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Tag: curiosity
Curiosity finds massive metal meteorite on Mars as it moves into more dangerous, exciting territory
2014-07-16 16:03:21| Extremetech
NASA's Curiosity rover has encountered a massive iron meteorite on Mars. At roughly two meters (6.5 feet) wide, and who knows how much beneath the surface, the meteorite (dubbed "Lebanon") might be the largest ever discovered on Mars. In other news, Curiosity recently celebrated its first Martian anniversary, and is now about two thirds of the way to its primary target of Mount Sharp, which it should reach in early 2015.
Tags: metal
mars
finds
dangerous
Curiosity spots artificial light source on Mars, but it probably isnt alien life
2014-04-09 15:02:41| Extremetech
Curiosity appears to have discovered... a Martian campfire. NASA, of course, says it's nothing of the sort -- rather than an indication of extraterrestrial life, it's probably just a bright spot caused by the sun reflecting off a rock, or errant cosmic radiation striking the camera's sensor. A prominent ufologist, however, claims that it's an artificial life source, and that "NASA could go and investigate it, but hey, they are not on Mars to discovery life, but there to stall its discovery."
Tags: life
source
light
probably
Curiosity captures rare photo of Earth from the surface of Mars, 100 million miles away
2014-02-07 14:14:54| Extremetech
Mars rover Curiosity, which is now roughly half way to its final destination, has taken a brief pause to look up at the sunsetting sky and take a photo of Earth. In the photo above, Earth is roughly 99 million miles away -- and if you squint, you can also see the Moon. According to NASA, if you were walking on the surface of Mars, the Earth and Moon would be visible to the naked eye and would appear as "bright evening stars." This is only one of a handful of times that Earth has been imaged from more than a few thousand miles away. It's always rather humbling to see Earth -- that mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam -- just sitting there, tiny and insignificant, dwarfed by the grandest of black expanses.
Tags: photo
million
miles
surface
Mars soil contains a huge amount of water, reports NASAs Curiosity rover
2013-09-27 17:02:41| Extremetech
If you heat up a cubic foot of Mars soil, you can harvest around two pints (one liter) of water. According to new data returned by NASA's Curiosity rover, this isn't just a one-off lucky find, either: It seems that most of the dirt on Mars harbors large amounts of water. This is very exciting news for future human exploration of Mars, because it's prohibitively difficult to transport water from the surface of Earth to the Red Planet -- and, in one fell swoop, it also makes the eventual terraforming and colonization of Mars a lot more feasible.
Tags: water
amount
reports
huge
NASAs Curiosity detects no methane on Mars, ruling out life on Mars
2013-09-25 18:11:06| Extremetech
In a surprising and probably killer blow to the possibility of finding microbial life on Mars, Curiosity has reported that there's no methane in the Martian atmosphere. New findings from Curiosity strongly suggest that previous observations from Earth, which indicated that there was actually quite a lot of methane on Mars, were false. With no methane, it is very unlikely that there's life on Mars.