The solar wind, the million-mile-per-hour stream of charged particles blasted away from the sun, is slowly but surely stripping away Mars’ atmosphere and likely played a major role in turning the red planet from a habitable world in the distant past into the dry, frozen wasteland seen today, scientists said Thursday.
Space station commander Scott Kelly and Kjell Lindgren carried out a tedious seven-hour 16-minute spacewalk Wednesday, installing cables needed for a new docking mechanism, mounting insulation panels on a physics experiment to improve cooling and lubricating the latching mechanism of the station’s robot arm.
The first scientific review of data collected during the New Horizons flyby of Pluto describe a small world with a thin but surprisingly complex atmosphere and a variety of surface features, ranging from ancient impact craters to geologically recent glaciers and other structures that reflect widespread resurfacing.
The discovery of intermittent flows of liquid water on Mars, announced with great fanfare Monday, makes the red planet the leading candidate for the near-term discovery of extraterrestrial life in the form of fossilized microbes or even existing microorganisms, NASA’s chief scientist told lawmakers Tuesday.
Researchers using data from a NASA satellite orbiting Mars said Monday they have found clear evidence of intermittent flows of salty water on the red planet, the first “unambiguous” signs of liquid water on the frigid world and a possible indicator of microbe-friendly environments below the surface.
Three space station crew members — two short timers completing a 10-day flight and a veteran cosmonaut who has logged a world record 879 days aloft over five missions — undocked from the International Space Station and returned to Earth Friday, landing safely on the steppe of Kazakhstan to close out a problem-free flight.
© 1999-2024 Spaceflight Now Inc