Russia could vacate International Space Station by 2024

The International Space Station launched in 1998 has been in operation since 2000. Scientists and astronauts from different countries have worked in this sky lab located 250 miles above Earth. In spite of difference in policies and ideologies, this space lab is a venture where the USA and Russia joined hands with a common objective to promote space research. They have carried out studies on various aspects of working in space in order to evaluate the effects of alien environments on humans. They worked on animals, plants, other living organism, and as many as nine countries worked on the ISS. Over the past more than two decades, they have conducted space walks, repaired portions of the space station from the outside and have participated in festivals like Christmas.

It seems Russia has taken a decision to dissociate itself from the International Space Station after 2024. It wants to focus on creating its own orbital outpost. This has been reported in the media. Russia to quit International Space Station ‘after 2024.’ Obviously, the cooperative program between Europe, the United States, Russia, Canada, and Japan would no longer exist. In the course of an ISS conference for NASA in Washington, an official said they did not want the US-Russia space relationship to end. Space agencies all over the world are trying to break new frontiers in space. They have the Moon and Mars on their radars. With a combination of robotics and artificial intelligence at their command, they want to explore unknown territories – they are in search of natural resources available on other planets.

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NASA finds huge underground ice deposit larger than New Mexico on Mars

Here is good news for Mars Mission - a new study from NASA has revealed the presence of a huge underground ice deposit on Mars which is more extensive in area than the state of New Mexico. The deposit holds about as much water as that in Lake Superior, the largest of the Great Lakes.
This discovery is based on data from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Scientists had examined part of Mars' Utopia Planitia region, in the mid-northern latitudes. They used the ground-penetrating Shallow Subsurface Radar (SHARD) instrument that was on board the MRO.
This has been reported in zeenews.india.com dated 23 November 2016.

As per initial estimates of NASA, the deposit ranges in thickness from about 260 feet (80 meters) to about 560 feet (170 meters) and its composition is 50 to 85 percent water ice, mixed with dust or larger rocky particles. It is presumed that this deposit formed as snowfall accumulating into an ice sheet mixed with dust during a period in Mars history when the planet's axis was more tilted than it is today.
The ice deposit is covered by just 3 feet to 33 feet (1 to 10 meters) of soil.
Today, Mars has an axial tilt of 25 degrees, thereby it accumulates large amounts of water ice at the poles. Incidentally, Utopia Planitia is a basin with a diameter of about 2,050 miles (3,300 kilometers). It was the result of a major impact early in Mars' history and subsequently filled. NASA had sent the Viking 2 Lander to a site near the center of Utopia in 1976.


Image courtesy wikimediacommons.org


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NASA developing hopping drones to explore Martian caves for human settlement

#NASA #Mars #humansettlement Mars is beckoning humans and, while preparations are on by different agencies to send humans to the Red Planet Mars, NASA has gone one step ahead and is developing hopping drones - they will be programmed to go into caves on Mars and try to zero in on probable locations where humans can have their settlements.
This has been reported in dailymail.co.uk dated 30 December 2015.

The drones will be capable to hop into caves and along 'lava tunnels' beneath the surface of Mars which will be used to find the first human home on the red planet.
NASA has awarded funding to scientists and engineers who have been asked to develop a robotic scout that will be able to make short flights above the Martian surface before descending into caves. NASA hopes that it may be possible for astronauts to shelter in the subterranean world that exists within a networks of lava tubes on Mars. That will protect them from harmful radiation.
And - in order to carry out this exercise and explore these tunnels, which had been formed billions of years ago, the team of researchers are developing an autonomous drone that can pick its way through the darkness. In other words, it will hop from location to location by using a combination of a spring and gas powered thrusters.
These drones would need to be able to navigate itself through the pitch black, rocky environment after first lowering down up to 1,000ft through one of the many 'skylights' that have been noticed on the surface of Mars.
Work on developing such drones have started by engineers at private space company Astrobotic Technology and researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

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NASAs Mars Curiosity Rover finds Mount Sharp was once a huge lake

Mount Sharp on Mars was once home to huge lakes that remained for up to 10,000 years at a time - long enough to support life. This is the latest discovery by NASAs Curiosity Rover that had landed in Gale Crater in August 2012. The rock formations that have been photographed by the rover would suggest that long ago a transient water system of deltas and lakes had dominated the landscape of Gale Crater.
This has been reported in dailymail.co.uk dated 9 October 2015.

The images show evidence of sediments transported southward by shallow streams to the boundary of an ancient lake. It may be recalled that recently NASA scientists had confirmed that current water flows on Mars.
As explained by scientists - the Gale crater floor today is the lowest topographic depression for over 1,000-Km in any direction, including the northern plains. It seems water collected there, in surface and subsurface reservoirs. And that had been happening for a geologically and perhaps biologically relevant period of time.
Moreover, observations from the rover tend to suggest that a series of long-lived streams and lakes existed at some point between about 3.8 to 3.3 billion years ago. These delivered sediment that slowly built up the lower layers of Mount Sharp.
Obviously, a conclusion can be reached that there were ancient lakes on Mars.
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Martians getting curious - NASAs Curiosity rover has been on Mars now for 3-years

#NASA #CuriosityRover #Mars NASA's Mars rover Curiosity had landed on the Red Planet Mars on 5 August 2012 and, has now been an integral part of the Martian landscape – that must have caused furrows on the foreheads of Martians up there. Anyway, Curiosity has trundled across the Red Planet for three very productive and eventful years and has sent back useful information.
This has been reported in space.com dated 5 August 2015.

The six-wheeled robot named Curiosity had a dramatic and unprecedented touchdown on the Martian surface with the aid of a rocket-powered "sky crane" that lowered the 1-ton rover gently by using cables. And, once on ground, the robot set out on its mission of whether its immediate environs — a 96-mile-wide (154 kilometers) crater named Gale — could ever have supported microbial life.
Based on the initial findings, scientists concluded that Gale Crater could have supported a potentially habitable lake-and-stream or water system for long stretches of time — perhaps for millions of years at a time.
The progress has been slow and NASA has to keep requesting for more and more time to carry on its investigations – Curiosity is, after all, a robot and it has to be guided on occasions to perform intriguing tasks that had not been visualized earlier.
Anyway, the man-and-machine team is carrying out work for the future of mankind and needs to get full support and cooperation from all quarters.
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Kerala girl excited about the one-way ticket to Mars from Mars One project

#mars #kerala #manonmars #MarsOne 19-year-old Kerala girl Shradha Prasad from Palakkad has cleared the initial hurdles to get a one-way ticket to the Red Planet Mars through the Mars One project of Netherlands – she is the only candidate from India as reported in timesofindia.indiatimes.com dated 17 February 2015.
She is, naturally, upbeat about clearing the fourth round of the astronaut selection process. This has been confirmed by Mars One authorities.
She is the only child of her parents and is a student of mechanical engineering student of Coimbatore's Amrita University.
Incidentally, there are three other Indians who have been selected but two of them are based in the US and the third one is from Dubai.
It will now depend on how she prepares for the rigorous tests before getting selected in the elite 24-member crew that will be selected to go to Mars.
There we a total of 202,586 applicants, and 100 of them have qualified for the third round – 24 of them will make it to the Mars-One for the mission.
Mars-One is a non-profit organization of Bas Lansdorp and has its base in the Netherlands. Its objective is to set up a permanent human settlement on Mars by offering a one-way trip to those selected. Under the current plan, crews of four will depart every two years beginning 2024 and the first of these flights is expected to lift-off in 2018.