A Nasa rover has recorded the sound of a red dust devil whizzing past on Mars. The 10-second first-of-its-kind audio was released on Tuesday and captures not only rumbling gusts of up to 25mph but also the pinging of hundreds of dust particles against the rover Perseverance. It sounds similar to dust devils on Earth […]
The ExoMars rover is one step closer to landing on the red planet following a rehearsal of what happens after it touches down. The exercise involved simulating the UK-built Rosalind Franklin rover driving off its landing platform once it touches down on Mars. After the nerve-wracking descent to the surface of the planet, the rover […]
Last night, the CEO of SpaceX, Elon Musk, presented his vision for ‘Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species’. If you missed it, you can see the full presentation here as it was streamed live, or check out the short animated overview below of The SpaceX Interplanetary Transport System. It’s an ambitious plan (you can download the slides here) and […]
I’m looking forward to The Martian, the new film starring Matt Damon which opens this week. The word is that if you like your science fiction with the emphasis on science, rather than fiction, it promises to be a rewarding experience. Yesterday, NASA announced the results of research which shows that liquid water has been observed on the surface […]
I’ve written about Mars One before. In principle it’s a reasonable idea. Sensationalist headlines have focused on the one-way, lifetime commitment required of the participants but, under the right circumstances, it doesn’t seem like an unreasonable sacrifice in order to make history. That’s probably what Dr Joseph Roche was thinking when he signed up. A serious scientist, Joseph was in it for […]
One of the topics in our house this weekend was the possibility of interstellar travel using generation ships, among other things (it’s that kind of house). We had watched a documentary about the planets discovered by the Kepler mission, which prompted the question: how would you even get there? My eldest was horrified at the prospect of a […]
This week, the Rosetta spacecraft reached the destination it’s been working towards since its launch in 2004, and for many years before that: Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. On RTÉ’s Drivetime on Wednesday, Kevin O’Rourke of The Planetary Society, pointed out that this project has become the life’s work of a generation of scientists, including many here in Ireland. It’s a mission on an […]
Marooned on Mars! It sounds like a 1950s pulp sci-fi title, but in reality over 200,000 people volunteered to do exactly that, and 1,058 have now gone through to the next phase of selection. Irish scientist Dr Joseph Roche is one of them . You might have heard him on Morning Ireland this morning – […]
