Jupiter has super strong winds and massive storms, including the iconic Great Red Spot, a storm bigger than Earth! At the poles, winds can reach up to 1440 km/h.
Saturn is even windier! It has some of the fastest, but not the fastest winds in our Solar System blow. Winds here can reach 1800 km/h.
Venus has super-rotating winds that race around the planet up to 60x faster than Venus itself spins. That’s way faster than Earth’s winds, which top out at 10–20% of our planet’s rotation speed.
Mars has a thin atmosphere, so winds are usually gentle. But during dust storms, they can kick up to around 100 km/h.
Neptune holds the record for the fastest winds in the Solar System, blowing at over 2000 km/h!
For context: the fastest wind ever recorded on Earth? 408 km/h—during a massive tornado in Australia.
📹 European Space Agency (ESA) 📸 ESA/Voyager 2, NASA, NSSDC Photo Gallery ID P-34709C
On 12 March 2025, ESA’s Hera spacecraft soared just 5000 km above Mars and passed within 300 km of its distant moon, Deimos. Captured by Hera’s 1020×1020 pixel Asteroid Framing Camera, this video sequence offers a rare view of the red planet and its enigmatic moon. The original greyscale images have been colour-enhanced based on known surface features.
We are Europe’s gateway to space. Our mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world. Check out https://www.esa.int/ to get up to speed on everything space related.
Join us live for a star-studded event this Thursday, as scientists working on ESA’s Hera mission for planetary defence release the mission’s first scientific observations beyond the Earth-Moon system, following its imminent flyby of Mars.
On 12 March 2025 ESA’s Hera mission comes to within 5000 km of the surface of the red planet and 300 km of Mars’s more distant and enigmatic moon Deimos. During this flyby Hera is performing observations of both Mars and the city-sized Deimos.
Hera then needs to swing its High Gain Antenna back to Earth to transmit its data home. The next day, on Thursday 13 March, these images will be premiered by Hera’s science team from ESA’s ESOC mission control centre in Darmstadt, Germany, explaining what they reveal, during our public webcast starting at 11:50 CET.
The team are being joined by ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst and renowned science fiction writer Andy Weir, author of The Martian and Project Hail Mary, as well as a surprise special guest!
Chapters: 00:00 Introduction 07:00 Image 1: AFC’s view of Mars and Deimos 18:20 Image 2: HyperScout’s view of colourful Mars 25:40 Audience questions 32:25 The Author and the Astronaut 50:55 Image 3: TIRI’s view of hot Mars, cold Mars 55:10 Ramses, Planetary Defence and asteroid deflection 1:00:25 The Hera AI companion – more than sci-fi! 1:05:30 What’s next for Hera?
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We are Europe’s gateway to space. Our mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world. Check out https://www.esa.int/ to get up to speed on everything space related.
For years, scientists believed Mars got its red color from hematite, a type of rust that forms in dry conditions. But a new study suggests something surprising—ferrihydrite, a different kind of rust that forms in cool liquid water!
This discovery could mean Mars was once much wetter than we thought—maybe even habitable. And the best part? Our Rosalind Franklin rover will soon analyse Martian soil up close to uncover even more secrets.
The ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover will drill deeper than any other mission has ever attempted on the Red Planet.
The third episode in the series shows how the rover will extract, collect and analyse martian samples in a high-fidelity simulation.
Rosalind Franklin will be the first rover to reach a depth of up to two metres deep below the surface, acquiring samples that have been protected from harsh surface radiation and extreme temperatures.
The drill system combines multiple precission mechanisms in an intricate automated sequence. It uses three extension rods that connect tor form a two-metre “drill string”.
As the rover drills, it will simultaneously investigate the borehole using infrared spectroscopy to study mineral composition.
The ExoMars Rosalind Franklin mission is part of Europe’s ambitious exploration journey to search for past and present signs of life on Mars.
Credits: ESA – European Space Agency Production: Mlabspace for ESA 3D animation: ESA/Mlabspace Music composed by Valentin Joudrier
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We are Europe’s gateway to space. Our mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world. Check out https://www.esa.int/ to get up to speed on everything space related.
We know how microgravity impacts the brain thanks to astronauts on the ISS, but what about life on the Moon or Mars? Future explorers will also face hypoxia—low oxygen levels—which could affect their brain function and decision-making.
A team of students is tackling this challenge by conducting zero-gravity flight experiments to study how the brain responds to both microgravity and hypoxia. Their research could help improve astronaut safety for future lunar and Martian missions, ensuring they can explore safely beyond their spacecraft.
Could this be a key step in preparing humans for deep space exploration? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!
📹 ESA – European Space Agency 📸 ESA – European Space Agency
Watch the second episode of the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover mission – Europe’s ambitious exploration journey to search for past and present signs of life on Mars.
This episode starts with Rosalind searching for traces of life below the martian surface using a ground penetrating radar and a set of cameras.
The rover will dig, collect, and investigate the chemical composition of material collected by a drill. Rosalind Franklin will be the first rover to reach a depth of up to two metres deep below the surface, acquiring samples that have been protected from surface radiation and extreme temperatures.
Rosalind Franklin uses the WISDOM radar to help scientists on Earth decide where to drill. Besides identifying the most promising targets for sampling, WISDOM will help the rover avoid potential hazards, such as the presence of buried rocks that could damage the drill. The scientific eyes of the rover are set on the Panoramic Camera suite known as PanCam. The Close-UP Imager (CLUPI) sits on the side of the drill box, a camera designed to acquire high-resolution, colour, close-up images of outcrops, rocks and soils. PanCam and CLUPI will help scientists find the most promising spots to drill. These instruments can also investigate very fine outcrop details and image drill samples before they are sent into the rover’s laboratory. After the rover retracts its drill, the sample is in a special chamber at the tip. Under the reduced martian gravity (38% of Earth’s), the material drops onto a special “hand” that the rover can extend to the front to collect drill samples. The mission will serve to demonstrate key technologies that Europe needs to master for future planetary exploration missions.
The ExoMars rover series show the rover and martian landscapes as true to reality as possible for a simulation.
Check ESA’s ExoMars website and our frequently asked questions for the latest updates.
Credits: ESA – European Space Production: Mlabspace for ESA 3D animation: ESA/Mlabspace Video footage: ESA/NASA, Shutterstock Music composed by Valentin Joudrier
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Noctis Labyrinthus is vast system of deep and steep valleys that stretches out for around 1190 km, roughly the length of Italy here on Earth.
It is nestled between the colossal martian ‘Grand Canyon’ (Valles Marineris) and the tallest volcanoes in the Solar System (the Tharsis region).
The intense volcanism in the nearby Tharsis region is to blame for the formation of these features; this volcanism caused large areas of martian crust to arch upwards and become stretched and tectonically stressed, leading to it thinning out, faulting and subsiding.
📹 ESA – European Space Agency 🖥️ ESA/DLR/FU Berlin
It can be seen as a dark blob passing through to the lower left.
Phobos sits very close to Mars by Solar System standards, orbiting just 6000 km from Mars’s surface. For context, our own moon lies about 385 000 km away from Earth’s surface.
Our ExoMars and Mars Express missions have spotted water frost for the first time on top of the Tharsis volcanoes: the tallest volcanoes not only on Mars but in the Solar System.
It was detected near Mars’s equator, a part of the planet where it was thought impossible for frost to exist.
The researchers propose that air circulates in a peculiar way above Tharsis; this creates a unique microclimate within the calderas of the volcanoes there that allows patches of frost to form.
🎥 ESA – European Space Agency 📸 ESA/TGO/CaSSIS 📸 ESA/DLR/FU Berlin 📸 NASA/MGS/MOLA Science Team, FU Berlin
Oxia Planum contains one of the largest exposures of rocks on Mars that are around 3.9 billion years old and clay-rich, indicating that water once played a role here. The site sits in a wide catchment area of valley systems with the exposed rocks exhibiting different compositions, indicating a variety of deposition and wetting environments.
A European rover, Rosalind Franklin, is part of the ExoMars programme that will explore the surface of Mars. The rover will be the first mission to combine the capability to move across the surface and to study Mars at depth.
Mars’s surface is covered in all manner of scratches and scars. Its many marks include the fingernail scratches of Tantalus Fossae, the colossal canyon system of Valles Marineris, the oddly orderly ridges of Angustus Labyrinthus, and the fascinating features captured in today’s video release from Mars Express: the cat scratches of Nili Fossae.
Nili Fossae comprises parallel trenches hundreds of metres deep and several hundred kilometres long, stretching out along the eastern edge of a massive impact crater named Isidis Planitia.
This new video features observations from Mars Express’s High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC). It first flies northwards towards and around these large trenches, showing their fractured, uneven appearance, before turning back to head southwards. It ends by zooming out to a ‘bird’s eye’ view, with the landing site of NASA’s Perseverance rover, Jezero Crater, visible in the lower-middle part of the final scene. (You can explore this crater further via ESA’s interactive map.)
The trenches of Nili Fossae are actually features known as ‘graben’, which form when the ground sitting between two parallel faults fractures and falls away. As the graben seem to curve around Isidis Planitia, it’s likely that they formed as Mars’s crust settled following the formation of the crater by an incoming space rock hitting the surface. Similar ruptures – the counterpart to Nili Fossae – are found on the other side of the crater, and named Amenthes Fossae.
Scientists have focused on Nili Fossae in recent years due to the impressive amount and diversity of minerals found in this area, including silicates, carbonates, and clays (many of which were discovered by Mars Express’s OMEGA instrument). These minerals form in the presence of water, indicating that this region was very wet in ancient martian history. Much of the ground here formed over 3.5 billion years ago, when surface water was abundant across Mars. Scientists believe that water flowed not only across the surface here but also beneath it, forming underground hydrothermal flows that were heated by ancient volcanoes.
Because of what it could tell us about Mars’s ancient and water-rich past, Nili Fossae was considered as a possible landing site for NASA’s Curiosity rover, before the rover was ultimately sent to Gale Crater in 2012. Another mission, NASA’s Perseverance rover, was later sent to land in the nearby Jezero Crater, visible at the end of this video.
Mars Express has visited Nili Fossae before, imaging the region’s graben system back in 2014. The mission has orbited the Red Planet since 2003, imaging Mars’s surface, mapping its minerals, studying its tenuous atmosphere, probing beneath its crust, and exploring how various phenomena interact in the martian environment. For more from the orbiter and its HRSC, see ESA’s Mars Express releases.
Disclaimer: This video is not representative of how Mars Express flies over the surface of Mars. See processing notes below.
Processing notes: The video is centred at 23°N, 78°E. It was created using Mars Chart (HMC30) data, an image mosaic made from single-orbit observations from Mars Express’s HRSC. This mosaic was combined with topography derived from a digital terrain model of Mars to generate a three-dimensional landscape. For every second of the movie, 62.5 separate frames are rendered following a pre-defined camera path. The vertical exaggeration is three-fold. Atmospheric effects – clouds and haze – have been added, and start building up at a distance of 50 km.
Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin & NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
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We are Europe’s gateway to space. Our mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world. Check out https://www.esa.int/ to get up to speed on everything space related.
Olympus Mons has an average elevation of 22 kilometres and the caldera, or summit crater, has a depth of about 3 kilometres. The data was retrieved during orbit 143 of Mars Express on 24 February 2004. The view is looking north.
Watch the first episode of the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover mission – Europe’s ambitious exploration journey to search for past and present signs of life on Mars.
This episode starts after a successful descent and landing on the Red Planet in 2030.
Rovers on Mars have previously been caught in loose soils, and turning the wheels dug them deeper, just like a car stuck in sand. To avoid this, Rosalind Franklin has a unique wheel-walking locomotion mode to overcome difficult terrains, as well as autonomous navigation software.
A major goal of the mission is to understand the geological context and identify minerals formed in the presence of water that could be good targets for drilling into and collecting samples for analysis.
The scientific eyes of the rover are set atop the mast on the Panoramic Camera suite, known as PanCam. From its vantage point about two metres above the ground, PanCam cameras come into play to get a whole picture of the site with high resolution imaging.
Enfys, meaning rainbow in Welsh, is an infrared spectrometer to study mineral composition. Enfys and PanCam work in synergy. PanCam is used to obtain colour, visual information of what lies around the rover. Enfys’ job is to inform scientists what the minerals are.
Rosalind Franklin will be the first rover to reach a depth of up to two metres deep below the surface, acquiring samples that have been protected from surface radiation and extreme temperatures.
The mission will serve to demonstrate key technologies that Europe needs to master for future planetary exploration missions.
This episode shows the spacecraft, the rover and martian landscapes are as true to reality as possible for a simulation.
Check ESA’s ExoMars website and our frequently asked questions for the latest updates.
Credits: Production: Mlabspace for ESA
3D animation: ESA/Mlabspace
Video footage: ESA/NASA, Shutterstock
Music composed by Valentin Joudrier
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We are Europe’s gateway to space. Our mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world. Check out https://www.esa.int/ to get up to speed on everything space related.
ESA is venturing towards putting a spacecraft into orbit around Mars using a technique that engineers have studied for over half a century but never dared to attempt.
Our Mars Express has revisited one of Mars’s most intriguing features the Medusae Fossae, revealing what seems to be layers of water ice below the dusty surface.
If melted, this potential water would be enough to fill Earth’s Red Sea, or cover Mars in a layer of water up to 2.7 m deep!
📸 Planetary Science Institute/Smithsonian Institution 📸 European Space Agency / DLR / FU Berlin 📸 CReSIS/KU/Smithsonian Institution
In 2028, ESA will launch its most ambitious exploration mission to search for past and present signs of life on Mars.
Enjoy the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin mission in minute detail – everything down to the colour and size of the wires, sticky tape and scratches. The spacecraft, the rover and martian landscapes are as true to reality as possible for a simulation. The visuals show the spacecraft structural engineering with a faithful robotic appearance. The martian landscape has been simulated with meticulous realism.
The story begins with the rover exploring the surface of the Red Planet. There is science to be done. Join the adventure.
This trailer provides a first taste for the most accurate animation series made so far of a Mars mission.
ESA’s Rosalind Franklin rover has unique scientific potential to search for evidence of past life on Mars thanks to its drill and scientific instruments. It will be the first rover to reach a depth of up to two metres deep below the surface, acquiring samples that have been protected from surface radiation and extreme temperatures. The drill will retrieve soils from ancient parts of Mars and analyse them in situ with its onboard laboratory.
The mission will also serve to demonstrate key technologies that Europe needs to master for future planetary exploration missions. This includes the capability to land safely on a planet, to move autonomously on the surface, and to perform drilling and sample processing and analysis automatically. The rover will use novel driving techniques including wheel-walking to overcome difficult terrains, as well as autonomous navigation software.
We are Europe’s gateway to space. Our mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world. Check out https://www.esa.int/ to get up to speed on everything space related.
Missions to Mars have made many exciting discoveries that have transformed our understanding of the planet, but the next step is to bring samples to Earth for detailed analysis in sophisticated laboratories.
1. Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos. They are both too light for gravity to make them spherical.
2. It has the highest volcano in the Solar System, the Olympus Mons. It rises 25 kilometres above the surrounding plain: Mount Everest is only one third as high.
3. The air is 100 times thinner than on Earth, and mostly made up of carbon dioxide. Human explorers will have to wear oxygen masks and special suits every time they step outside their sealed homes.
4. Like Earth, the Red Planet has two large ice caps at its north and south poles.
A solar eruption detected simultaneously at Earth, the Moon and Mars emphasises the need to prepare human exploration missions for the dangers of space radiation.
Detect, fetch and collect. A seemingly easy task is being tested to find the best strategy to collect samples on the martian surface, some 290 000 million km away from home.
Testing technologies for Mars exploration is part of the daily job of Laura Bielenberg, an ESA graduate trainee for the Mars Sample Return campaign.
The test takes place at the rock-strewn recreation of the Red Planet at ESA’s ESTEC technical centre in Noordwijk, the Netherlands. The nickname of this test site is the ‘Mars Yard’ and is part of the Planetary Robotics Laboratory.
The tube is a replica of the sample caches that NASA’s Perseverance rover is leaving on Mars hermetically sealed with precious martian samples inside. They are called RSTA, an acronym of Returnable Sample Tube Assembly, and to most people on Earth they look like lightsabers. Laura is investigating sample tube collection strategies, from autonomous detection to pose estimation of sample tubes on Mars, with a testbed called the RABBIT (RAS Bread Boarding In-house Testbed).
The Sample Transfer Arm will need to load the tubes from the martian surface for delivery towards Earth. ESA’s robotic arm will collect them from the Perseverance rover, and possibly others dropped by sample recovery helicopters as a backup.
Besides cameras and sensors, the team relies on neural networks to detect the tubes and estimate their pose. Inspired by the way the human brain works, neural networks mimic the way biological neurons signal to one another.
We are Europe’s gateway to space. Our mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world. Check out https://www.esa.int/ to get up to speed on everything space related.
A year has passed since the launch of the ESA’s Rosalind Franklin rover mission was put on hold, but the work has not stopped for the ExoMars teams in Europe.
In this programme, the ESA Web TV crew travel back to Turin, Italy to talk to the teams and watch as new tests are being conducted with the rover’s Earth twin Amalia while the real rover remains carefully stored in an ultra-clean room.
The 15-minute special programme gives an update on what happened since the mission was cancelled in 2022 because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the plan ahead, the new challenges, the latest deep drilling test and the stringent planetary protection measures in place.
ESA’s Rosalind Franklin rover has unique drilling capabilities and an on-board science laboratory unrivalled by any other mission in development. Its twin rover Amalia was back on its wheels and drilled down 1.7 metres into a martian-like ground in Italy – about 25 times deeper than any other rover has ever attempted on Mars. The rover also collected samples for analysis under the watchful eye of European science teams.
ESA, together with international and industrial partners, is reshaping the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin Mission with new European elements, including a lander, and a target date of 2028 for the trip to Mars.
The newly shaped Rosalind Franklin Mission will recover one of the original objectives of ExoMars – to create an independent European capability to access the surface of Mars with a sophisticated robotic payload.
We are Europe’s gateway to space. Our mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world. Check out https://www.esa.int/ to get up to speed on everything space related.
When a spacecraft launches on a mission to another planet it must first break free of the Earth’s gravitational field. Once it has done that, it enters interplanetary space, where the dominant force is the gravitational field of the Sun.
The spacecraft begins to follow a curving orbit, around the Sun, which is similar to the orbit of a comet. When this orbit brings it close to its target destination the spacecraft must fire a retrorocket to slow down and allow itself to be captured by the gravitational field of its target. The smaller the target, the more the spacecraft must slow down.
Sometimes passing a planet can result in the spacecraft being accelerated, even without the spacecraft firing any of its thrusters. This is known as the ‘slingshot’ effect. Such ‘gravity assist’ manoeuvres are now a standard part of spaceflight and are used by almost all our interplanetary missions. They take advantage of the fact that the gravitational attraction of the planets can be used to change the trajectory and speed of a spacecraft.
The amount by which the spacecraft speeds up or slows down is determined by whether it is passing behind or in front of the planet as the planet follows its orbit. When the spacecraft leaves the influence of the planet, it follows an orbit on a different course than before.
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We are Europe’s gateway to space. Our mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world. Check out https://www.esa.int/ to get up to speed on everything space related.
The Webb observations which revealed this small asteroid were not originally designed to hunt for new asteroids — in fact, they were calibration images of the main-belt asteroid (10920) 1998 BC1, which astronomers discovered in 1998, but the calibration team considered them to have failed for technical reasons due to the brightness of the target and an offset telescope pointing. Despite this, the data on asteroid 10920 were used by the team to establish and test a new technique to constrain an object’s orbit and to estimate its size. The validity of the method was demonstrated for asteroid 10920 using Webb observations combined with data from ground-based telescopes and ESA’s Gaia mission.
In the course of the analysis of Webb’s data, the team found the smaller and previously unknown interloper in the same field of view. The team’s results suggest the object measures 100–200 meters, occupies a very low-inclination orbit, and was located in the inner main-belt region at the time of the Webb observations.
We are Europe’s gateway to space. Our mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world. Check out https://www.esa.int/ to get up to speed on everything space related.
Terrae Novae is not only literally about exploring new worlds, but by describing the limitless opportunities for discovery, economic growth and inspiration it also expresses our ambitions for Europe’s future innovators, scientists and explorers.
This video shows the many exploration activities ESA is conducting or has planned in our Solar System, from the International Space Station to the Moon with the European Service Module and lunar Gateway modules for Artemis, and on to Mars with the Mars Sample Return campaign.
We are Europe’s gateway to space. Our mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world. Check out https://www.esa.int/ to get up to speed on everything space related.
Just think about the amount of food and water that a crew of astronauts would need to go all the way to Mars, as well as all the mental, physiological, and, most importantly, radiation risk challenges. How about we avoid all of those issues by putting the astronauts to sleep?
The main problem is that humans don’t hibernate. Astronauts would have to take a drug to induce hibernation and enter sleeping pods, quiet environments with low lights, high humidity, kept at temperatures below 10°C.
Hibernation not only promises to benefit astronauts in space, but it may also offer new potential applications for patient care on Earth.
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We are Europe’s gateway to space. Our mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world. Check out https://www.esa.int/ to get up to speed on everything space related.
As Mars orbits around our Sun, time on the Red Planet is measured in years. However, there are some significant differences between a year on Mars and a year on Earth. Let’s look at some similarities and differences between a year on the two planets.
We are Europe’s gateway to space. Our mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world. Check out https://www.esa.int/ to get up to speed on everything space related.
Short animation featuring key moments of the Mars Sample Return campaign: from landing on Mars and securing the sample tubes to launching them off the surface and ferrying them back to Earth.
NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) are developing plans for one of the most ambitious campaigns ever attempted in space: bringing the first samples of Mars material safely back to Earth for detailed study. European scientists are part of an international team giving advice on what samples to choose for return and the best analysis methods to use once they land on Earth.
The diverse set of scientifically curated samples being collected by NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover could help scientists answer the question of whether ancient life ever arose on the Red Planet.
Bringing samples of Mars to Earth for future study would happen in several steps with multiple spacecraft, and in close collaboration between ESA and NASA.
The first step of the campaign began with the arrival of the Perseverance rover at Jezero Crater on 18 February 2021.
ESA will give robotic assistance with the Sample Transfer Arm. The 2.5 m robotic arm will pick up the tubes filled with precious material from Mars and transfer them to a rocket for a launch into martian orbit.
The European Earth Return Orbiter will then be the first interplanetary spacecraft to capture samples in orbit and make a return trip between Earth and Mars.
This strategic partnership with NASA will be the first to return samples from another planet. The samples to be returned are thought to be the best opportunity to reveal the early evolution of Mars, including the potential for life.
Credit: @NASA/ESA/@NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory/@NASA Goddard/@NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center
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We are Europe’s gateway to space. Our mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world. Check out https://www.esa.int/ to get up to speed on everything space related.
Two NASA missions, working in tandem, have made a science discovery on Mars.
In this briefing, science team members from NASA’s InSight Mars lander and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) missions will explain how data and images – from the Red Planet’s surface and from above – contributed to the discovery. They will share how the two missions worked together to confirm their observations. There also will be an update on InSight’s solar energy status.
Participants:
● Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, NASA Headquarters ● Bruce Banerdt, InSight principal investigator, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory ● Liliya Posiolova, MRO, orbital science operations lead at Malin Space Science Systems ● Ingrid Daubar, InSight impact science lead, Brown University
NASA will host a briefing to provide highlights from the first year-and-a-half of the Perseverance rover’s exploration of Mars.
The rover landed in Mars’ Jezero Crater in February 2021 and is collecting samples of rock and other materials from the Martian surface. Perseverance is investigating the sediment-rich ancient river delta in the Red Planet’s Jezero Crater.
Speakers: • Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, NASA Headquarters • Laurie Leshin, JPL director • Rick Welch, Perseverance deputy project manager, JPL • Ken Farley, Perseverance project scientist, Caltech • Sunanda Sharma, Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals (SHERLOC) scientist, JPL • David Shuster, Perseverance returned sample scientist, University of California, Berkeley
We are Europe’s gateway to space. Our mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world. Check out https://www.esa.int/ to get up to speed on everything space related.
The mission to return martian samples back to Earth will see a European 2.5 metre-long robotic arm pick up tubes filled with precious soil from Mars and transfer them to a rocket for an historic interplanetary delivery.
The sophisticated robot, known as the Sample Transfer Arm or STA, will play a crucial role in the success of the Mars Sample Return campaign. The joint endeavour between @NASA and ESA aims to bring back martian samples to the best labs in our planet by 2033.
The robotic arm will land on Mars to retrieve the sample tubes NASA’s Perseverance rover is currently collecting from the surface. Able to “see”, “feel” and take autonomous decisions, the Sample Transfer Arm will identify, pick up and transfer the tubes into the first rocket fired off another planet – the Mars Launch System.
Only after the robot closes the container’s lid, the martian samples will be launched for rendezvous with ESA’s Earth Return Orbiter (ERO) and bring the material back to Earth.
The Sample Transfer Arm is conceived to be autonomous, highly reliable and robust.
Its architecture mimics a human arm with a shoulder, elbow and wrist, and has its own built-in brain and eyes. The robot can perform a large range of movements with seven degrees of freedom.
We are Europe’s gateway to space. Our mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world. Check out http://www.esa.int/ESA to get up to speed on everything space related.
Did Mars ever look like Earth? We think it did! Ancient Mars may have been wetter and warmer — similar to our home planet. So what happened? Scientists like Dr. Becky McCauley Rench are trying to find out. Keep up with our Martian exploration efforts: www.nasa.gov/Mars
The ExoMars team have performed important parachute drop tests as crucial preparation for a safe touchdown on Mars in 2023. The European Rosalind Franklin rover will search for signs of past life beneath the surface of Mars with its unique two metre drill and onboard laboratory. The Russian surface science platform Kazachok will study the environment at the landing site. Landing on Mars is always a challenging endeavour and all possible parameters are taken into account.
We are Europe’s gateway to space. Our mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world. Check out https://www.esa.int/ to get up to speed on everything space related.
On April 19, the Ingenuity Mars helicopter became the first spacecraft to achieve powered, controlled flight on another world. This historic flight on Mars has implications for how we will explore other worlds. Join experts from the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter team and upcoming Dragonfly mission to learn about the future of extraterrestrial flight. Have questions? Use #askNASA.
Meet the guests:
Mr. Johnny Lam is an Ingenuity Mars Helicopter pilot at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Mr. Lam always had an interest in math and science growing up, and enjoys getting to work on one-of-a-kind missions that are helping us to learn more about the universe. He is an avid frisbee player and has a family that is expecting their second baby soon. Mr. Lam has an exciting vision for how aerial vehicles could be used for exploration in the future. Watch the show to hear more about it!
Mr. Nishant Mehta is the Deputy Lead for the Dragonfly Mobility System at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory. Mr. Mehta grew up surrounded by science fiction through books and television, these stories reinforced the notion that possibilities are endless with science. His favorite part of his job is knowing that he is working on something that will ultimately be on another planet to help humanity understand our universe better than before.
Ms. Jia-Rui Cook is the News Events & Projects Supervisor at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and will be your host for this episode. As the child of immigrants, she has always been interested in American history and asking the question, “What does it mean to be American?” Working for NASA’s news and media team means she gets a front-row seat at this history in the making. In her role in the media office, she gets to help figure out how stories about first-of-their-kind accomplishments are told. When it comes to the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, Ms. Cook is amazed that the team could build something so light and powerful at the same time.
New video from NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover chronicles major milestones during the final minutes of its entry, descent and landing (EDL) on the Red Planet on Feb. 18 as the spacecraft plummeted, parachuted, and rocketed toward the surface of Mars.
From the moment of parachute inflation, the camera system covers the entirety of the descent process, showing some of the rover’s intense ride to Mars’ Jezero Crater. The footage from high-definition cameras aboard the spacecraft starts 7 miles (11 kilometers) above the surface, showing the supersonic deployment of the most massive parachute ever sent to another world and ends with the rover’s touchdown in the crater.
Producer Credit: Sonnet Apple Music: “DMC 12″/Universal Production Music
NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover safely touched down on the Red Planet on Feb. 18. So what will the robotic scientist “see” on her descent and what will she do next? Join mission experts for update about the rover – the biggest, heaviest, cleanest, and most sophisticated six-wheeled robot ever launched into space – including imagery it captured and its mission to explore Mars.
This panorama, taken on Feb. 20, 2021, by the Navigation Cameras, or Navcams, aboard NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover, was stitched together from six individual images after they were sent back to Earth.
A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith.
Subsequent missions, currently under consideration by NASA in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these cached samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.
The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California built and manages operations of the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover for NASA.
NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance mission captured thrilling footage of its rover landing in Mars’ Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, 2021. The real footage in this video was captured by several cameras that are part of the rover’s entry, descent, and landing suite. The views include a camera looking down from the spacecraft’s descent stage (a kind of rocket-powered jet pack that helps fly the rover to its landing site), a camera on the rover looking up at the descent stage, a camera on the top of the aeroshell (a capsule protecting the rover) looking up at that parachute, and a camera on the bottom of the rover looking down at the Martian surface.
The audio embedded in the video comes from the mission control call-outs during entry, descent, and landing.
