Earlier this week strong winds over the Saharan Desert blew westwards pushing clouds of dust and sand over southern and central Morocco and out into the Atlantic Ocean. This is […]
Remote Sensing
Posted inAstrogeology, Caves, Craters, Mountains, Subsurface, Lava Tubes, Desert Worlds, Exploration Gear & Tech, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Mapping, Geodesy, Cartography, Bathymetry, Mars, Missions & Hardware, Status Report
MarsRetrieval: Benchmarking Vision-Language Models for Planetary-Scale Geospatial Retrieval on Mars
Data-driven approaches like deep learning are rapidly advancing planetary science, particularly in Mars exploration. Despite recent progress, most existing benchmarks remain confined to closed-set supervised visual tasks and do not […]
Posted inAnalog Studies, Astrogeology, Caves, Craters, Mountains, Subsurface, Lava Tubes, Desert Worlds, Icy Worlds, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Mapping, Geodesy, Cartography, Bathymetry, Mars, Status Report
Orbital Recon: A Decade Of Carbon Dioxide Sublimation At Mars’ South Pole
We’ve monitored the so-called Happy Face Crater in the South Polar region of Mars for over a decade. Two images that we took, one in 2011 and the other in […]
Posted inAtmospheres, Climate, Weather, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Mapping, Geodesy, Cartography, Bathymetry, Radiation, Status Report
Cosmic Rays As An Interdisciplinary Earth Observation Tool: From Particle Physics and Atmospheric Processes to Geosciences and Urban Science
The exploration of cosmic rays, which are high-energy particles originate from space and the atmosphere, has historically been associated with particle physics and astrophysics.
Posted inAnalog Studies, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Extremeophiles and Extreme Environments, Habitable Zones, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Plant Biology, Press Release, Sample Return, Tricorders & Sensors, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography
Orbital Biosignature Assay: Lake Eyre
Editor’s note: As we begin to study worlds in our own solar system that might have life we use our home world as a testbed for the various ways to […]
Posted inAnalog Studies, Artemis & Lunar Exploration, Astrobiology (general), Astrogeology, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Away Teams & Field Reports, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Citizen Science / Open Science, Courses, Education and Outreach, Exploration Gear & Tech, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Mapping, Geodesy, Cartography, Bathymetry, Missions & Hardware, Robotics/Rovers/UAVs, Sample Return, Space Life Science, Tricorders & Sensors
Tricorder Tech For Everyone: NASA’s STELLA Open Science Instrument
Editor’s note: NASA has just authored a paper on a new way for people with a wide variety of interests to use – and build – sensor technology that is […]
Posted inAstrogeology, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Desert Worlds, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Mapping, Geodesy, Cartography, Bathymetry, Mars, Missions & Hardware, Status Report
Mars Orbital Recon: Possible Sulfate Deposits In West Melas Chasma
Melas Chasma is the widest segment of Valles Marineris, the largest canyon in the Solar System. In this region, hydrated sulfate salts have been detected, and are found extensively throughout […]
Posted inArtemis & Lunar Exploration, Away Teams & Field Reports, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Mapping, Geodesy, Cartography, Bathymetry, Missions & Hardware, Robotics/Rovers/UAVs, Status Report
Mars-Bench: A Benchmark for Evaluating Foundation Models for Mars Science Tasks
Foundation models have enabled rapid progress across many specialized domains by leveraging large-scale pre-training on unlabeled data, demonstrating strong generalization to a variety of downstream tasks.
Posted inAstrogeology, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Desert Worlds, Icy Worlds, Mars, Missions & Hardware, Press Release, Terraforming & Geoengineering
Mars South Pole: Suspected Underground Lake Is Probably A Layer Of Rock And Dust
NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has revisited and raised new questions about a mysterious feature buried beneath thousands of feet of ice at the Red Planet’s south pole. In a […]
Posted inAnalog Studies, Arctic / Antarctic / Alpine, Astrochemistry, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Icy Worlds, Meteorites & Asteroids, Press Release, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography
Space Dust Reveals Arctic Ice Conditions Before Satellite Imaging
Arctic sea ice has declined by more than 42% since 1979, when regular satellite monitoring began. As the ice grows thinner and recedes, more water is exposed to sunlight.