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Washington, <keyword id="6360409" type="General" weightage="100" keywordseo="nasa" source="Orion">NASA</keyword>'s <keyword id="47638" type="General" weightage="80" keywordseo="mars" source="Orion">Mars</keyword> Reconnaissance Orbiter (<keyword id="46371" type="General" weightage="80" keywordseo="mro" source="Orion">MRO</keyword>) spacecraft has captured unusual circles of sand dunes on the Red Planet.<br /><br />The dunes were snapped by MRO's High Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRise) colour camera.<br /><br />While sand dunes of many shapes and sizes are common on Mars. The MRO captured "dunes that are almost perfectly circular, which is unusual," wrote planetary geologist <keyword id="1636162" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="alfred-mcewen" source="Orion">Alfred McEwen</keyword> for a HiRise picture-of-the-day feature.<br /><br />While being circular, "they are still slightly asymmetrical" and have "steep slip faces on the south ends," McEwen wrote.<br /><br />He explained that this indicates that "sand generally moves to the south, but the winds may be variable".<br /><br />The dunes were snapped in late November last year - when researchers were studying the area to monitor for seasonal changes in frost coverage. This image shows frost is absent from the landscape.<br /><br />MRO, which has higher-resolution instruments than <keyword id="322890" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="odyssey" source="Orion">Odyssey</keyword>, was launched in 2005. It has studied the Red Planet's atmosphere and terrain from orbit since 2006 and also serves as a key data relay station for other Mars missions.<br /><br />Equipped with a powerful camera called HiRISE that has aided in a number of discoveries, the MRO has sent back thousands of stunning images of the Martian surface that are helping scientists learn more about Mars, including the history of water flows on or near the planet's surface.<br /><br /><b>SEE ALSO:</b><br /><br /> <b><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/startups/news/startup-fundraising-hits-an-8-month-low-in-february-falls-over-83-yoy/articleshow/98390347.cms">Startup fundraising hits an 8-month low in February, falls over 83% YoY</a></b><br /><br /> <b><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/science/health/news/lets-get-real-scientists-discover-a-new-way-climate-change-threatens-cold-blooded-animals/articleshow/98406756.cms">'Let's get real': scientists discover a new way climate change threatens cold-blooded animals</a></b><br /><br /> <b><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/science/news/iisc-researchers-show-chemically-modified-nanosheets-are-effective-for-biomedical-applications/articleshow/98406708.cms">IISc researchers show chemically-modified nanosheets are effective for biomedical applications</a></b><br />

NASA spacecraft captures unusual circles of sand dunes on Mars

<p>You may have heard that NASA has solved some Mars mystery and will be announcing their findings live on Monday morning.</p><p>The best way to watch the announcement live is the NASA TV livestream below, which starts at 11:30 AM EST:</p><p><div></div></p><p>While we don't want to speculate on what it is, there <a href="https://www.Google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&amp;ion=1&amp;espv=2&amp;es_th=1&amp;ie=UTF-8#q=nasa%20mars%20mystery%20anouncement&amp;es_th=1">are plenty of theories out there if you Google.</a></p><p>Here are the full details about the announcement, <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-to-announce-mars-mystery-solved/">from the NASA press release</a>:</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">NASA will detail a major science finding from the agency's ongoing exploration of Mars during a news briefing at 8:30 a.m. PDT (11:30 a.m. EDT) on Monday, Sept. 28 at the James Webb Auditorium at NASA Headquarters in Washington. The event will be broadcast live on NASA Television and the agency's website.</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">News conference participants will be:</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">-- Jim Green, director of planetary science at NASA Headquarters</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">-- Michael Meyer, lead scientist for the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">-- Lujendra Ojha of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">-- Mary Beth Wilhelm of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California and the Georgia Institute of Technology</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">-- Alfred McEwen, principal investigator for the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) at the University of Arizona in Tucson</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">A brief question-and-answer session will take place during the event with reporters on site and by phone. Members of the public also can ask questions during the briefing using #AskNASA.</p><p>NASA &#xa0;said the announcement is related to a paper published today, September 28, in <a href="http://press.nature.com/?post_type=press_release&amp;p=25439&amp;WT.ec_id=PRESS&amp;shunter=1443011455894">Nature Geoscience</a>. The paper&#xa0;<span>confirms that the&#xa0;dark s</span><span>treaks that seasonally appear and fade away on the surface of&#xa0;Mars are caused by running, salty water.&#xa0;</span>&#xa0;</p><p><span><span>Scientists have long assumed that Mars holds water, based on&#xa0;things like photographs of river flows on the planet and data from rovers, but we've lacked any direct evidence until now.&#xa0;</span></span></p><p>The liquid on Mars can't be pure water. Mars is simply too cold - the average temperature is about minus 67 degrees Fahrenheit.&#xa0;I<span>n March, NASA announced evidence that </span><span>Mars used to have a vast ocean back when it was warmer. Most of that&#xa0;water was lost to space, but some is likely still there, frozen at the planet's polar ice caps.</span></p><p><span>The paper doesn't speculate as to where the water is coming from, or what it might mean for humanity's search for alien life.&#xa0;</span></p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/universe-fruitcake-space-analogy-2015-7">Why a fruitcake is the best description of an expanding universe</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="l2dmhsdjo9aODNLXd8H8FN4NU13xUrY_" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

Watch live: NASA confirms flowing water on Mars

<p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>Last week NASA sent out a <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-to-announce-mars-mystery-solved">cryptic press release</a> about solving a "major" mystery on Mars, which it will announce Monday at 11:30 a.m. EDT. Beyond that the space agency provided little information.<p>So what is the "Mars mystery" NASA has solved? <a href="http://www.techinsider.io/watch-nasas-mars-mystery-solved-livestream-2015-9">Flowing water on Mars</a>.</p><p>This is indeed a major discovery. Where there's water, there may be life.</p><p>But in this case I wouldn't hold your breath. <strong>NASA hyping this finding is a bit like throwing a party over a patch of wet sand in a desert when - right around the celestial corner - at least two <a href="http://www.techinsider.io/oceans-on-planets-and-moons-infrographic-2015-9">vast, inhabitable oceans</a> remain unexplored</strong>.</p><p>The news we'll hear about today (<a href="http://www.techinsider.io/watch-nasas-mars-mystery-solved-livestream-2015-9">watch the live stream here</a>) dates back to 2011, when an undergraduate named <a href="http://lightyears.blogs.cnn.com/2011/08/05/how-an-undergrad-spotted-possible-water-on-mars/">Lujendra Ojha</a> discovered <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/multimedia/pia14472.html">dark streaks on the slope of a crater</a> near the Martian equator.</p><p>Back then, Ojha, planetary scientist Alfred McEwan, and other researchers <a href="https://wesfiles.wesleyan.edu/courses/E&amp;ES-471-mgilmore/mcewenetal.pdf">announced in the journal Science</a> that these streaks, called "slope lineae," appeared during warmer periods on Mars. (McEwen also led a <a href="http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v7/n1/full/ngeo2014.html">2013 followup study</a> in the journal Nature.) They suggested that water in the soil is melting, leaking down the crater wall, and showing up in Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter satellite images.</p><p>NASA told the world back in August 2011 that "<a href="http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/04aug_marsflows/">salt water may flow on Mars</a>."</p><p><div></div></p><p class="embed-spacer">We're almost certain NASA's big announcement on Monday, Sept. 28, will be about the atmospheric origins of these recurring streaks for a few reasons.</p><p>First, both Ojha and McEwen are in NASA's announcement. Second, <a href="http://nasawatch.com/archives/2015/09/nasa-will-revea.html">Keith Cowing at NASAWatch.com</a> learned that both Ojha and McEwen authored a recent scientific abstract about the same slope lineae titled "<a href="http://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EPSC2015/EPSC2015-786-1.pdf">Recurring Slope Lineae on Mars: Atmospheric Origin?</a>" at the <a href="http://www.epsc2015.eu/">2015 European Planetary Science Congress</a>. Third, that conference is happening now, from Sept. 27 - Oct. 2.</p><p>The new abstract suggests that salts in Martian soil are absorbing traces of water in the planet's thin atmosphere, then periodically melting. This is similar to the process that makes table salt, brown sugar, and other compounds in your cupboard soak up humid air. Except on Mars it's blisteringly cold - so the water freezes until it gets warmer, at which time it melts into salty liquid.</p><p>It's possible something else is causing the streaks, perhaps an underground aquifer or a reserve of ice beneath the soil. <strong>Wherever the water comes from, it's not looking promising for life.</strong></p><p>"If [recurring slope lineae] form via atmospheric deliquescence, then they are likely eutectic brines with temperatures and water activities too low to support terrestrial life," the new abstract concludes.</p><p>And this doesn't mean Mars isn't a worthy or interesting target for exploration, robotic or human. Elon Musk and others believe we can terraform the planet (<a href="http://www.techinsider.io/elon-musk-colbert-late-show-heat-mars-nuclear-bombs-2015-9">with nuclear weapons</a>!) and send humans there to colonize it. Also, Mars may have been habitable at one point. Many studies showed it had vast, <a href="http://www.techinsider.io/what-mars-looked-like-with-water-2015-3">450-foot-deep oceans covering 19% of the planet</a>.</p><p>But something went wrong. Mars' internal dynamo stopped, shutting down its magnetic shield that once helped protect the surface from solar radiation - which, in turn, blasted away the Martian atmosphere and almost all of its water over the millennia.</p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><p>Given NASA's growing mission to search for signs of alien life in the Solar System, it's high time the US government seriously commit resources to exploring much more promising if difficult-to-reach locations, such as Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's moon Enceladus. Scientists suspect both of these worlds hide <a href="http://www.techinsider.io/saturns-moon-enceladus-cassini-ocean-life-global-salty-nasa-2015-9">warm, habitable oceans beneath their icy shells</a>.</p><p>If we could orbit or land on one of these ice moons - or even send a submersible into the waters below - we stand to quickly advance two of the greatest questions ever posed by humankind: <a href="http://www.techinsider.io/evidence-for-life-on-other-planets-2015-9">Are we alone</a>? And if we find some microbial life, the follow-up question: <a href="http://www.techinsider.io/why-aliens-have-not-contacted-humans-2015-9">Why haven't we heard from intelligent alien races yet</a>?</p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>NASA has loosely committed to a Europa-orbiting mission sometime in the 2020s, <a href="http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/06/nasa-lays-out-its-plans-for-a-europa-orbiter/">according to Ars Technica</a>. That ice moon's subsurface ocean is thought to harbor twice as much water as all of the liquid on Earth. But the space agency has a bad habit of <a href="http://www.wired.com/2012/08/europa-moon-three-missions/">canceling planned Europa missions</a> after months and years of planning - the bills added up to billions of dollars.<p>Stretch the cost over years, however, and those billions should be relatively easy for the US government to find.</p><p>It's also crucial that the government commit to helping NASA increase its dwindling supply of plutonium-238: A rare, unique, and red-hot material that can power spacecraft for decades - and could help a submersible robot melt through a miles-thick ice shell with relative ease.</p><p>The problem is that <a href="http://www.wired.com/2013/09/plutonium-238-problem/">the entire world is running out</a>. It hasn't been made in earnest since the end of the Cold War, and a $50-million-a-year effort by NASA and the US Department of Energy to reboot production has stalled over and over again, <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/within-nasa-a-plutonium-power-struggle/">according to Scientific American</a>.</p><p>NASA planned to use plutonium-238 to power the Europa mission, but it required more material than the space agency has available. So it opted for a more limited, solar-powered version of the mission.</p><p>Jupiter, Saturn, and their moons are very far away, requiring years of space travel to get there. It also takes scientists and engineers years to design, build, and test the spacecraft they want to send. This means a mission can take more than a decade to pull off.</p><p>A recent feature story about Europa in <a href="http://www.popsci.com/europa-or-bust">Popular Science</a> summed up the problem well (emphasis added):</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">"We understand how special Europa is. It's worth the investment. It's worth the risk," says Louise Prockter, a planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory. Prockter has already made that investment herself, having spent half her career studying Europa's unique, frosty terrain. <strong>"I just hope we can get something there while I'm alive."</strong></p><p>If we're ever going to answer "are we alone?" within our lifetimes, let alone those of the scientists most capable of attacking the question, it's time for NASA and the US government to seriously commit to looking somewhere other than Mars. And right now, Europa and Enceladus are our best shots.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-mars-footage-rover-opportunity-2015-7">NASA released a time-lapse of 11-years of footage filmed on the surface of Mars </a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="h2eWszdjo-_JwHqeuCeuPFO5ZuxZkb19" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

NASA's 'major' discovery on Mars is a distraction from something really exciting

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NASA spacecraft captures unusual circles of sand dunes on Mars

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Watch live: NASA confirms flowing water on Mars

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NASA's 'major' discovery on Mars is a distraction from something really exciting

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