Fantastic Photos From ESA's Mars Express

I just got a heads up about some really spectacular photos from the ESA's Mars Express.   These shots are in truth a mosaic of shots that bring out the Hebes Chasma canyon system that in part is related to the Tharsis system which contains the largest volcano in the solar system Olympus Mons.

Here is the Hebes Chasma photo, but you should do yourself a favor and check out the ESA site

And here is the link to the ESA site that has more pics  and a lot more info.  Check it out HERE

Readying For Comet ISON

 Out in deep space some 6 billion miles from the sun lies an area containing billions of icy bodies.   Every so often one of theses bodies falls out of this area and hurtles sunward. 

In September of 2012 just such an object was discovered by  Artyom Novichonok and Vitali Nevski using a 40 cm-diameter telescope.  Designated comet ISON its  path  will bring it within over 6 hundred thousand miles above the Sun’s  surface on 28 November of 2013.

Both ESA and NASA have  missions that are now planning to observe ISON.  ESA’s Mars Express will be taking photos and analyzing the composition of the comet’s coma for a two week period.   

SOHO, a  joint ESA/NASA mission will observe the comet as it swings around the Sun in November,  to see if the comet survives its close encounter with the sun.

ESA’s Venus Express and Proba-2 will also target ISON during November and December.

December 26 is the best time to observe the comet during its' closest pass to Earth.  Its brightness will be very much reduced however as its close encounter will have burned off substantial amounts of ice and other gasses

3d Phobos photo!

The ESA spacecraft Mars Express took this and other stunning images of Mars' moon Phobos
on March 7 2010 using the on-board High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) .

With this photo, there are also several excellent high resolution and 3d pictures as well.

Check out the article on the ESA space science online site here

ESA & Mars Express closer to decerning origin of Phobos

European space scientists are getting closer to unravelling the origin of Mars’ larger moon, Phobos. Thanks to a series of close encounters by ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft, the moon looks almost certain to be a ‘rubble pile’, rather than a single solid object. Mars' largest moon is an irregularly sized lump of space rock measuring just 27 km x 22 km x 19 km. Recent passes by Mars Express have allowed teams of European scientists to determine both the mass and volume of Phobos. Putting this data together, the teams will be able to calculate the moon's density. Eventually, this will be a new important clue to how the moon formed. Preliminary density calculations suggest that it is just 1.85 grams per cubic centimetre. This is lower than the density of the martian surface rocks, which are 2.7-3.3 grams per cubic centimetre, but very similar to that of some asteroids. The particular class of asteroids that share Phobos’ density are known as D-class. They are believed to be highly fractured bodies containing giant caverns because they are not solid. Instead, they are a collection of pieces, held together by gravity. Scientists call them rubble piles. This suggests that Phobos, and probably its smaller sibling Deimos, are captured asteroids. The only problem with this scenario is that captured asteroids have erratic obits, but Phobos and Demos have equatorial orbits that seem to contradict the asteroid conclusion. To clear up the question of where the moons came from would require samples of the moon's surface. This possibility might soon become reality because the Russians will attempt to do this with the Phobos-Grunt mission, (I couldn't make this up if I tried!) to be launched next year.

'Active glacier found' on Mars

Shaun Saunders send in this article from BBC News online.

We have seen evidence that water in liquid form was once common on Mar's surface. Today, evidence shows that a significant amount of the Martian polar regions are composed of water ice. However up to this point this was considered ancient ice, many millions of years old. Recent overflights of the Deuteronilus Mensae region between Mars' rugged southern highlands and the flat northern lowlands by the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft have shown an icy feature may only be several thousand years old. This could be significant in not only finding active water underground on Mars but also these areas might be uniquely positive sites for discovering microbial life on the red planet. The reasoning being that as the water peculates to the surface it would carry along any microbes living in the or around the liquid.

For the complete article, click here or the article title