WILL MARS BECOME "THE YELLOW PLANET"? Want to see Mars with your own eyes? It's easy to do. Just wake up an hour before sunrise; step outside and look south. Mars is blazing brighter than any star in the sky. You might be surprised, however, by the color. The dust storm now enveloping Mars is gradually hiding the planet's rusty surface, giving the Red Planet an increasingly yellow complexion. Take a look and let us know what color you see! [sky map] [photo gallery]
HUGE DUST STORM ON MARS: Mars rover Opportunity is in trouble. NASA engineers attempted to contact Opportunity on June 12th, but did not hear back from the nearly 15-year old rover. The problem: A huge dust storm is blanketing Perseverance Valley where Opportunity has been working. This sequence of images from NASA's Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter shows the progression of the storm:
The huge dust cloud is highlighted in red. Soon after it appeared on May 31st, the cloud swirled south to engulf Opportunity. Right now, the dust is so thick in Perseverance Valley, day has been turned into night, depriving the solar powered rover of the sunlight it needs to charge its batteries.
Opportunity's silence probaby means it has dropped into a low power fault mode. All of the rover's subsystems, except a mission clock, are turned off. The mission clock is programmed to wake Opportunity at intervals so it can check power levels, going back to sleep if the batteries are still low. When sunlight returns, the battery should recharge and Opportunity will fully wake up again.
This is a dust storm of rare size. It is now on the verge of circumnavigating the entire globe, overlying more than a quarter of Mars' land area. This graphic compares the storm to others Opportunity has weathered:
The vertical axis tells us the opacity of the atmosphere. Values range from less than 1 (a little dusty) to greater than 10 (black as night). The horizontal axis marks time after the start of northern spring in units of degrees around the martian orbit (360 degrees=1 full year). This year's storm denoted by the green line is almost off the charts.
Stay tuned for updates as the storm continues to grow.
ONE RING TO RULE THE STRATOSPHERE: The students of Earth to Sky Calculus are about to fly from California to New Zealand to launch a trio of cosmic ray balloons over Earth's 8th continent. To get ready, yesterday they launched a ring of power to the stratosphere. Here it is floating 33 km above the Sierras of California:
You can have one for $119.95. The students are selling these Tolkien-inspired rings as a fundraiser for their trip. They are made of golden-colored tungsten and inscribed with the authentic Mordor script of the One Ring.
Buy one now, and we will fly it again for you over Hobbiton, located in the North Island of New Zealand where our cosmic ray balloons will be released. Just note "Please fly it again!" in the comments section at checkout.
Each golden ring comes with a greeting card showing the ring in flight and telling the story of its journey to the edge of space. Sales support the Earth to Sky Calculus cosmic ray ballooning program and hands-on STEM research.
Far Out Gifts: Earth to Sky Store
All proceeds support hands-on STEM education