You have to see this incredible feature on Mars, showing some of the best High-Res photos and milestones from the mission. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/12/09/science/space/curiosity-rover-28-months-on-mars.html As you look through the images, remember that you are looking at another world. It feels foreign, yet oddly familiar. You almost want to reach out and just grab a handful of sand. It makes you realize that we are not the center of the Universe. There are likely Billions of worlds similar to Mars, with Dunes and Soil and Skies and Mountains, except those world may not be so barren. They may be lush and alive, dominated...
In a press conference yesterday, NASA officials revealed the latest data from the Curiosity rover mission on Mars. The data shows that the Rover’s current location, at the base of Mount Sharp in the Gale Crater, was once deep underwater, part of a vast lake filling the entire crater. The results suggest that ancient Mars had a climate that could sustain large lakes across the planet over millions of years. “If our hypothesis for Mount Sharp holds up, it challenges the notion that warm and wet conditions were transient, local, or only underground on Mars,” said Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity deputy...
After yesterday’s scrubbed launch due to valve issues, the Orion spacecraft has launched on its first full test flight aboard a Delta IV rocket. This is the first step for humanity to reach beyond the Moon, and the Orion craft will eventually carry astronauts Watching it live and seeing everyone in the space flight community on twitter talking about it and posting pictures really makes you feel like a part of the mission itself. I feel like I’m there in mission control along with the NASA staff, and having followed the progress of the mission for so long it feels...
Twenty Years of exoplanet research has seen incredible advances in detecting planets orbiting distant stars, as well as their size, orbit period, orbit distance, and even atmospheric composition. But the next step in understanding exoplanets is to learn about their magnetic fields. We know that many exoplanets should have magnetic fields. It makes sense, since nearly every world in our own solar system has some sort of magnetism. But for the first time, an international team of Astronomers, led by Kristina Kislyakova of the Space Research Institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, have discovered a way to detect magnetic fields...
Vesta is the 2nd-largest Asteroid in the well known asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. 525 Km in diameter, it is very big for an asteroid. If it was much bigger we would call it a dwarf planet. The Dawn Spacecraft, launched in 2007, stopped by Vesta in 2011 and stuck with it until 2012 as it orbited the sun. We are still seeing the results of that rendezvous, and just recently NASA released a complete map of the surface features of Vesta. It’s amazing to see so many interesting surface features on such a small world. Geologic...
It’s true, Mars just had what we call a Meteor Storm. This is an event that, on Earth, only happens once every few hundred years, and the one that Mars just had was more intense than anything Earth has experienced in recorded history. This event happened because of a close Martian fly-by of comet C/2013 A1 Sliding Spring. On October 19th around 2:30pm EDT the comet came within 140,000 Km of Mars. This is incredibly close in Astronomical terms, being less than half the distance to the Moon and comparable to the total distance I’ve driven my car in the...
Over the past month I’ve been developing a new podcast entitled ‘What’s the Latest?’ Each show a particular topic in Astronomy is discussed from its discovery, through history, all the way up to the latest news and developments. Also at the end some big questions are asked and future developments are discussed. The first podcast will air Monday, April 15th, on Astronomy FM after York Universe, but if you’d like to hear the show before then, it is live here on RyanMarciniak.com. You can find it by clicking on ‘Podcasts.’ The podcast will air on a biweekly basis. If there...
