Mars

We knew that Mars has gravity. Now we have just discovered the unexpected effect it has on the Earth’s climate

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I don’t need to tell you that the Earth’s climate is not constant and it is not just because of the climate change: If we look at it in perspective, throughout the history of the planet it has gone through glaciations and warm periods. Many of these changes find explanation in the Milankovitch cycles or orbital variations, that is, the slow changes in the Earth’s orbit and the inclination of its axis due to the gravitational attraction of other planets. The surprising influence of Mars. It was known that the giant Jupiter or the nearby Venus are largely to blame, but now we have discovered another secondary actor that has gained importance: Mars, as explained this study collected in Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific and led by scientist Stephen Kane. What’s surprising about it? That Mars only has 10% of the mass of the Earth, hence there are simplified climate models that downplay its importance. The simulations. The hypothesis is: what would happen to the Earth’s orbit if Mars were much larger or did not exist? Since human research teams do not have millions of years to wait, they used simulations with a solar system model of ten million years each to study gravitational interactions. The only factor they changed in each simulation was the mass of Mars: from zero (Mars does not exist) to being ten times larger than Earth. Mars “weighs” much more than we think. And the results were conclusive: Mars is directly responsible for the “Great Cycle”, a 2.4 million year gravitational beat in which Mars rhythmically stretches and shrinks the Earth’s orbit, acting as a metronome that regulates the amount of solar radiation received and regulates the frequency of ice ages. Without Mars, that cycle would not exist. However, Kane nuance: “It doesn’t mean that without Mars the Earth wouldn’t have ice ages, but it would completely change the frequency with which they occur.” But if Mars were giant, Earth’s climate cycles would also change: they would be shorter and more extreme, going from an ice age to suffocating heat waves. In short, life adaptation would become more complicated. What would not change, according to the study, is the “great Jupiter – Venus cycle”, the 405,000-year gravitational pattern driven by a secular resonance of both planets that acts as the “master clock” of the Earth’s climate as it is the most stable and constant cycle in the planet’s geological history. Why is it important. Knowing better the influence of the planets around us on the climate is good news that helps us better understand our past and be able to glimpse the future with more precision. But it has an impact on the search for habitable exoplanets: it is not enough to find something similar to Earth, but you also have to look at its neighbors and pay attention to the fine print. That is, if it has a “Mars-type” planet nearby but of great mass, its climate has every chance of being too chaotic for life. In Xataka | Mars has just entered the exclusive club of planets with rays. This is discouraging news for NASA. In Xataka | We had been wondering for decades how Mars could have water, cold and life. Today we finally have an answer Cover | Photo of Planet Volumes in Unsplash

NASA has already used it to plan routes for the Perseverance rover on Mars

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Over the last few years, artificial intelligence has crept into our routines as a practical tool: generate images, summarize, analyze, program. But in recent times it is crossing a more demanding frontier, that of systems that make decisions with physical consequences in the real world. And that also includes space. NASA JPL just announced that the Perseverance rover has completed the first drives on another world whose route was planned by AI. In terms of planetary exploration, we are not talking about a great leap in distance, but about something more delicate: proving that a technology designed to interpret information and propose actions can begin to be integrated, with supervision, into the way in which other worlds are explored. What exactly did the AI ​​do. The test materialized in two drives carried out on December 8 and 10, 2025, both inside the crater Jezero. In those two days, the team incorporated AI models with visual capacity for a very specific task: proposing waypointsthat is, the intermediate locations on which the driving plan is then built and sent to the rover. This type of planning is normally done manually by specialists who analyze images and data of the terrain. On this occasion, AI generated these waypoints so that Perseverance could safely navigate a complex area, under the leadership of the rover’s own operations center at JPL and in collaboration with Anthropic. A basic limitation. Mars is far away, and you can’t drive a rover like a remote-controlled car. JPL itself remembers that the red planet is, on average, about 225 million kilometers from Earth, a distance that generates delays in communication and makes real-time control unfeasible. For this reason, the missions operate with a different logic: the terrain is analyzed, routes are drawn in sections and instructions are sent through the Deep Space Network. The rover executes them and the result is confirmed with a delay. It is a well-proven workflow, but it is also slow, especially when the goal is to advance through complex areas without putting the vehicle at risk. The milestone figures. JPL details that, in the first demonstration on December 8, 2025, Perseverance advanced about 210 meters. In the second, on December 10, he traveled around 246 meters. In total, just over four hundred meters in two days. It is not an epic feat nor does it pretend to be. What is relevant is that these routes were based on a different scheme than usual: the planning was built from the aforementioned waypoints and the rover then executed the plan on terrain that requires precision because it does not forgive mistakes. A demonstration that AI continues to gain ground. “This demonstration shows how far our capabilities have advanced and expands how we will explore other worlds,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. And he finished with an idea that serves as an editorial guide for the entire experiment: “Autonomous technologies like this can help missions operate more efficiently, respond to challenging terrain, and increase scientific performance as distance from Earth increases.” For now, the demo is limited, but it’s hard not to read it as a warning. Autonomy is no longer discussed only in laboratories, it is also being tested on Mars. In context. We are not talking about any AI. Claude, Anthropic models, have been gaining ground as a tool for programming tasks for some time, becoming a reference option, even threatening ChatGPT. And that reputation has not stayed in the developer community: according to Mark Gurman (Bloomberg), Apple would be beginning to integrate it in a structured way into its AI strategy for Xcode; and, according to Insider, Meta has incorporated Claude into “Devmate”, an internal debugging-oriented tool. Images | NASA | Anthropic In Xataka | Anthropic has rewritten his 25,000-word “Constitution” for Claude. It is the manual for how AI should behave

China has just resolved one of the biggest doubts about going to Mars with the birth of six space mice

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For years, the great doubt of space biology It has not been whether we can have tomatoes and lettuce in orbit to be able to populate other planets, but whether our bodies will remain functional after returning from the vacuum of space. Something that above all interests us in order to reproduce. And in order to solve it, China sent a mouse who was in the Tiangong station to see if she was later capable of having babies and if they came with any serious alteration. Some babies for history. The result of this trip to Tiangong Station The truth is that it has been a successsince on December 10, 2025, a laboratory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) witnessed an apparently everyday but scientifically extraordinary event: the birth of nine baby mice. The special thing, logically, was not the birth, but the fact that his mother had been in space for several weeks (although with some problems) subjected to microgravity and cosmic radiation. Now, six of these babies have survived and are growing normally. It was not without incident. The experiment was a priori quite simple: launch four mice (two males and two females) into space on October 31 and leave them there for two weeks. All this accompanied by adequate food for the duration of the mission. But in the end there were major problems that forced extend the stay in space. And this was a huge inconvenience, since the critical shortage of solid food for the mice could literally cause the mice to die and the mission to be a disaster. And that is why on Earth they began to look for the most suitable food to feed these animals and the result was liquid soy milk, which was the only thing available at the station. Completely monitored. In order to have good traceability of what the mice do in space, scientists kept the mice monitored with artificial intelligence at all times. In this way, it was possible to know at the moment what they ate and even the stress patterns they presented, circadian rhythms and possible anomalies in real time. And everything was taken care of in detail, to the point that the soy milk was supplied with a negative pressure pumping system to prevent liquid bubbles from floating around the cabin. The progression. Once this problem was resolved, on November 14, 2025, the animals returned to earth and natural conception occurred. The result was that 9 calves were born and only six survived in good health. The problem of microgravity. Until this experiment, there was a well-founded fear in the scientific community: that ionizing radiation and the absence of gravity would “break” something in the hormonal axis or in the integrity of the DNA of the gametes. Something that would prevent us from reproducing normally, which would prevent, for example, the colonization of Mars. Precisely, cosmic radiation acts as a shower of high-energy particles that can cause double-strand breaks in DNA. On Earth, our atmosphere protects us, but at 400 km altitude, mice (and humans) are exposed to a much higher dose. Researcher Wang Hongmei highlights that the fact that the offspring are viable suggests that the cellular repair mechanisms of mammals are capable of compensating for the damage suffered during short-duration flights. A competition. As with everything related to space, there is a great rivalry between the United States and China. In this way, if we look back we see that China He had already managed to partially develop mouse embryos in space in 2020. Subsequently, NASA in 2019 conducted researchers on the International Space Station to analyze the bone density loss and muscle in space. What’s next. The experiment does not end with childbirth. Now, scientists monitor what they call “second-generation effects.” The aim is to determine if these six mice will develop health problems in the medium term or if their fertility will be affected when they reach maturity. In this way, if these mice do not present infertility, we can see that space travel is not a sentence of sterility. China’s next big step will be to attempt the reproductive cycle in orbit: conception, gestation and birth without setting foot on Earth. Something that will be fundamental for to be able to understand if humans in space can have some kind of possibility of reproducing without the protection of our beloved atmosphere. Images | Frenjamin Benklin POT In Xataka | Thinking that we are alone in the universe is arrogant. The question is why the aliens haven’t contacted us yet

this is how radiosynthesis wants to take us to Mars

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In May 1997, Nelli Zhdanova entered the Chernobyl nuclear station and discovered something curious: The ceiling, the walls and even the inside of the reactor ducts were black. For some inexplicable reason, all those places that until then were considered incompatible with life They were full of mold. Not only that. He discovered that these fungi not only survived brutal doses of radiation, but they took advantage of it, fed on it, grew towards it. What I didn’t know is that those very obscure radiotrophic fungi were our best asset for traveling to space. Because now it’s not enough to understand them… We already know that these organisms they carry out a kind of radiosynthesis using melanin to convert ionizing radiation into usable chemical energy. And, if that were not enough, we know that a layer of just 1.7 mm could reduce around 2–2.5% the radiation measured under it. It was a matter of time before we got down to work and a new wave of studies emerged that combines biology, materials science and low-orbit testing. …we need to change the world. The basic idea right now is to create biocomposites where melanin (fungal, animal or synthetic) is mixed with polymers such as PLA (polylactic acid) to improve its structural stability and, above all, its shielding capacity against space radiation. Based on melanin and with the DNA repair mechanisms of fungi under arm, the idea of ​​​​creating a bi-shield of protection in deep space is on the table. We are talking about one of the best solutions (light, self-healing and versatile) to travel to Mars avoiding the problems of microradiation. A huge toolbox. Of course, this is just the beginning. Extremophiles have proven to be an incredible toolbox and the interest in Chernobyl mushrooms is part of that idea, that dream, that hope. But is it realistic or is it pure hype? That’s the big question, isn’t it? After all, the current armor figures are modest: reductions of 2–4%; and a good part of the community sees it as something complementary (and not a technology capable of replacing others). Above all, because there are many doubts about how we will be able to resolve all biosecurity problems than a bunch of mushrooms in a closed space in deep space. Luckily, we have time to get it. Image | Jorge Fernandez Salas | Photobank kyiv In Xataka | Chernobyl was filled with mushrooms after the nuclear accident. Thanks to them we discovered a “new form of photosynthesis”

Mars has just entered the exclusive club of planets with rays. This is discouraging news for NASA.

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NASA’s Perseverance rover has captured a lightning strike on Mars for the first time. Although it may seem strange, it is only the fourth planet in which we have confirmed the presence of this type of electrical activity, after Earth, Jupiter and Saturn. Confirmed. Despite its thin atmosphere, scientists have suspected for decades that the red planet, with its constant whirlwinds and dust storms, must have some type of electrical activity. Now, thanks to the Perseverance rover, we finally have definitive proof. The discovery, published in the journal Natureconfirms that the Martian atmosphere crackles with electricity, although not exactly like the Earthly storms we know. They haven’t seen it, they’ve heard it. As much as we would have liked the Perseverance rover to photograph a blinding flash across the Martian sky, the first evidence of electrical activity on Mars is not visual, but auditory. NASA’s rover’s SuperCam instrument, equipped with a microphone originally designed to listen to the rover’s laser hitting rocks, has captured something unexpected: the sound of electrical discharges. Among dust devils. According to the data analyzed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratorythe rover recorded 55 electrical discharge events over two Martian years. Most associated with dust storms, and 16 of them when the rover was directly crossed by sand devils. “We got some good recordings where you can clearly hear the click,” Ralph Lorenz, Perseverance mission scientist, explains in a statement. But in a specific recording from sol 215 (the 215th Martian day of the mission), you hear not only the electrical crack, but also the swirling wind hitting the rover and grains of sand impacting the microphone. The triboelectric effect. How do these rays form on a planet without rain clouds? Because of the triboelectric effect, exactly the same physical principle that happens when we walk with socks on a carpet and then you touch a doorknob and, ouch, a spark jumps. On Mars, dust devils act like giant generators of static electricity: Hot air rises and begins to rotate, forming a vortex. When rotating, it raises dust and sand. The dust grains rub against each other, transferring electrons and generating charge. It’s not very encouraging. Although on Earth it also occurs in deserts, on Mars this effect is much more likely to result in electrical shocks. The Martian atmosphere is extremely thin, so the amount of charge needed to break air resistance and generate a spark is much smaller. This discovery is not just a meteorological curiosity; has profound implications for the planet’s chemistry and the search for life. Confirmation of these electrical discharges suggests that the Martian atmosphere may become charged enough to activate powerful chemical reactions. These sparks could be creating highly oxidizing compounds, such as perchlorates, which are very aggressive and can destroy the organic molecules (the building blocks of life) that the rover is trying to find. Image | NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona In Xataka | Who or what excavated the ravines on Mars? The answer is even stranger than we always thought

After a month and a half of controversy, NASA will publish the 3I/ATLAS photos it took from Mars

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It’s been the hottest topic of conversation in ufology circles for the past six weeks. While 3I/ATLAS, the third known interstellar object, crossed our solar system, NASA kept receiving the same question: where are the photos of its passage through Mars? Here are the damn photos. After 47 days of silence, the US space agency has confirmed that it will make public the 3I/ATLAS images and all the data collected by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter probe during its approach to Mars in early October. will do it through press conference on Wednesday, November 19, at 3:00 PM EST (9:00 PM PST). The event will be attended by heavyweights such as Nicky Fox (Associate Administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate) and will be broadcast online on the NASA+ channel. A little context. Between October 2 and 3, the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS passed within about 29 million kilometers of Mars. At that time, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and its powerful HiRISE camera had a golden opportunity: observe the object from a unique lateral angle, impossible to achieve from Earth. However, the images never appeared, and Avi Loeb soon raised his voice. The controversial Harvard cosmologist argues that there are enough anomalies in 3I/ATLAS to consider the possibility that it is an artificial alien object“possibly hostile.” Loeb accused NASA of withholding “extremely scientifically valuable” images, and managed to involve a Republican congresswoman to demand their release. The reason for the wait. It was not a kidnapping, but one of the many consequences of the US government shutdown, which kept 83% of the NASA staff suspended from employment and pay between October 1 and November 13. In fact, the position of NASA and counterparts like the European Space Agency regarding 3I/ATLAS is absolutely calm. The agencies maintain that 3I/ATLAS is a comet. Its observations with the Hubble and James Webb telescopes suggest that it is an icy body between 440 meters and 5.6 kilometers with an active coma. And his behavior, including non-gravitational acceleration As it passes through the Sun, it is a natural effect of the sublimation of ice when heated. What can we expect? The side view of the comet will be crucial to understanding the geometry of the comet’s gas and dust jets, and ruling out the exotic theory that they are artificial propellants. In any case, they will not be the last images we see of 3I/ATLAS. The European probe Juice is observing the object, but the data will take months to arrive due to the position of the spacecraft relative to the Sun. 3I/ATLAS will pass its closest point to Earth, about 270 million kilometers, on December 19, 2025. For now, the scoreboard is: Bureaucracy 1 – Science 0. In Xataka | It went from a supposed alien ship to definitely a comet. Now 3I/ATLAS surprises again with another possibility

Who or what excavated the ravines on Mars? The answer is even stranger than we always thought

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For years, we have seen images of strange grooves in the dunes of Mars that seemed to have been carved by liquid water, feeding the hopes of finding conditions for life. But the reality, as often happens in these fields, is much stranger and fascinating as shown a new study published in Geophysical Research Letters which not only confirms that the culprit is carbon dioxide ice, but has discovered a completely new mechanism that seems straight out of science fiction. The study. Dr. Lonneke Roelofs of Utrecht University, lead author of the study, described it in a way that will be familiar to many of us: “I felt like I was watching the sandworms from the movie Dune.” And it’s no wonder. In his experiments, he saw blocks of dry ice not only slide, but literally burrow and dig into the sand with explosive force, a phenomenon never before observed. Recreating Mars. To solve the mystery, the research team used the martian simulation chamber ‘George’. Inside this two-meter cylinder, they recreated the conditions of Mars’ thin atmosphere, which has a pressure of only 700 pascals compared to Earth’s 100,000 pascals. The experiment was simple: place a tray with dune sand, adjust the inclination and drop blocks of CO₂ ice from the top. Here the process that was being sought was that of sublimationthe direct passage from solid to gas. On Earth, this is a calm process, but on Mars it is extremely violent. The enormous temperature difference between the ice and the sand on which it is located, combined with the low pressure, causes the CO₂ to expand explosively and generate immense force. Results. In this case, the team discovered that the ice blocks moved very differently depending on the steepness of the slope. On steep slopes (>22.5º) the ice block slid rapidly, at about 0.8 m/s, over a layer of gas, almost floating. This movement created straight, shallow channels with almost imperceptible ridges. This is something that coincides with the channels seen in the highest parts of the Martian dunes. In the case of gentle slopes is where the real magic happened. The block moved very slowly, at about 0.0003 m/s, and instead of sliding it was partially buried in the sand. Explosive sublimation threw grains of sand ballistically in all directions, carving a deep channel beneath the block and with high ridges on its sides. This ‘digging’ movement perfectly explains the deep channels, high ridges and sinuous curves that for so long They baffled scientists. But finally, when the block finally stops at the foot of the dune, the sublimation effect continues to occur and generates the characteristic pits. The importance. These findings are very relevant to understanding Mars as a planet. First of all, the results confirm that one of the most active and striking phenomena is driven by CO₂ processes, without the need for have liquid water. In addition, it gives us a physical model that explains all the strange characteristics of the ravines. Sharp curves, for example, are not due to the flow of liquid, but to an excavating block that changes course due to small irregularities in the terrain. Finally, the formation of these ravines requires very specific conditions, such as sufficient accumulation of CO₂ ice in winter and sufficient solar radiation in spring to heat the sand and cause violent sublimation. In short, the mystery of the grooves in the Martian dunes has been solved, and the answer is not the water we long to find, but a violent and exotic physical process, more typical of an alien planet. Images | Daniele Colucci POT In Xataka | NASA has a plan to speed up our arrival on Mars: crash things into its surface

The only way to confirm the signs of life on Mars is to bring the rock to the earth: there are three great volunteers

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NASA’s Rover Perseverance has given us one of the most exciting news of recent years. In an old river bed in the Jezero crater, he has found a rock that could contain, In the words of NASA directorone of the “clearest signs of life we ​​have seen on Mars.” Baptized as Cheyava Falls, the rock has dark deposits whose chemical, mineral and textural characteristics, on earth, are associated with microbial life. But scientists cannot be safe from here. Unless… Mars Sample Return. Perseverance did his job: in July of last year he identified a place of very high scientific interest, analyzed the rock with its instruments and, most importantly, pierced a core of the rock and kept it in a sealed sampling tube. This little treasure, along with 29 other sampling tubes, waits patiently on the Martian surface. The problem is that, however advanced the instruments of the rover are, they have their limits. To confirm if those possible “biofirmas” are the product of old microorganisms or geochemical processes without biological intervention, there is only one solution: bringing samples to the earth to analyze them in our laboratories. And this is where The plans collide with a hard reality. The plan to collect these samples, the ambitious Mars Sample Return mission, has been de facto canceled waiting for a cheaper and faster solution. Truncated due to lack of budget. NASA’s original plan to collect the 30 samples of the Perseverance Rover was to send a ship to the surface of Mars, that a small rocket would take off with the samples (delivered by Rover itself or by a drone) and that an orbiter (in this case, contributed by the European Space Agency) to bring them back home. The project ended up becoming a bottomless well. According to an external audit, the budget shot up to 11,000 million dollars with an estimated date for 2040. The situation reached such an extent that the US administration He proposed to cancel Mars Sample Return for his excessive budgetprioritizing other programs such as Artemis to return to the moon. NASA was forced to put the project in pause and look for faster and more cheap alternatives. A career to counterreloj. Time runs against NASA. Not only for the potential historical value of these samples, but because China plans to launch its own sampling mission in 2028. Tianwen-3 is a simpler mission, which would not bring selected rocks but from the ground where the probe landed, but that would return to Earth in 2031. It would be a Sorpasso symbolic in full rule, advancing the United States in a milestone that had at hand. Before the collapse of its official plan and the probable symbolic defeat, NASA did what has been best given in recent years: to look at the private sector. The agency Explore two paths simultaneously: one based on public technology already tested, such as the “Sky Crane” landing system of Curiosity and Perseverance, and another open to “new commercial capabilities.” Voluntary companies. They haven’t taken to appear. Lockheed Martin has put on the table a groundbreaking proposal: executing the mission For less than 3,000 million dollars and under a fixed price contract, which means that it would assume any extra cost. Your plan is based on reusing and adapting technology already tested in missions such as Insight and Osiris-Rexwith a simpler and more light architecture than the original Mars Sample Return. Another of the great candidates is Rocket Lab, a company that, despite its youth, also has experience on the red planet: its components travel aboard Perseverance and other missions. Your proposal is to send a probe to collect the samples and send them to the Martian orbit and a second probe to bring them to the earth, with a third probe called Telecommunications Orbiter for Mars (MTO) that not only would support the mission, but would serve as a basis for future manned missions, establishing a robust communications network between Mars and the land that Rocket Lab could exploit commercially for decades. And Spacex? NASA It does not rule out using starship as a vehicle to bring to the Martian surface all the necessary equipment. If Elon Musk fulfills its ambitious deadlines, Starship could offer an unprecedented load capacity to an unbeatable cost. The final decision on which path is expected for the second half of 2026. What is clear is that NASA is at a crossroads. The samples collected by Perseverance have the potential to confirm that on Mars there was extraterrestrial life. But to find the answer, you must first bring them home. And the solution may not be in a public program, but in companies that have offered to do the job for less than half. Image | Rocket Lab In Xataka | Perseverance has found what, according to NASA’s director, is “the clearest indication of life we ​​have seen on Mars”

Perseverance has found what, according to NASA’s director, is “the clearest indication of life we ​​have seen on Mars”

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That NASA conveque without warning a press conference related to Rover Perseverance can only mean that it has found something interesting. And indeed, that is what the acting administrator of the NASA, Sean Duffy, has announced today. What, I quote textually, “could be one of the clearest signs of life we ​​have seen on Mars.” Short. The scientific community has finished analyzing A rock with a leopard spots pattern that NASA’s Perseverance Rover found on Mars in July last year. A complete study Posted in Nature magazine It confirms that the surface of the rock has a combination of chemical, mineral and textural characteristics that are difficult to explain without, at least consider the intervention of biology. Although scientists cannot confirm it without physical access to the rock, It could be the first biofirma found on Mars. That is, a geochemical characteristic that is associated with microbial life on earth and that, casually, has been found in a place where water ran. Cheyava Falls. The epicenter of this finding is an area of ​​the edges of the Marciano Jezero crater baptized as Bright Angel, an old river bed about 400 meters wide. It was here that, in July 2024, the Rover Perseverance ran into a rock -shaped rock of approximately one meter long that was baptized by NASA scientists as “Cheyava Falls”. The analysis of this rock has revealed some tiny structures to which researchers refer, colloquially, as “poppy seeds” and “leopard spots.” They are not simple rocks with curious shapes, they are the product of chemical reactions. Poppy seeds are nodules between 100 and 200 microns, probably a mineral called Vivianita, and leopard spots are the reaction fronts: more complex structures of up to 1 mm with a dark edge of Vivianita and a clearer core rich in iron sulfide, probably of Greigita. What is special. The truly interesting thing about these mineral structures is that they are next to organic carbon, detected by the Perseverance Sherloc instrument through its spectral Band G. To understand the striking of this finding, you just have to see what causes these structures on Earth. And yes, microbial life is an option. “On Earth, sometimes things are formed in sediments where microbes eat organic matter and ‘breathe’ oxide and sulfate”, explains the geobiologist Michael TiceProfessor of the University of Texas A&M and co -author of the study. They were the microbes. Oxide-reduction reactions (better known as redox) start from electron transfer, which is a fundamental process for living beings to obtain energy. Therefore, an option is the biological scenario: microorganisms that lived in the mud of an old Marciano Lake more than 3,000 million years ago caused these structures. As? They used organic matter as food. When “breathing”, they used oxidized iron and sediment sulfate as electrons acceptors, producing the reduced iron minerals that we see today: the vivianita and the greek. This process occurs at low temperatures and perfectly explains the combination and disposition of minerals and organic matter. Not so fast. Purely geochemical processes, without biological intervention, could also have created these structures. Organic matter (which can have a non -biological origin, such as a meteorite) was also able to react with rock minerals. But in this abiotic scenario there is a problem. The reactions that the Vivianita form can occur at low temperatures, and the geochemical processes known to form the Greigite from sulfate require very high temperatures (greater than 150-200 ° C) or very acidic. Bright Angel’s rocks show no evidence of having experienced either. The definitive test? Not far, but a promising first step. Perseverance instruments are powerful, but it has its limits. The rover drilled the rock “Cheyava Falls and stored a nucleus, nicknamed” Sapphire Canyon “, in a sealed sampling tube. It is one of the 27 tubes that the rover has filled to date and one of the highest candidates to be brought to the earth, where a much more exhaustive analysis could be done. This is where emotion collides with reality. The Mars Sample Return mission, designed to collect these samples and bring them home, is de facto canceled after the original mission budget was shot up to 11,000 million dollars with delays until 2040. The situation has forced NASA to look for faster and cheaper alternatives. That is, to ask for alternative proposals to the private industry and the JPL. But there is still no defined path. The cake widge. There is another surprising factor that raises the importance of this discovery. Until now, the dominant hypothesis suggested that possible signs of life should be sought in the oldest rocks of Mars. However, Bright Angel’s lodolites are among the younger sedimentary rocks that the mission has investigated. This opens a new and fascinating possibility: that Mars could have been habitable for a longer period of time or at a later stage in its history of what was thought. Image | NASA, JPL That NASA conveque without warning a press conference related to Rover Perseverance can only mean that it has found something interesting. And indeed, that is what the acting administrator of the NASA, Sean Duffy, has announced today. What, I quote textually, “could be one of the clearest signs of life we ​​have seen on Mars.” Short. The scientific community has finished analyzing A rock with a leopard spots pattern that NASA’s Perseverance Rover found on Mars in July last year. A complete study Posted in Nature magazine It confirms that the surface of the rock has a combination of chemical, mineral and textural characteristics that are difficult to explain without, at least consider the intervention of biology. Although scientists cannot confirm it without physical access to the rock, it could be the first biofirm found on Mars. That is, a geochemical characteristic that is associated with microbial life on earth and that, casually, has been found in a place where water ran. Cheyava Falls. The epicenter of this finding is an area of ​​the edges of the Marciano Jezero crater … Read more

Russia wants to know how trips will affect us to Mars, so you will throw a thousand flies and 75 mice in a rocket

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He Baikonur Cosmodrome, in Kazakhstanhe has witnessed the launch of the Soyuz-2.1b rocket that has put the mission into orbit Bion-M No. 2. This Russian space agency project, Roscosmos, is a crucial step in the investigation of the effects of the microgravityand above all, the Cosmic radiationabout living organisms. But on board they are not human, but travel flies or mice, among other organisms. A varied crew on the ship. As if it were Noah’s ark, 75 mice are found in this ship, more than 1,000 fruit fliescellular crops, microorganisms and plant seeds. For a month, these ‘bionautas’ will orbit the earth in a polo pole trajectory, at an altitude that will expose them to the levels of cosmic radiation significantly higher than those experienced in the International Space Station. A “high -tech mice hotel”. The true protagonists of this mission are the 75 mice, who will travel in a specially designed passenger cabin: a “mini hotel”. Each unit is equipped with food, lighting, ventilation and waste systems to guarantee their well -being during the trip. In addition, chips have been implemented in some of the rodents to be able to monitor the constants in real time. Scientists have divided mice into three groups to compare the results. The first will remain on earth in normal conditions, which is what we call in science ‘control group’. The second will live in a land laboratory in flight equipment identical to those of the satellite. The third group, of course, will be the one who travels to space. In this way, the effects of the space flight of other variables can be isolated. Why are they chosen to mice. It has already become an iconic image to see how in biomedical research Mouse is used as the ideal test ‘subject’. And it is not a coincidence. The mouse has a genetic very similar to human, they have a short life cycle to see changes throughout several generations and are very economical to maintain and feed. On the other hand, for this specific investigation the mice They are very radiation sensitiveso they make it the ideal subjects to give us more information on the effect of this physical phenomenon. It has important implications for our health. The objective of this mission is clear: knowing how this radiation will affect astronauts traveling to the moon or Mars. Cosmic radiation In the long term you can damage cell DNAdrastically increasing the risks of long -term cancer, and what you want is to quantify the real damage and prove countermedons as armor for ships and drugs that avoid these undesirable effects. But it also has medical applications here on Earth. Its results can give us more weapons to fight aging, since the rapid loss of bone and muscle mass suffered by astronauts is a perfect model to study osteoporosis and sarcopenia to find new treatments. There are more research apart from mice. In collaboration with the Vernadsky Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry, the mission transports 16 test tubes with dust simulations and lunar rocks. The objective is to study how radiation and space emptiness affect these materials, information of great value for the future development of lunar bases. Other experiments on board will investigate the susceptibility of organisms to radiation, the development of new life support systems and possible medical benefits in the earth derived from spatial biological research. Continuing the legacy of the bion-m No. 1. This mission It was launched in 2013 And he also spent 30 days in the orbit. However, the new mission will orbitate a 97 degree inclination, which will increase exposure to cosmic radiation compared to its predecessor. It is not the first time that it is investigated in space. There are many precedents that exist of space missions that have aimed at investigation. For example, I know analyzed the potential risks of fertility in space in mice or even the Japanese wanted to see If you can procreate in space through mouse embryos. Images | Spacex Joshua J. Cotten In Xataka | Spacex is on its way to having more money than NASA. He has succeeded, in part, because he does not pay taxes

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