we see," Dr Schunker said. "The photographic images that are taken of the auroras on Earth are often exposed for some minutes, so you get these really bright, vivid colours. Whereas if you see it with your eyes, it doesn't look quite so bright and quite so vivid, although still impressive." Mars, meanwhile, has fainter auroras to start with: lacking Earth's magnetism, the solar particles produce less light when they crash into the planet's atmosphere. "There might be a detectable change in the atmosphere, but it would not be strong and it would not be very obvious to the eye," Dr Schunker said. While it might not be the best light show in the Solar System, the research will be useful for better understanding solar weather from different angles, according to Dr Schunker. "Mars is not aligned with Earth at the moment. So we would not have experienced this particular CME," she said. We might be able to expect more observations like this in coming months, she said, thanks to "solar maximum": the point in its roughly 11-year cycle when the Sun produces the highest number of flares and sunspots. This is why people on Earth have seen so many auroras in the past year, often much further away from the poles than they can normally be spotted. "We're approaching, or we're in the middle of, solar maximum at the moment. We never know if we've reached solar maximum until we're on the other side of it," Dr Schunker said. - ABC
ABC News
15-05-2025
- Science
- ABC News
NASA's Perseverance rover spots first auroras from the surface of Mars
Auroras on Mars don't look quite like they do on Earth — but they still produce a weird and fascinating light show. NASA's Perseverance rover has snapped pictures of a visible-light aurora from the Martian surface. It's the first time an aurora has been observed from the surface of a planet other than Earth, and the first time visible auroras have been seen on Mars. The weak green light was photographed in March last year, with the pictures just released in a new study published in Science Advances. Auroras on Earth are formed by particles from the Sun interacting with the planet's magnetic field. But auroras have also been observed on nearly every other planet in the Solar System. The light show was first detected around Mars 20 years ago from space. Unlike Earth, Mars doesn't have a global magnetic field — instead, its magnetism is patchy and varies across the planet's surface. This means its auroras are caused by slightly different phenomena. One type of aurora Mars sees, called a solar energetic particle (SEP) aurora, comes from super-energised particles from the Sun hitting the Martian atmosphere directly. These have been observed in ultraviolet light before, from NASA's MAVEN instrument that orbits around Mars. But when the Sun emitted a solar flare and a coronal mass ejection (CME) in the direction of Mars last year, a team of researchers spotted an opportunity to see the auroras from the planet's surface. They scrambled to ready the Perseverance rover, which is trundling through Mars' Jezero crater. The team used computer models to predict when and where the aurora would be visible in the Martian sky, and what colour and intensity of light they could expect the rover to spot. They expected particles from the CME would react with oxygen atoms in the Martian atmosphere, causing a faint glow in a very precise shade of green. Elise Knutsen, a physicist at the University of Oslo and lead author of the study, said the team needed to pick a strong CME to test their models. 'When we saw the strength of this one, we estimated it could trigger an aurora bright enough for our instruments to detect,' Dr Knutsen said. Days after the solar flare, two instruments on Perseverance recorded the exact shade of green in Mars' sky the researchers had predicted. Hannah Schunker, a physicist at the University of Newcastle who wasn't involved in the research, called the study a "neat observation". "It's a nice test of the Martian atmosphere models — and also a little more indirectly, it can be used to test our models of the coronal mass ejections," Dr Schunker said. Disappointingly for future space travellers, it's unlikely the aurora would be as dazzling as those seen on Earth. "Even on Earth, when we observe auroras, they often look quite different to the beautiful images we see," Dr Schunker said. "The photographic images that are taken of the auroras on Earth are often exposed for some minutes, so you get these really bright, vivid colours. Whereas if you see it with your eyes, it doesn't look quite so bright and quite so vivid, although still impressive." Mars, meanwhile, has fainter auroras to start with: lacking Earth's magnetism, the solar particles produce less light when they crash into the planet's atmosphere. "There might be a detectable change in the atmosphere, but it would not be strong and it would not be very obvious to the eye," Dr Schunker said. While it might not be the best light show in the Solar System, the research will be useful for better understanding solar weather from different angles, according to Dr Schunker. "Mars is not aligned with Earth at the moment. So we would not have experienced this particular CME," she said. We might be able to expect more observations like this in coming months, she said, thanks to "solar maximum": the point in its roughly 11-year cycle when the Sun produces the highest number of flares and sunspots. This is why people on Earth have seen so many auroras in the past year, often much further away from the poles than they can normally be spotted. "We're approaching, or we're in the middle of, solar maximum at the moment. We never know if we've reached solar maximum until we're on the other side of it," Dr Schunker said.
