NASA’s InSight lander has started providing a daily Mars weather report everyone can see. The American space agency has created a dedicated web page on the NASA InSight mission website to share that information.
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Driving Distances on Mars and the Moon: Out-of-This-World-Records
This chart, prepared by NASA illustrates comparisons among the driving distances by various wheeled vehicles on the surface of the planetary bodies other than Earth (as of February 13, 2019, only the moon and Mars). Opportunity rover, which declared dead after record-breaking 15-years on the Martian surface also holds the off-Earth roving distance record after accruing 45.16 kilometers (28.06 miles) of driving on Mars.
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It’s time to go home, Oppy by Rostislav Shekhovtsov
An amazing work by the Uzbek artist Rostislav Shekhovtsov, titled “It’s time to go home, Oppy”. The digital painting shows two future astronauts finding the dust-covered Opportunity rover on Mars.
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Opportunity Rover’s first and last images from the Martian surface
The first and the last images of NASA’s Opportunity rover from the Martian surface. The first photo (on the left) was acquired on Sol 1 (at approximately 14:58:27 Mars local solar time on January 25, 2004). The last photo (on the right) was taken on Sol 5111 (on June 10, 2018 ), before the rover entered hibernation due to
Watch – NASA Explorers: Permafrost
In this episode of NASA Explorers (Season 1 Episode 7), the scientists go back in time – by going underground. In the Arctic, a frozen layer of soil – permafrost, the “permanently” frozen earth – trapped dead plants and animals for thousands of years. As the climate warms, that soil is beginning to thaw, releasing carbon dioxide and methane – two harmful greenhouse gases which contribute to global warming.
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Terraforming Mars – why it’s so hard
If we want to colonize Mars in the future, it would be better for us to terraform the planet, in order to make the colonization process safer and sustainable. But, terraforming Mars will be a real challenge for humanity.
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InSight Lander Takes Selfie on Mars
NASA’s InSight lander takes a selfie – this is what it looks like on Mars (InSight is the abbreviation for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport). With its solar panels deployed, InSight is about the size of a small bus.
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Solar Panels work by absorbing LIGHT from the sun, not heat
Ignorance is a very, very bad thing. Last week, as North America suffering from extreme cold weather because of a phenomenon called “polar vortex“, Jim Hoft, founder of the American far-right news and opinion website The Gateway Pundit has tweeted that: “It’s a bit cold outside this morning in middle America… Aren’t you glad you aren’t heating your home with a solar panel like nitwit socialist @AOC is demanding?” (@AOC is the American politician and activist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez here.) What Jim Hoft says is flat-out wrong. Solar panels DO work in the cold. They work by absorbing LIGHT from the sun, not heat.
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Snow cover of Earth between Mar. 2000 and Dec. 2018
Here is a quick summary of the Earth’s snow cover between March 2000 and December 2018. These snow cover maps are made from observations collected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite.
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A 1992 Family Portrait of Earth and the Moon
On December 16, 1992, eight days after its final encounter with Earth, NASA’s Galileo spacecraft looked back and captured this remarkable view of Earth and the moon.
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