Yet another brilliant addition to JPL's 'Mars in a minute' video for all my readers who still don't understand why its such a big deal for Curiosity and other missions operating at Mars. Enjoy!
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
The 44th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference
Its March and that can only mean one thing; the annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) 2013 is here! This conference is important to all of us space geeks because its where all planetary scientists come together to discuss the latest in researches into the inner workings of the planetary bodies and other objects in our solar system. An amazing amalgam of the Earth sciences, engineering, astronomy and public outreach, the LPSC is as good as it gets in terms of a hot bed for new discoveries and insights into our solar system.
One of the most wonderful things about the LPSC is its generous publication of extremely informative abstracts which actually look more like mini-papers than abstracts per se. The most anticipated papers (atleast for me) would be from Curiosity this year given the mission's importance as a flagship mission and the amount of data returned over the last 200 sols. This year is especially interesting as the conference planners are becoming more social than ever before; a facebook and twitter page are available as well as a list of microbloggers who will tweet all the latest from the proceedings. I only follow one blogger and that's Planetary Society's ever esteemed Emily Lakdawalla (she has written a post on the website's blog about the whole conference; be sure to follow her on twitter @elakdawalla for excellent tidbits). There is also a youth program somewhere which helps to highlight the commitment these men and women of science have made to help bring pure science to the public.
Though I won't be attending, I'm definitely going through lists abstracts on Curiosity's mission. There's so much I can hardly breathe! I'll select one or two and maybe talk about them on the blog while we wait for Curiosity to resume her science ops which according to the latest press release should happen by the end of this week.
The conference is already halfway through (it runs up to Friday this week). Already there have been two video press briefings on the discoveries made by two missions, one of them being Curiosity which you can read about here. It talks about the observation by Mastcam and the DAN instruments of hydrated minerals in the rock veins that the rover encountered on entering the Yellowknife bay area.
For the curious ones, go to the conferences site here to experience so much more on the absolute fine cutting edge of planetary exploration! Onwards!
One of the most wonderful things about the LPSC is its generous publication of extremely informative abstracts which actually look more like mini-papers than abstracts per se. The most anticipated papers (atleast for me) would be from Curiosity this year given the mission's importance as a flagship mission and the amount of data returned over the last 200 sols. This year is especially interesting as the conference planners are becoming more social than ever before; a facebook and twitter page are available as well as a list of microbloggers who will tweet all the latest from the proceedings. I only follow one blogger and that's Planetary Society's ever esteemed Emily Lakdawalla (she has written a post on the website's blog about the whole conference; be sure to follow her on twitter @elakdawalla for excellent tidbits). There is also a youth program somewhere which helps to highlight the commitment these men and women of science have made to help bring pure science to the public.
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| Lunar and Planetary Science Conference 2013 |
Though I won't be attending, I'm definitely going through lists abstracts on Curiosity's mission. There's so much I can hardly breathe! I'll select one or two and maybe talk about them on the blog while we wait for Curiosity to resume her science ops which according to the latest press release should happen by the end of this week.
The conference is already halfway through (it runs up to Friday this week). Already there have been two video press briefings on the discoveries made by two missions, one of them being Curiosity which you can read about here. It talks about the observation by Mastcam and the DAN instruments of hydrated minerals in the rock veins that the rover encountered on entering the Yellowknife bay area.
For the curious ones, go to the conferences site here to experience so much more on the absolute fine cutting edge of planetary exploration! Onwards!
Saturday, March 16, 2013
The Mount
Just when I wanted to start fooling around with mastcam raw images, out pops this gorgeous sol 45 view of the more than 5km high Mount Sharp aka Aeolis Mons on the mission's website!
As you may notice there is a bit of a problem when it comes to discerning details under natural colour on Mars. Everything just seems... beige with no diversity in shade. In fact, on the scientist's side, the natural colour reveals very little about something on Mars. So to reveal a little more detail in this beige nightmare, the picture is usually white-balanced to make the scene look like its under a more balanced, Earth-like setting.
There is a lot of compensation on the blue side of the spectrum hence the colour of the sky. You can even clearly see colour differences in the rocks that make up the lower slopes. These are more ancient, Noachian era rocks that should contain more smectite like at John Klein. As you move up the slope towards the lighter-toned rocks we should be seeing more sulphate rich content as we move into the more acidic Hesperian era of Mars and finally the more modern, arid Amazonian rock at the summit. Welcome to Mars' central library of history! Or natural history for that matter!
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| True colour image of Mount Sharp taken by Curiosity's 100mm Mastcam. Click the picture to see the full size version. (NASA/JPL/MSSS) |
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| White-balanced version. Click to see a full size. (NASA/JPL/MSSS) |