Well into its fifth year, the rover has now shot more than 500 movies of the clouds above it, including the first ground-based view of martian clouds shaped by gravity waves, researchers reported here this week at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. The shots are the best record made so far of a mysterious recurring belt of equatorial clouds known to influence the martian climate. Understanding these clouds will help inform estimates of ground ice depth and perhaps recurring slope lineae, potential flows of salty water on the surface, says John Moores, a planetary scientist at York University in Toronto, Canada, who led the study with his graduate student, Jake Kloos. “If we wish to understand the water story of Mars’s past,” Moores says, “we first need to [separate out] contributions from the present-day water cycle.”
WASHINGTON, DC — Lighter-toned bedrock that surrounds fractures and comprises high concentrations of silica — called “halos”— has been found in Gale crater on Mars, indicating that the planet had liquid water much longer than previously believed. The new finding is reported in a new paper published today in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.“The concentration of silica is very high at the centerlines of these halos,” said Jens Frydenvang, a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the University of Copenhagen and lead author of the new study. “What we’re seeing is that silica appears to have migrated between very old sedimentary bedrock and into younger overlying rocks. The goal of NASA’s Curiosity rover mission has been to find out if Mars was ever habitable, and it has been very successful in showing that Gale crater once held a lake with water that we would even have been able to drink, but we still don’t know how long this habitable environment endured. What this finding tells us is that, even when the lake eventually evaporated, substantial amounts of groundwater were present for much longer than we previously thought—thus further expanding the window for when life might have existed on Mars.”
NASA’s new algorithm to conserve Curiosity’s wheelsby Lee Cavendish, 30 June 2017The rough terrain of the Red Planet has produced problems for the Mars rover, but a new algorithm can now help reduce the effect
AbstractWe report the first in situ detection of boron on Mars. Boron has been detected in Gale crater at levels <0.05 wt % B by the NASA Curiosity rover ChemCam instrument in calcium-sulfate-filled fractures, which formed in a late-stage groundwater circulating mainly in phyllosilicate-rich bedrock interpreted as lacustrine in origin. We consider two main groundwater-driven hypotheses to explain the presence of boron in the veins: leaching of borates out of bedrock or the redistribution of borate by dissolution of borate-bearing evaporite deposits. Our results suggest that an evaporation mechanism is most likely, implying that Gale groundwaters were mildly alkaline. On Earth, boron may be a necessary component for the origin of life; on Mars, its presence suggests that subsurface groundwater conditions could have supported prebiotic chemical reactions if organics were also present and provides additional support for the past habitability of Gale crater.
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity has begun the steep ascent of an iron-oxide-bearing ridge that’s grabbed scientists’ attention since before the car-sized rover’s 2012 landing.“We’re on the climb now, driving up a route where we can access the layers we’ve studied from below,” said Abigail Fraeman, a Curiosity science-team member at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.“Vera Rubin Ridge” stands prominently on the northwestern flank of Mount Sharp, resisting erosion better than the less-steep portions of the mountain below and above it. The ridge, also called “Hematite Ridge,” was informally named earlier this year in honor of pioneering astrophysicist Vera Rubin.“As we skirted around the base of the ridge this summer, we had the opportunity to observe the large vertical exposure of rock layers that make up the bottom part of the ridge,” said Fraeman, who organized the rover’s ridge campaign. “But even though steep cliffs are great for exposing the stratifications, they’re not so good for driving up.”The ascent to the top of the ridge from a transition in rock-layer appearance at the bottom of it will gain about 213 feet (65 meters) of elevation — about 20 stories. The climb requires a series of drives totaling a little more than a third of a mile (570 meters). Before starting this ascent in early September, Curiosity had gained a total of about 980 feet (about 300 meters) in elevation in drives totaling 10.76 miles (17.32 kilometers) from its landing site to the base of the ridge.Curiosity’s telephoto observations of the ridge from just beneath it show finer layering, with extensive bright veins of varying widths cutting through the layers.“Now we’ll have a chance to examine the layers up close as the rover climbs,” Fraeman said.
Engineers have started testing a new way to use the Curiosity rover’s drill to bore into Martian rocks after a motor in the device stalled late last year, but ground teams are still months away from the first chance to resume drilling operations.The rover has not used its drill since Dec. 1, 2016, when engineers noticed a problem with the drill feed mechanism, a motor which is supposed to extend the drill bit to touch the surface of Martian rocks. Two fang-like contact posts on each side of the drill bit press on the rock for stability, then the drill feed motor pushes the bit onto the rock before percussive and rotating mechanisms start boring into the target to collect a powder sample.With the drill feed mechanism no longer reliably working, managers have decided to keep the drill bit in its extended position. That raises concerns over the stability of the drill while in use because the prong-like extensions on each side of the bit will no longer be in contact with the rock.Curiosity touched its drill bit directly onto a Martian rock Oct. 17, according to a press release from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The rover was commanded to press the drill bit downward, then applied smaller sideways forces, according to a statement.A force sensor took measurements during the test. Engineers want to avoid applying too much side force while the drill is in use to ensure the bit does not get stuck in the rock.“This is the first time we’ve ever placed the drill bit directly on a Martian rock without stabilizers,” said JPL’s Douglas Klein, chief engineer for the mission’s return-to-drilling development. “The test is to gain better understanding of how the force/torque sensor on the arm provides information about side forces.”
I can't find any version of Curiosity's traverse map more recent than sol 1830, which is 27 days out of date.It looks like it's not being updated any more. Does anybody know what the reason is?