#Perseverance rover

[without-ado]

Mars' moon Phobos eclipses the sun

l NASA Perseverance Sep. 2024 via Daniel Pomarède

[planetaryalphabet]

A view of Mars from 140 million miles away. Courtesy of the Perseverance Rover

[krakenmare]

Perseverance: Drifting clouds just before sunrise on Mars (March 18, 2023)

[tilbageidanmark]

A hole drilled on Mars by Curiosity Rover, one of 36 holes drilled.

[adastra-sf]

Solar eclipse from Mars

We're uniquely situated with our Moon to produce total eclipses of the Sun - the geometry is such that, from our POV, our sister world completely covers our star when its orbit is just right.

Though Mars has two moons, they're both absolutely tiny compared to our Moon - Phobos is 17 miles (27 km) in diameter along its largest axis, and Deimos is only 7.6 miles (12.4 km) across. BTW, Mars is only about half the size of Earth (4219 miles/ 6790 km vs our 7922 miles/ 12750 km), but even proportionally they're teeny.

And even though they orbit way closer to Mars than our Moon orbits us, Mars orbits much farther away from the Sun (average 1.52 times as distant) - thus the disc of the Sun in the Martian sky is just a little over half its size in our sky.

So even with all the geometric advantages, those moons are so minute they just can't blot out much of the Sun during an eclipse.

Here's a Martian-POV solar eclipse courtesy of Phobos:

Perseverance rover took this video a couple years ago - it's the most zoomed-in, highest frame-rate observation of a Phobos solar eclipse ever taken from the Martian surface. (That's about the sunspot population we saw during our most-recent eclipse, too!)

Mars may never get a solar eclipse like those we enjoy on Earth, but they're still pretty cool.

[mindblowingscience]

An experiment that took place on Mars has shown that it's feasible to extract breathable oxygen from the thin Martian atmosphere. From its little home in the belly of NASA's Perseverance rover, the briefcase-sized Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) Experiment (MOXIE) has been repeatedly breaking apart molecules in Mars air to generate a small, but steady supply of oxygen. Now, MOXIE is getting set to retire, after a job well done. "MOXIE's impressive performance shows that it is feasible to extract oxygen from Mars' atmosphere – oxygen that could help supply breathable air or rocket propellant to future astronauts," says NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy.

Continue Reading.

[superbly-charging-at-78-percent]

Perseverance Rover but she’s a girl

She is taking up all of the space in my brain right now

[promithiae]

Eeeeeee hehehehehehe

The seller never got back to me when I emailed them about printing the pictures so I had to do it myself, which involved a long argument with my printer. But behold! Mars rovers in my locket!

[pepperedart]

My mars gremlins,,,

[imodelsgood]

Look at all these dudes :)

sojourner (hes dead lol)

Spirit and opportunity (may they rest in peace 😔)

Curiosity (he's just vibeing up there :D)

And Percy (say hi to Percy!)

[wayti-blog]

"NASA has announced the first detection of possible biosignatures in a rock on the surface of Mars. The rock contains the first martian organic matter to be detected by the Perseverance rover, as well as curious discolored spots that could indicate the past activity of microorganisms."

"Since landing in Jezero crater a few years ago, Perseverance has traversed a series of rocks formed nearly four billion years before present. Mars back then was far more habitable than the cold, dry, toxic red planet of today.

There were thousands of rivers and lakes, a thick atmosphere, and comfortable temperatures and chemical conditions for life. Many of the rocks in Jezero are sedimentary: mud, silt and sand dumped by a river flowing into a lake.

The new discovery concerns one of these rocks. Informally named "Cheyava Falls" (a waterfall in Arizona), it is a small reddish block of what looks like a mudstone, enriched with organic molecules. The rock is also laced with parallel white veins. Between the veins are millimeter-scale whitish spots with dark rims. For an astrobiologist, all these features are intriguing."

continue reading

[improbabledreams900]

Rest in peace Ingenuity, which was damaged during its 72nd flight on January 18, 2024 and decommissioned a few days later. The Perseverance rover snapped a final picture of the helicopter, which will rest forever in the dunes of Valinor Hills.

[krakenmare]

Perseverance: using its auto-navigation, or AutoNav, technology to guide during its drive to the delta (April 9, 2022)

[tilbageidanmark]

Martian sunset

[theofficialastronomy101]

BREAKING NEWS

[roamerbird]

the fun thing about coming back to tumblr is that I have no idea what I've posted before and what I haven't posted before. Nor do I feel like checking. Sorry if you've seen this before, because it's from 2020.

This was for an editorial illustration assignment and depicts the launch of the Perseverance rover. Plus my thumbnails because I cleaned them up kind of nice.