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The Earth and moon imaged by Tianwen-1 on July 27, 2020, when it was 750,000 miles away from its planet of origin. (Image: © CNSA) China's Tianwen-1 spacecraft captured a stunning view of the Earth and moon before making its first trajectory correction maneuver on the long journey to Mars. The mission consists of an orbiter, entry vehicle and rover. The spacecraft will begin orbiting the Red Planet in February 2021, and then prepare for the rover's landing attempt, which is expected in April or May. Tianwen-1 launched on July 23 on a Long March 5 rocket and completed the final burn to send it on a trajectory to Mars 36 minutes later. On July 27, while the spacecraft was about 750,000 miles (1.2 million kilometers) away from Earth, an optical navigation sensor imaged the crescent-shaped Earth and the smaller, more distant moon. The black-and-white image reveals a few apparent features of Earth, against the stark background of an otherwise vast, black ocean. At 7:00 p.m. EDT (2300 GMT) on August 1, Tianwen-1 fired its engine for 20 seconds to optimize the spacecraft's trajectory. When the maneuver occured, Tianwen-1 was roughly 1,860,000 miles (3 million km) away from Earth after 230 hours of flight. The burn was a vital test of the vehicle's propulsion system, which it will rely on to correct its trajectory and slow the spacecraft to allow it to enter Mars orbit. The spacecraft will make four or five such adjustments before reaching Mars, Geng Yan, an official with the China National Space Administration, told Chinese media. The second such correction will be made before October. Tianwen-1 is in good condition, communicating well with the ground, according to the update from the China Lunar Exploration Project. The orbiter carries high- and medium-resolution cameras designed for studying and mapping Mars. The image of the Earth and moon, however, was taken by an optical navigation sensor that is normally pointing toward Mars. In the days following launch, a NASA asteroid camera picked up the spacecraft moving against the star field. The far side of the moon and distant Earth, as imaged by an experimental Chinese spacecraft called Chang'e-5 T1 in 2014. (Image credit: CNSA) Other Chinese spacecraft have imaged the Earth and moon together previously. Chang'e-5 T1, an experimental mission launched in 2014 to test lunar sample-return technologies, took a stunning image of the far side of the moon and a distant Earth. The Queqiao relay satellite for the Chang'e-4 lunar far-side mission has also imaged the pair from the second Earth-moon Lagrange point beyond the moon, as did the Longjiang-2 microsatellite that launched with Queqiao. Fengyun-4A, a weather satellite in geostationary orbit, has also captured the pair in a single shot. Tianwen-1, as well as the United Arab Emirates' Hope mission and NASA's Perseverance rover, are now all en route to Mars and will arrive in February.
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China's first fully homegrown Mars mission is on its way to the Red Planet. The Tianwen-1 mission launched atop a Long March 5 rocket from Hainan Island's Wenchang Satellite Launch Center this morning (July 23) at 12:41 a.m. EDT (0441 GMT). Tianwen-1 consists of an orbiter and a lander/rover duo, a combination of craft that had never before launched together toward the Red Planet. The ambition of Tianwen-1 is especially striking given that it's China's first stab at a full-on Mars mission. (The nation did launch a Red Planet orbiter called Yinghuo-1 in November 2011, but the spacecraft flew piggyback with Russia's Phobos-Grunt mission. And that launch failed, leaving the probes trapped in Earth orbit.) "Tianwen-1 is going to orbit, land and release a rover all on the very first try, and coordinate observations with an orbiter," team members wrote in a recent Nature Astronomy paper outlining the mission's main objectives. "No planetary missions have ever been implemented in this way. If successful, it would signify a major technical breakthrough." If all goes according to plan, Tianwen-1 will arrive at the Red Planet in February 2021. The lander/rover pair will touch down on the Martian surface two to three months later somewhere within Utopia Planitia, a large plain in the planet's Northern Hemisphere that also welcomed NASA's Viking 2 lander in 1976. The solar-powered rover will then spend about 90 Martian days, or sols, studying its surroundings in detail. (One sol is roughly 40 minutes longer than an Earth day.) It will do so with six different science instruments, which the Nature Astronomy paper identified as the Multispectral Camera, Terrain Camera, Mars-Rover Subsurface Exploration Radar, Mars Surface Composition Detector, Mars Magnetic Field Detector and Mars Meteorology Monitor. The orbiter will eventually settle into a polar elliptical orbit that takes it as close to the Martian surface as 165 miles (265 kilometers) and as far away as 7,456 miles (12,000 km). The spacecraft will relay information home from the rover and collect science data of its own using seven science instruments: two cameras, the Mars-Orbiting Subsurface Exploration Radar, Mars Mineralogy Spectrometer, Mars Magnetometer, Mars Ion and Neutral Particle Analyzer and Mars Energetic Particle Analyzer. A Chinese Long March 5 rocket launches the China National Space Administration's Tianwen-1 Mars rover, lander and orbiter from Wenchang Satellite Launch Center on Hainan Island on July 23, 2020. (Image credit: CCTV/China National Space Agency) The lander apparently will not do any substantive science work, serving as a delivery system for the rover. That wheeled explorer, by the way, tips the scales at about 530 lbs. (240 kilograms), making it twice as heavy as China's line of moon-exploring Yutu rovers. Overall, Tianwen-1 aims to take Mars' measure in a variety of ways. "Specifically, the scientific objectives of Tianwen-1 include: (1) to map the morphology and geological structure, (2) to investigate the surface soil characteristics and water-ice distribution, (3) to analyze the surface material composition, (4) to measure the ionosphere and the characteristics of the Martian climate and environment at the surface, and (5) to perceive the physical fields (electromagnetic, gravitational) and internal structure of Mars," mission team members wrote in the Nature Astronomy paper. The paper also explained the mission's name: Tianwen means "questions to heaven," and it was taken from the title of a poem by Qu Yuan, who lived from about 340 to 278 BCE. Tianwen-1 was the second Mars mission to get off the ground in the last four days. The United Arab Emirates' Hope orbiter launched on Sunday (July 19) to study the Martian atmosphere and climate, streaking into space from Japan atop an H-2A rocket. Like Tianwen-1, Hope (also known as the Emirates Mars Mission) is historic: It's the first interplanetary mission ever developed by an Arab state. And the summer of Mars isn't over yet. NASA's next Mars rover, the 2,300-lb. (1,040 kg) Perseverance, is scheduled to lift off on July 30. This clumping of launches is dictated by orbital dynamics; Earth and Mars line up properly for interplanetary missions for just a few weeks once every 26 months. (The European-Russian ExoMars rover was supposed to join the launch party this summer, but it suffered technical issues and now must wait until 2022.)
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This photo of Mars taken by NASA's Curiosity rover on Nov. 1 shows a bleak landscape of hills and hazy crater mountains. The huge ridge in the background is the rim of Gale Crater, which surrounds Curiosity for about 50 miles (80 kilometers) in every direction.
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This movie is no extraordinary i say, but for the purpose of entertaining i'd say it's a good movie. The first human born on Mars travels to Earth for the first time, experiencing the wonders of the planet through fresh eyes. He embarks on an adventure with a street smart girl to discover how he came to be. Would love to read your opinions for those who already watched it.
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When the sun huffs and puffs, its solar wind blows part of Mars' atmosphere out to space. That's the key finding announced at a NASA press conference on Thursday by researchers working on the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission. The MAVEN mission's spacecraft has been circling the Red Planet for over a year now to study its atmosphere and determine how so much of it was lost over its history, transforming it from a once wet and warm Earth-like planet to the cold, dry place of so many sci-fi storylines. Figuring out what happened to the Martian atmosphere is a big deal because it helps scientists understand why some planets can or can't host life while others like Mars go from potential beach destination to inhospitable. The culprit in the loss of Mars' atmosphere is the solar wind, a stream of mostly protons and electrons flowing from our star's atmosphere at a speed of about a million miles per hour. The solar wind also carries a magnetic field that can generate an electric field as it flows past Mars. This electric field is then capable of accelerating electrically charged gas ions in the planet's upper atmosphere and shooting them out into space, similar to the way a baseball might be launched out of the field of play when a batter hits a high foul ball or home run. MAVEN has eight sensors that gather data on Mars' upper atmosphere and its interaction with the sun and solar wind. According to MAVEN measurements, the solar wind strips away gas in the Martian atmosphere at a rate of about 100 grams (roughly a quarter pound) every second. "Like the theft of a few coins from a cash register every day, the loss becomes significant over time," said Bruce Jakosky, MAVEN principal investigator at the University of Colorado-Boulder. "We've seen that the atmospheric erosion increases significantly during solar storms, so we think the loss rate was much higher billions of years ago when the sun was young and more active." Jakosky added that geology on Mars seems to show that water was abundant on the planet until about 3.7 billion years ago, leading the researchers to hypothesize that more active solar storms stripped away most of the atmosphere during a period sometime between 3.7 billion and 4.2 billion years ago. The fact that the sun is less active and prone to big solar wind storms today is just one reason Jakosky says we shouldn't worry too much about something similar happening to Earth's atmosphere anytime soon. The other factor that protects our planet from turning into a dead, frozen hellscape is Earth's rocking magnetic field that shields us from the brunt of the solar wind's wrath. Mars has no such magnetic field to protect its upper atmosphere from the ion-stripping effects of the solar wind. "Understanding what happened to the Mars atmosphere will inform our knowledge of the dynamics and evolution of any planetary atmosphere," NASA's John Grunsfeld said in a news release. "Learning what can cause changes to a planet's environment from one that could host microbes at the surface to one that doesn't is important to know, and is a key question that is being addressed in NASA's journey to Mars." Speaking of that trip to Mars, though, Jakosky added that dreams of someday releasing carbon dioxide sequestered in Mars to aid global warming and make the planet more like Earth will prove more difficult in light of the new findings. That's because Mars' carbon dioxide is "gone, it's blown away," he said. Maybe that's a good thing. Someone call Elon Musk and tell him to put away those nukes he wanted to use to kickstart the process. Source http://www.cnet.com/news/mars-atmosphere-was-likely-blown-away-by-the-sun/
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So i came across this image from the mars rover as you can see, there seems to be steel wheels on the surface, in the attached images i have resized the section of interest, hope you enjoy. Below you will find the original image from NASA http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/msss/00729/mcam/0729ML0031250020305133E01_DXXX.jpg
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For forty years now the -- sending astronauts to Mars has only been no victory it's dangerous it's complicated from governments it would cost hundreds of billions of dollars. But now comes Dennis Tito will -- -- the first space tourist in 2001. When we bought arrived from the Russian space agency so I just came back from paradise -- -- he's joined a team called inspiration lower than says it could launch a crew of two people married couple. To fly around Mars and safely back. He says the trip would take a year and a half and could happen by the year 2018. That's a great. Step for humanity. And I think it would be really exciting and not only -- our generation. You know younger generations as well. Here's the idea crazy lot of people think so but Tito says his group would use privately built spacecraft that are already being developed. The money would come from private investors who love and adventure and it would not be a government project. Private enterprise might. Be a little bit more flexible. And in this case it it's not a commercial. Mission it's a Philanthropic mission inspiration Mars would you do it.
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A Trip to Mars -- Without Leaving Russia A simulated mission to Mars is drawing to a close in Moscow after 520 days. The test astronauts will be weak and pale, but an international team of researchers has learned a number of vital medical lessons. Now German scientists hope to start a more modern test of manned space flight near. Diego Urbina, a 26-year-old Italian with Colombian roots, and five other human guinea pigs will climb out of their mock Russian spaceship on Friday in Moscow. When they do -- rather pale after almost one and a half years without sunlight -- one of the longest isolation experiments in the world will be over. Urbina and his colleagues have simulated a mission to Mars and back. Cut off from the outside world, the crew received radio messages from ground control. Sometimes the messages arrived after a 20-minute delay, just as if their spaceship were floating through space, millions of miles away. Of course, the six pseudo-astronauts never really left the planet. But when they emerge on Friday at the Moscow-based Institute for Biomedical Problems (IBMP), the safety measures will imitate measures needed for a real mission to Mars. Only hand-picked television crews from Russia, Western Europe and China will be allowed to film the end of the experiment. Reporters even had to submit a medical certificate of good health, because the test subjects' immune systems are thought to be so weakened that they won't even withstand the pathogens of an otherwise harmless cold. Health Dividends on Earth Just under 17 months ago, researchers closed the hatch of the earth-bound Mars module, leaving three men from Russia -- as well as one each from France, Italy and China -- inside. The crew wasn't exposed to weightlessness or dangerous cosmic radiation, so the mission will produce only modest findings when it comes to long-term space missions. But medical scientists in Germany are still excited. Their curiosity mainly involves efforts to combat terrestrial afflictions. "For example," says Jens Titze, a medical researcher at the University of Erlangen in Bavaria, "for the first time in a long-term study, we were able to establish that consuming too much salt stimulates high blood pressure." Titze gradually reduced the daily salt ration provided to Urbina and his colleagues in the Mars module and followed how their blood pressure dropped in parallel. Titze hopes that having less salt in their diets will extend the lives of many thousands of people with high blood pressure. "In the United States," he says, "a projected 50,000 heart attacks could be prevented each year, saving the US health-care system $10 billion to $24 billion." Researchers at Berlin's Charité Hospital also tested a new temperature sensor. The device, attached to the forehead, aims to monitor patients who have recently undergone surgery, to recognize dangerous fevers early on. "Until now, that was always done with rectal probes," explains Hanns-Christian Gunga, a specialist in space medicine. "It wasn't particularly popular." Such space research makes it possible to keep young, extremely fit test subjects essentially in a cage. The scientists don't mind. "Otherwise," Titze says, "we only observe sick people." Germans are planning the next space-travel coup -- this time in Porz, a neighborhood of Cologne, instead of Moscow. The German Aerospace Center (DLR) is building a test facility like no other in the world. Test subjects selected according to criteria similar to those in Russia will be closed off from the outside world before long, to simulate space flight. The €30 million ($41 million) project is called "envihab." It consists of five interlinked modules covering approximately 3,500 square meters (38,000 square feet). It even makes a human centrifuge available to researchers. The project should launch in two years. Test subjects in Cologne will spend 60 days in a horizontal position as they simulate a space flight to an asteroid as part of a mission dubbed "Osteogeneration." Researchers hope to learn more about why bones atrophy as people age. With such projects, the facility has attracted interest from potential partners that wouldn't otherwise be suspected of harboring cosmic ambitions. The health insurance company Barmer GEK, and the Asklepios hospital group, want to collaborate with the DLR. 'Something Unexpected' German scientists are also pleased that they will no longer have to rely on the now somewhat antiquated "Mars500" module in Moscow. "With our health-related research," Titze explains, "we had a focus that didn't quite fit with our Russian partners The corruption and arbitrary state power they confronted in Russia also bothered the Germans. Russian customs officials, for example, delayed the processing of a shipment of German cooling devices by five months. The process was only set back on track after the German ambassador intervened. "If our truck full of research instruments is stuck on the border for 10 days in the Russian winter," Titze complains, "it isn't all that conducive to the reliability of our planning." In contrast, after 520 strictly regimented days, 1,000 urine samples and 1,500 ready-made meals, test subject Diego Urbina can hardly wait to finally get out from under the thumb of the researchers in Moscow. "The thing I missed the most," the Italian says, "was simply having something unexpected happen." Source and for more Pic´s DJ
