2014 – The year of Mars Missions

#missiontomars #maven #mangalyaan #baslansdorp #methane 2014 was a year with its dose of plus and minuses, highs and lows and, as we near the last phase of 2014, we can look back on a few of these incidents that made us feel better while a few of these made us cry our hearts out praying to God Almighty that such incidents should never happen again.
On the bright side, the top of the list would naturally go to Mission Mars – Man is desperate to search out an alternate planet for migration because Planet Earth is saturated from all angles. Increase in population coupled with reduction in natural assets is forcing people to wonder what could be in store for us in another hundred years from now. Hence, focus is on the Red Planet Mars which is believed to have had life forms at some point of time in the past. MARS ONE Human Settlement on Mars –
The Netherlands-based non-profit organization Mars One of Bas Lansdorp has plans to send four people to the Red Planet in 2024 – these pioneers would set up human settlement on the Red Planet. It would be a one-way ticket and already over 200,000 have expressed their intention to sign up. As Bas Lansdorp, Mars One Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, has explained – water exists in the form of "water-ice" and the pioneers would have to generate oxygen and create a breathable environment. Nitrogen would come from the Martian atmosphere.
NASAs Curiosity rover – this robot is trudging along inch by inch on the rough terrain of Mars, it continues to send back to Earth exciting news once in a while – and, its latest one regarding the find of methane has made the expedition more interesting. Scientists believe that where there is methane, there should be life, it cannot be too far off.
MAVEN - early discoveries by NASA's newest Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission, has been revealing new facts – this Mars orbiter has found key features about the loss of the planet's atmosphere to space over time. MAVEN has entered its science phase on Nov. 16 and its findings indicate a new process by which the solar wind can penetrate deep into a planetary atmosphere.
MANGALYAAN - this is India’s entry into the Mars race. In September 2014, ISRO was on a high when it successfully launched the Mangalyaan or Mars Orbiter Mission or MOM. It is a low-cost Mars spacecraft in orbit around the red planet and it succeeded in its very first attempt thus entering into the elite club of three nations.
So far, European, American and Russian probes have either orbited or landed on the planet – that to. Not on the first tempt. The first Chinese Mars mission, called Yinghuo-1, failed in 2011 and, in 1998, the Japanese mission ran out of fuel and was lost.

NASAs Curiosity rover finds a 96-mile-wide crater, possibly a dried up lake, on Mars

NASAs Curiosity is on track to solve the mystery of whether Mars, the Red Planet, ever had water on it. Hence, its latest find of a huge 96-mile (154-Km) wide crater tends to lend credence to the theory that Mars indeed had water, plenty of it, in the form of lakes.
Scientists have discovered stacks of rocks that contain sediments that appear to have been deposited by water and these are inclined toward the center of the crater – this now reveals a three-mile (5 km) mound called Mount Sharp. Therefore, it is quite possible that Mount Sharp was not there during a period of time roughly 3.5 billion years ago when the crater was filled with water.
Of course, researchers are baffled as to why Mount Sharp that stands about 3 miles (5 kilometers) tall with its lower flanks exposing hundreds of rock layers, sits in a crater.
From these latest findings, a conclusion can be drawn that billions of years ago, a lake once filled this huge crater and as NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity continues to dig up new data, they bolster the thinking that the Red planet was most like the Earth in the solar system and was suitable for microbial life.
These new findings combine more than two years of data collected by the rover since its sky-crane landing inside Gale Crater in August 2012. NAA has plans to send humans to Mars by 2030 and results of such studies could throw up probable areas that would need to be focused upon.

Planet Earth is too crowded – let us send message to Mars and go there

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of NASA's Mariner 4 mission to Mars, plans have been chalked out to use Radio telescopes on Earth to beam out 90,000 ‘hello’ messages to Mars – it would commemorate the launch 50 years ago of the first robotic probe to the Red planet.
The program has been developed by a US space funding company called Uwingu – the intention is not just to say ‘hello’ to whosoever may be listening out there but also to raise funds for its other projects. The program of Uwingu is called "Beam Me To Mars" and participants can send digital radio-wave transmissions of their names, messages and pictures to Mars for fees ranging from $5 to $99.
As per information, the transmission would travel at the speed of light and the messages will reach Mars within 15 minutes and it would be repeated twice.
The novel program has attracted a number of celebrities including actor and comedian Seth Green and actor George Takei, who portrayed Mr. Sulu on the television series "Star Trek."
As far as Man’s attachment with Mars is concerned, Mariner 4 had successful flown-by Mars and sent back the first ever pictures of the planet's surface – subsequently, over 20 other spacecraft have successfully visited, orbited or landed on the planet's surface. NASA at present has three orbiters and two rovers working on Mars – one of these is Curiosity. The European Space Agency and India each have one Mars orbiter.
With every passing day, our Planet Earth is getting more and more crowded and we would like to migrate to another world where there is no violence and where peace reigns supreme – our eyes have been set on Mars and efforts have been undertaken by various agencies like Mars One to train would-be astronauts to shift base to the unknown plant and rough terrain and set up a new civilization. The take-off of Mars One is fixed tentatively for 2023, when the first group of 4 men and women will land on Mars.