USGS Astrogeology: Hot Topics

Cool Pics

Shoemaker Impact Structure: Resembling splotches of yellow and green paint, salt-encrusted seasonal lakes dot the floor of Western Australia’s Shoemaker impact structure. The structure was formed about 1.7 billion years ago and is currently the oldest known impact site in Australia. This image was acquired by Landsat 7’s Enhanced Thematic Mapper plus (ETM+) sensor. Image provided by the USGS EROS Data Center Satellite Systems Branch as part of the Earth as Art 2 image series

More Fantastic Imagery!

Astro Gallery

Astro Images & Maps

NASA Planetary Photojournal

Press Releases

NASA and USGS announce availability of historic images of the Moon (1/20/2004) [PDF, 85KB]

Reviews & Awards

The National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) SciLinks web service has chosen to include our site in their listing. SciLinks is an endeavor by NSTA to connect textbooks to useful online content to help teachers take advantage of the Internet to show their students materials that enhance or extend the content covered in the curriculum.

Our site was selected to be included in September's Digital Dozen, a list of exemplary web sites for educators selected by the Eisenhower National Clearinghouse (ENC). ENC collects both physical and virtual resources useful to math and science educators. ENC is funded by the United States Department of Education and administered by The Ohio State University.

News

Mercury-Bound MESSENGER Launches from Cape Canaveral

2004-08-03 - NASA's MESSENGER -- set to become the first spacecraft to orbit the planet Mercury -- launched today at 2:15:56 a.m. EDT aboard a Boeing Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. The approximately 1.2-ton (1,100-kilogram) spacecraft, designed and built by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md., was placed into a solar orbit 57 minutes after launch. Once in orbit, MESSENGER automatically deployed its two solar panels and began sending data on its status. Once the mission operations team at APL acquired the spacecraft’s radio signals through tracking stations in Hawaii and California, Project Manager David G. Grant confirmed the craft was operating normally and ready for early system check-outs.

Messenger Launch

The MESSENGER spacecraft successfully launches from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

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More: NASA - Mercury-Bound MESSENGER Launches from Cape Canaveral

Link: NASA - Mercury, Get Ready for a Close-Up

Titan's Purple Haze Points to a Fuzzy Past

2004-07-24 - Encircled in purple stratospheric haze, Saturn's largest moon, Titan, appears as a softly glowing sphere in this colorized image taken on July 3, 2004, one day after Cassini's first flyby of that moon.

Titan's Purple Haze

Images like this one reveal some of the key steps in the formation and evolution of Titan's haze. The process is thought to begin in the high atmosphere, at altitudes above 400 kilometers (250 miles), where ultraviolet light breaks down methane and nitrogen molecules. The products are believed to react to form more complex organic molecules containing carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen that can combine to form the very small particles seen as haze. The bottom of the detached haze layer is a few hundred kilometers above the surface and is about 120 kilometers (75 miles) thick. NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

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More: NASA - Titan's Purple Haze Points to a Fuzzy Past

Link: NASA - Cassini Image Gallery

About Face: Rover Engineers Change the Rules for Driving

2004-07-16 - When Joe Melko started design work four years ago on the six-wheeled rovers that are now on Mars, he didn’t plan on steering one of them like a six-person river raft. five 1/2 months after landing the robots on Mars, that’s what he and a team of engineers are doing. Now that the right front wheel on the Spirit rover is showing signs of wear, Melko and a team of assistants have been testing a surrogate rover at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to see how it performs on five wheels. No matter that the rover has gone six times the distance it was designed to drive on Mars. Scientists still have a lot of rock outcrops they’d like to investigate. And this team will keep that rover going as long as humanly possible.

More: Mars Exploration Rovers - About Face: Rover Engineers Change the Rules for Driving

Link: NASA - Spirit event archive

Mars Express pictures

2004-06-29 - Mars Express, the first European Space Agency probe to head for another planet entered orbit around Mars, from where it performs detailed studies of the planet's surface, its subsurface structures and its atmosphere. shown here is a picture the Mars Express took of the Melas Chasma.

Melas Chasma

Steep cliffs drop into the rugged terrain of Melas Chasma in this stunning view from the Mars Express spacecraft orbiting the Red Planet. At a scale of 16 meters per pixel, the image data from the orbiter's High Resolution Stereo Camera offers evidence that volcanic activity, water, wind erosion and marsquakes may all have shaped the region. Melas Chasma lies along the central southern edge of the large Valles Marineris, the grand canyon of Mars. While the Valles Marineris is itself over 4,000 kilometers long and up to 10 kilometers deep, the region pictured spans about 70 kilometers. The floor of Melas Chasma seen here is several kilometers below the surrounding plateau. G. Neukum (FU Berlin) et al., Mars Express, DLR, ESA

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More: G. Neukum (FU Berlin) et al., Mars Express, DLR, ESA - Mars Express Image

Link: JPL - Mars Express en route for the Red Planet

Link: ESA - Mars Express Home

Mars Rover Surprises Continue; Spirit, Too, Finds Hematite

2004-06-25 - Spirit rolled up to a knobby rock just past where the "Columbia Hills" start to rise from the surrounding plain. It touched the rock with a mineral-identifying instrument at the tip of its robotic arm and detected hematite. Hematite identified from orbit was NASA's key reason for choosing Opportunity's landing site halfway around Mars from these hills within Gusev Crater.

Hematite

This close-up image taken by Spirit highlights the nodular nuggets that cover the rock dubbed "Pot of Gold." These enigmatic features appear to stand on the end of stalk-like projections. Data from the rover's scientific instruments has shown that Pot of Gold contains the mineral hematite, which can be formed with or without water. Scientists are planning further observations of that and other rocks in the area to determine this mineral's origin. JPL

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More: JPL - Mars Rover Surprises Continue; Spirit, Too, Finds Hematite

Link: Cornell University - Mars Rover Mission Journal

Spirit Reaches Columbia Hills

2004-06-16 - On sol 156, Spirit roved 42 meters (138 feet) closer to a vantage point where it could observe the hill outcrops. Some of the images that Spirit sent back revealed a small and unusual rock that piqued scientists' interest and was informally named "End-of-Rainbow." Part of the sol 157 plan was to observe End-of-Rainbow and use the alpha particle X-ray spectrometer, Mössbauer spectrometer and microscopic imager to study the "Shredded" soil target. However, the command load for sol 157 never made it to Spirit. Further analysis indicated that the problem had to do with the frequency drift associated with the colder temperatures on Mars as the planet moves into its southern winter season. This was an anticipated problem, and the rover team has already imposed some strategies that will help to prevent the problem in the future.

More: NASA - Spirit Reaches 'Columbia Hills'

Transit of Venus

2004-06-08 - Transits of Venus across the disk of the Sun are among the rarest of planetary alignments. Indeed, only six such events have occurred since the invention of the telescope (1631, 1639, 1761, 1769, 1874 and 1882). Two transits of Venus are occuring within a few years of eachother - the first was on June 08, 2004, the next will be June 06, 2012. Transits of Venus are only possible during early December and early June when Venus's orbital nodes pass across the Sun. If Venus reaches inferior conjunction at this time, a transit will occur. Transits show a clear pattern of recurrence at intervals of 8, 121.5, 8 and 105.5 years. The next pair of Venus transits occur over a century from now on 2117 Dec 11 and 2125 Dec 08.

More: NASA Sun-Earth - Venus Transit 2004

More: Science@NASA - James Cook and the Transit of Venus

More: Space Weather - Transit of Venus Photo Gallery

NASA Field Tests Wi-Fi in Arizona

2004-01-25 - NASA has begun field tests, in an Arizona meteor crater, of a mobile Wi-Fi system that could allow astronauts on manned planetary exploration missions to easily deploy wireless data connectivity, similar to the wireless technology used by many people to connect their laptops and other mobile devices to the Internet. Mars explorers might carry wireless-enabled personal computers while on extra-vehicular activities (EVAs) for collecting and exchanging data and information with eachother, the lander, and mission control on Earth.

More: Wired - Wi-Fi Enters the Space Race

Rover Opportunity Lands on Mars

2004-01-25 - NASA's second Mars Exploration Rover successfully sent signals to Earth during its bouncy landing and after it came to rest on one of the three side petals of its four-sided lander. Mission engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., received the first signal from Opportunity on the ground at 9:05 p.m. Pacific Standard Time Saturday via the NASA Deep Space Network, which was listening with antennas in California and Australia. Opportunity landed in a region called Meridiani Planum, halfway around the planet from the Gusev Crater site where its twin rover, Spirit, landed three weeks ago. Earlier today, mission managers reported progress in understanding and dealing with communications and computer problems on Spirit.

More: NASA - NASA Hears From Opportunity Rover On Mars

More: NASA - Opportunity Sits In A Small Crater, Near A Bigger One

More: NASA - First Images Of Opportunity Site Show Bizarre Landscape

Spirit Drives to 'Adirondack'

2004-01-19 - NASA's Spirit rover has successfully driven to its first target on Mars, a football-sized rock that scientists have dubbed Adirondack. The Mars Exploration Rover flight team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., plans to send commands to Spirit early Tuesday to examine Adirondack with a microscope and two instruments that reveal the composition of rocks, said JPL's Dr. Mark Adler, Spirit mission manager. The instruments are the Mössbauer spectrometer and the alpha particle X-ray spectrometer.

More: NASA - Spirit Drives to a Rock Called 'Adirondack' for Close Inspection

Link: USGS Astro - Mars Exploration Rovers Project

Read previous news features

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NASA: today@nasa.gov

NASA: Science@nasa.gov

NASA Watch

SpaceWeather.com - Science news and information about the Sun-Earth environment

Space.com: News

Astro in Print

Volcano-Ice Interaction on Earth & Mars
Geological Society Special Publication 202
ISBN 1-86239-121-1
Edited by J L Smellie (British Antarctic Survey, UK) & M G Chapman (US Geological Survey, US)

This volume focuses on magmas and cryospheres on earth and Mars and is the first publication of its kind to combine a thematic set of contributions addressing the diverse range of volcano-ice interactions known or thought to occur on both planets. Understanding those interactions is a comparatively young scientific endeavour, yet it is vitally important for a fuller comprehension of how planets work as integrated systems. It is also topical since future volcanic eruptions on earth may contribute to melting ice sheets and thus to global sea level rise.

Visit the Volcano/Ice Interaction Workshop page for more about this subject.

Mars News

Mars Exploration Rover

View the video of the Roving Around Mars: Adventures in Exploring the Red Planet talk in Menlo, CA, January 22nd by Devon Burr, Planetary Geologist

NASA Mars Exploration Rover News & Features

JPL Mars Exploration Rover Mission

Cornell: Mission to Mars - MER Athena Science Package

Other Missions

ESA: Beagle 2 Lander &
Mars Express

JAXA: Nozomi (also see Japan Bids Farewell to Nozomi)

Hot Topics

New!

Historic Lunar Data Archive - View and download Lunar images and data from Apollo, Galileo, Lunar Orbiter, and Zond 8 missions, plus geologic maps and other data.

MDIM 2.1: Mars Global Digital Image Mosaic - View and download the latest Mars Digital Image Model, a global image map designed to emphasize local topographic features

Io's Aurorae: Images and observations about Cassini images of Io's visible aurorae during an eclipse

Clementine Near-Infrared Global Lunar Mosaic: View and download the near-infrared global mosaic of the Moon from the Clementine mission data

Reviving Lunar Orbiter Photographs: Project to scan, enhance, and mosaic Lunar Orbiter photographic film. Download recently completed imagery, see the project status, and learn more about the history of this project.

Events

View the video of the Roving Around Mars: Adventures in Exploring the Red Planet talk in Menlo, CA, January 22nd by Devon Burr, Planetary Geologist

Astro in the Media

Astronomy Magazine did a story about our Lunar Orbiter Digitization Project - read the article: Reviving Lunar Orbiter (3/17/2004).

KNAZ and the Arizona Daily Sun interviewed Lunar Orbiter Digitization Project members Tammy Becker and Lynn Weller about the public release of imagery from the project. View the news release: NASA and USGS announce availability of historic images of the Moon (1/20/2004) [PDF, 85KB].

David Sunfellow interviewed Jim Torson and Carolyn Shoemaker and documented his visit here in a New Heaven, New Earth special report A Visit To USGS Center of Astrogeology in Flagstaff, Arizona

Science magazine's NetWatch featured the USGS Astrogeology Research Program website in their 5 July 2002 issue (volume 297, page 19). The 2 July 2002 issue of AGU's weekly newspaper, Eos, included Dave Roddy's biography written by Carolyn Shoemaker.

Moons