Mars, the coolest neighbour of Earth is one of the most analyzed, examined bodies of the solar system. There is a lot of research going on to find out about this dusty, cold planet.
Here are few findings about MARS:
NASA’s Curiosity Rover finds an ancient oasis on Mars. This mission was launched by the NASA on 26th November, 2011 and it landed on Mars on August 6, 2012. The intention of this mission is to find out if Mars could support microbial life.
In the year 2013, the NASA scientists were able to declare that Mars would support livable environment and also discovered Sulphur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorous which are the key elements of life.
After 7 years of rover’s exploration, scientists at the NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, disclosed a new study about water on Mars.
Planet Mars look 3.5 billion years ago. This key finding from the rover proposes that red planet might have had water in its past.
NASA declared that they have detected some sections of sedimentary rocks which were rich with minerals, a gesture that the crater had trivial briny ponds which flooded and dried up several times. William Rapin, a lead researcher described that the ponds that were discovered are a 150m tall section of sedimentary rocks which were simile to the saline lakes of Altipano is South America.
The NASA team is now working on finding out the time-span for this planet to transform from wet to dry . NASA also disclosed that some peculiar sounds can be heard on Mars.
Insight is the first mission by NASA that was intended to explore about the interior of Mars. It landed in the region called Elysium Planitia on November 26, 2018. Since then Insight has been taking images, providing Martian weather reports on a daily basis, noticing quakes and hearing strange sounds.
But the heat probe associated with it is striving to dig down the surface of Mars. Insight has a suite of geophysical instruments which sound like a doctors bag and altogether those instruments are taking measurements of crucial signs like the pulse, reflexes, temperature which would help to translate like seismology.
Since February 2018, the heat probe, has roughly dug only 14 inches into the surface though it was designed to reach at least 16 feet. It seems that the mole is missing a key factor in penetrating deeper. But, the Insight team believes that this problem with the heat probe can be fixed by applying excess pressure.