Past Highlights

SPACE (5/1, Wall) reports, "Three spectacular new panoramas give an eye-popping look at NASA's Mars rover Curiosity hard at work on the Red Planet." Ken Kremer and Marco Di Lorenzo created the images, which "help paint a picture of Curiosity and its mission." Kremer said, "I chose these scenes because they vividly tell the story of what NASA seeks to accomplish with Curiosity in the search for signs of life on Mars as well as tell the science story of the entire mission at a glance - one pan

Curiosity Engineers, Scientists Getting Needed Time Off With Solar Conjunction. The Pasadena (CA) Star-News (4/5, Figueroa) reports how the Curiosity rover is now "operating under a stored set of commands" until May 1 because of a solar conjunction.

Kepler Supplies More Evidence Supporting General Relativity. The Los Angeles Times (4/5, Mohan, 692K) "Science Now" blog reports, "NASA's Kepler space telescope has beamed back the latest evidence that light can be bent by gravity, an element of the theory of general relativity." While the result was not surprising, "the findings represent the first time the phenomenon

RELEASE: 13-20AR NASA ROVER FINDS CONDITIONS ONCE SUITED FOR ANCIENT LIFE ON MARS

MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. -- An analysis of a rock sample collected by NASA's Curiosity rover shows ancient Mars could have supported living microbes.

Scientists identified sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbon -- some of the key chemical ingredients for life -- in the powder Curiosity drilled out of a sedimentary rock near an ancient stream bed in Gale Crater on the Red Planet last month.

       

     

Remembrance Gathering for Bob Rubin, Space Science and Astrobiology Auditorium, Bldg. 245, 3 p.m.
POC: Sean Colgan, mailto:sean.colgan@nasa.gov
Ames employees are welcome to attend a remembrance gathering for Bob Rubin, April 12, at 3 p.m.

 

Bob's hometown was Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He completed undergraduate and graduate studies at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio.  His advisor, Robert Hjellming, was interested in the physics of H II regions – interstellar clouds of gas ionized by nearby hot stars. 

The AP http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/feb/20/smallest-planet-yet-found-outside-solar-system/  (2/21, Chang) reports scientists using the Kepler telescope data have discovered a planet about the size of the moon, although the exoplanet, called Kepler-37b, "orbits too close to its sun-like star and is too sizzling to support life." It was discovered by Thomas Barclay of the Ames Research Center and it "took more than a year and an international team to co

New Scientist http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23161-curiositys-first-drilling-hints-at-martian-mining.html  (2/13, Grossman) reports Curiosity's first drill on Mars this past weekend "could lay the groundwork for future Mars explorers to build structures or even to mine the Red Planet." Louise Jandura of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory said, "Drilling anywhere is hard, but drilling on a rover kicks it up a notch." JPL drill engineer Avi Okon added, "We've built up a good b

NBC Nightly News javascript:mediaPopup('http://media.bulletinnews.com/playclip.aspx?clipid=8cfd5df3196b33b&pub=nasa#20130211120609143232218166') (2/10, story 8, 0:15, Holt, 7.86M) reported, "The Mars Rover Curiosity did something that had never been done before. It drilled a hole into the rocky surface of the planet and is now collecting the powdered results for analysis. It's an area that shows signs if it was once under water, could potentially reveal evidence that life once existed on Mars."