Good news for those interested in finding alien life, even if it maybe life that died out long ago. Its looking more and more like Mars may have been very Earth like in the distant past. It may never have been Earth like enough that we could survive there without some kind of special suit, but microbes can thrive in conditions that would kill just about every other creature we know of. George Dvorsky has more,

Data collected by the Curiosity Rover suggests Mars once featured a moderate climate capable of fostering lakes of liquid water and even a vast sea, and that this climate could have extended to many parts of the Red Planet.

Up top: A recent selfie taken by Curiosity. Image credit: ASA/JPL/CALTECH/MSSS.

NASA’s Curiosity Rover is currently investigating the lowest sedimentary layers of Mount Sharp, a section of rock 500 feet (150 meters) high known as the Murray formation. Observations taken by the robotic probe suggests the mountain was produced by sediments deposited in a large lake bed over tens of millions of years. The observation strongly suggests that ancient Mars maintained a long-lasting water-friendly climate.

According to NASA scientists, it’s an hypothesis that’s challenging the notion that warm and wet conditions were transient, local, or only underground. It now appears that Mars’ ancient, thicker atmosphere raised temperatures above freezing globally, but NASA scientists aren’t entirely sure how the atmosphere produced the required effects.

Read more at io9

The actual working panorama gadget is at the link. I do not think I can embed or link directly to it as it’s a flash file. While there is an embed feature, it wants me to promise only to a non commercial site. Not gonna make that promise without asking our kind host.

I can tell you it works fantastic. Science nerds should set aside a few minutes. :-)>

UPDATE-Charles has put the gadget right in the page. Charles thanks for taking a moment to enable that.

For a while now we’ve been sharing photos beamed home by NASA’s rovers on Mars. From panoramas by the old timer Opportunity to selfies by the new kid Curiosity, we’re starting to see more and more of the Red Planet many millions of miles away. Andrew Bodrov, however, has taken it to the next level.

By putting together 407 photos taken by both the Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) and Medium Angle Camera (MAC) on Curiosity, Bodrov has created the amazing 4-gigapixel 360-degree panorama you see below. A panorama so vast it’ll make you feel like you’re using street view on Mars (something Google’s probably already working on … ).

The panorama was put together using 295 images from the NAC (100mm focal length) and 112 images from MAC (34mm focal length). The photos — which include a view of Mount Sharp similar to the one we’ve seen before — were taken on Mars solar days 136-149, with the MAC’s entire contribution coming on solar day 137.

More: 4-Gigapixel Mars Panorama Created Using 407 Photos Taken by Curiosity

This image released by NASA on Saturday Feb. 9, 2013 shows a fresh drill hole, center, made by the Curiosity rover on Friday, Feb. 8, 2013 next to an earlier test hole. Curiosity has completed its first drill into a Martian rock, a huge milestone since landing in an ancient crater in August 2012. (AP Photo/NASA)

In a Mars first, the Curiosity rover drilled into a rock and prepared to dump an aspirin-sized pinch of powder into its onboard laboratories for closer inspection.

The feat marked yet another milestone for the car-size rover, which landed last summer to much fanfare on an ambitious hunt to determine whether environmental conditions were favorable for microbes.

Using the drill at the end of its 7-foot-long robotic arm, Curiosity on Friday chipped away at a flat, veined rock bearing numerous signs of past water flow. After nearly seven minutes of pounding, the result was a drill hole 2 1/2 -inches deep.

The exercise was so complex that engineers spent several days commanding Curiosity to tap the rock outcrop, drill test holes and perform a ”mini-drill” in anticipation of the real show. Images beamed back to Earth overnight showed a fresh borehole next to a shallower test hole Curiosity had made earlier.

More: Curiosity Rover Completes 1st Drill Into Mars Rock - News

NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity has pounded into a Red Planet rock with its drill for the first time, bringing the 1-ton robot a big step closer to initiating its first full-bore drilling operations.

The Curiosity rover hammered the rock using the arm-mounted drill’s percussive action over the weekend, completing another test along the path toward spinning the bit and biting into rock for the first time.

“We tapped this rock on Mars with our drill. Keep it classy everyone,” Curiosity flight director Bobak Ferdowsi — who gained fame as “Mohawk Guy” during the rover’s nail-biting landing on the night of Aug. 5, 2012 — wrote in a Twitter post Sunday, sharing a photo of the pounded rock.

More: Curiosity Rover Hammers First Mars Rock - Technology & Science - Space - Space.com

NASA - Curiosity Self-Portrait, Wide View

Curiosity Self-Portrait, Wide View

On the 84th and 85th Martian days of the NASA Mars rover Curiosity’s mission on Mars (Oct. 31 and Nov. 1, 2012), NASA’s Curiosity rover used the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) to capture dozens of high-resolution images to be combined into self-portrait images of the rover.

The mosaic shows the rover at “Rocknest,” the spot in Gale Crater where the mission’s first scoop sampling took place. Four scoop scars can be seen in the regolith in front of the rover. A fifth scoop was collected later.

Self-portraits like this one document the state of the rover and allow mission engineers to track changes over time, such as dust accumulation and wheel wear. Due to its location on the end of the robotic arm, only MAHLI (among the rover’s 17 cameras) is able to image some parts of the craft, including the port-side wheels.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Scientists Speculate on Top-Secret Mars Rover Discovery

NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mars is busily grinding out science data — and has likely relayed some provocative findings — but mum’s the word from scientists on the mission.

At the epicenter of all the speculation is that Curiosity’s Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument has gulped in Martian soil and regurgitated exciting news.

John Grotzinger, lead mission investigator for the Curiosity rover, set the rumors in motion during an interview with NPR last week, saying, “We’re getting data from SAM … this data is gonna be one for the history books. It’s looking really good.”

Whatever history-making news there is to report, Curiosity scientists are expected to cough up the goods at this year’s American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting in San Francisco, to be held from Dec. 3 to Dec. 7.

On the AGU agenda is a discussion of Curiosity’s search for organic molecules on Mars with its Gas Chromatograph-Mass Spectrometer — a key instrument to help explore the surface and subsurface of Mars, seeking traces of prebiotic or biological activity.

As expected, readers in the blogosphere have already chimed in with what they believe Curiosity has found; their guesses so far have included a fossil, a black monolith, Tang and Jimmy Hoffa. [Top 5 Attempts to Find Life on Mars]

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Mars Rover Finds ‘Bright Object’

NASA’s Curiosity rover has uncovered a “bright object” in the red soil of Mars that might be a part of the robotic explorer that broke off, the US space agency said.

“The rover team decided to refrain from using the rover’s robotic arm on Oct. 8 due to the detection of a bright object on the ground that might be a piece from the rover,” NASA said in a statement.

“Curiosity is acquiring additional imaging of the object to aid the team in identifying the object and assessing possible impact, if any, to sampling activities.”

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Picture here

Anyone who’s taken his or her own picture for a Facebook profile page will know how tricky it is to do what NASA’s Curiosity rover just did: It turned one of its 17 cameras around on itself and took a snapshot of its very own “face on Mars.”

The picture, which was sent down from Mars just a few hours ago, comes from the Mars Hand Lens Imager, or MAHLI, a camera mounted on the end of Curiosity’s jointed, 7-foot-long (2.1-meter-long) robotic arm. The top of the rover’s mast — the face — is front and center, with the Martian horizon in the far background.

The biggest “eye” on the face is the lens for the ChemCam instrument, which can shoot out a laser beam to vaporize rock and read the chemical signature contained in the resulting flash of light. Two square eyes below the big lens represent the two cameras of the color Mastcam imaging system. Four smaller round eyes, two on each side, are the high-resolution, black-and-white Navcam imagers.

NBC

usnews.com

Earlier this week, the Mars Curiosity rover drove 100 feet, the farthest it has gone in a single day on its mission, NASA announced Thursday. In the month it has been on Mars, it has driven 358 feet.

NASA also released new high-resolution images of the rover, taken by its HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, in which track marks can be seen. NASA says the track marks can be observed over time to determine changes to Mars’s soil.

The rover is only about a fourth of the way to its first “science destination,” where it will begin using its drill to bore into the Martian surface. According to NASA, the rover “continues to work in good health.”

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