Tag: Mars
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From The Oatmeal to the space station, Mars InSight lander’s fans are all a-Twitter
Today’s smashingly successful touchdown of NASA’s InSight lander on Mars was a cause for celebration on Twitter. There was good-natured snark from SarcasticRover and from Matthew Inman, the Seattle cartoonist behind The Oatmeal (following up on his terrific preview of the landing). And there were heartfelt congratulations from the space community’s celebrities, including SpaceX founder Elon Musk…
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Elon Musk says there’s a 70 percent chance he’ll move to Mars (and possibly die there)
Axios’ Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen interview SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. (Axios / HBO via YouTube) As NASA prepares for its next Mars landing on Monday, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is giving himself a 70 percent chance of moving to Mars. But in an Axios interview airing tonight on HBO, he emphasizes that it won’t…
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All systems go for Mars InSight landing: Here’s how to watch online and in person
An artist’s conception shows the Mars Insight lander on the Red Planet’s surface, with its seismometer deployed at left and its heat-measuring “mole” deployed at right. (NASA / JPL-Caltech Illustration) After a 300 million-mile, six-month interplanetary cruise, NASA’s Mars InSight robotic lander is heading for a plain-vanilla arrival at the Red Planet on Monday —…
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NASA picks ancient Martian river delta at Jezero Crater as landing site for 2020 rover
This color-coded image of the Jezero Crater delta combines information from two instruments on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars and the Context Camera. (NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS / JHU-APL) One week before the next Mars mission is due to land, NASA has chosen the landing site for its next…
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Goodbye, BFR … hello, Starship: Elon Musk gives a classic name to his Mars spaceship
An artist’s conception shows SpaceX’s Starship in flight. (SpaceX Illustration) First it was the Mars Colonial Transporter, or MCT … then it was the Interplanetary Transport System, or ITS … then it was the Big Falcon Rocket, or BFR. Now it’s Starship. Tonight SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced the latest name for the spaceship that…
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NASA picks Jezero Crater landing site for next Mars rover
STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION On ancient Mars, water carved channels and transported sediments to form fans and deltas within lake basins. Examination of spectral data acquired from orbit show that some of these sediments have minerals that indicate chemical alteration by water. Here in Jezero Crater delta, sediments contain clays and carbonates.…
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Elon Musk and Mars take the spotlight in National Geographic TV doubleheader
SpaceX founder Elon Musk watches February’s ascent of the Falcon Heavy rocket in a scene from National Geographic’s “Mars: Inside SpaceX.” (National Geographic / RadicalMedia via YouTube) Science fiction blends with fact in tonight’s double dose of Mars from National Geographic’s TV channel. Truth to tell, there’s more fact than fiction: The first show in…
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Moon Direct: Mars maverick lays out his low-cost plan to set up lunar bases
Mars Society President Robert Zubrin provides a guided tour of future space missions during a talk at the University of Washington. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle) For decades, rocket scientist Robert Zubrin has been a voice crying in the Martian wilderness. But now the president of the Mars Society is pleading the case for a…
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Who will get to Mars first? Oddsmakers favor SpaceX and Blue Origin over NASA
An artist’s conception shows SpaceX’s BFR rocket landing on Mars. (SpaceX via YouTube) If sending humans to Mars is a race, which team is favored to win? Bookies give the nod to Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin venture, but it’ll be years before any bet pays off. David Strauss, an…
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Pale Red Dot: NASA’s MarCO probe snaps first picture of Mars taken by a CubeSat
Mars shows up as a pale red dot on a picture taken by one of NASA’s twin MarCO spacecraft on Oct. 2. Click on the image for a larger version. (NASA / JPL-Caltech Photo) Mars looks like nothing more than a reddish speck in a picture captured by one of NASA’s twin MarCO spacecraft, but…