wowspace

Resources like oxygen are crucial building blocks in NASA’s plans to establish a long-term presence on the lunar surface. In addition to using oxygen for breathing, it can also be used as a propellant for transportation, helping lunar visitors stay longer and venture farther. During a recent test, scientists at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston successfully extracted oxygen from simulated lunar soil. Lunar soil refers to the fine-grained material covering the Moon’s surface. This was the first time that this extraction has been done in a vacuum environment, paving the way for astronauts to one day extract and use resources to “live off the land” in a lunar environment. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-successfully-extracts-oxygen-from-lunar-soil-simulant/ Credit : Nasa

Compilation of b-roll for media. Collecting samples from Mars and bringing them back to Earth will be a historic undertaking that starts with the launch of NASA's Perseverance rover, part of the Mars 2020 mission. Perseverance will collect samples and leave them on Mars for a future mission to retrieve and return to Earth. NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) are solidifying concepts for this Mars sample return campaign. The current concept includes a lander, a fetch rover, an ascent vehicle to launch the sample container to Martian orbit, and a retrieval spacecraft with a payload for capturing and containing the samples and then sending them back to Earth. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech, ESA, NASA/GSFC and NASA/GRC For more information, visit https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/mars-sample-return-msr/

After 1,000 Martian days of exploration, NASA’s Perseverance rover is studying rocks that show several eras in the history of a river delta billions of years old. Scientists are investigating this region of Mars, known as Jezero Crater, to see if they can find evidence of ancient life recorded in the rocks. Perseverance project scientist Ken Farley provides a guided tour of a richly detailed panorama of the rover’s location in November 2023, taken by the Mastcam-Z instrument. Composed of 993 individual images and 2.38 billion pixels, this 360-degree mosaic looks in all directions from a location the rover science team calls “Airey Hill.” Portions of the rover itself are visible in the scene, appearing more distorted toward the edges as a result of the image processing. A color enhancement applied to the image increases contrast and accentuates color differences. By approximating what the scene would look like under Earth-like lighting conditions, the adjustment allows mission scientists to use their everyday experience to interpret the landscape. The view on Mars would be darker and more reddish. The panorama can be explored and downloaded at: https://go.nasa.gov/3tmJnGB. Learn more about Perseverance: https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS; ESA/DLR/FU-Berlin