NASA Reveals MAJOR NEW Discovery On Mars!

on today's episode we are getting into the latest space news including liquid water evidence on Mars could show proof of an active core NASA and SpaceX talk Hubble repairs and the dart Mission slams a satellite into an asteroid there's lots to go over this week so let's get going this is the space race we have huge news coming out of the red planet this week according to a new orbital study by the Mars Global surveyor satellite scientists have found the best evidence yet for liquid water on Mars and potentially even an active geothermal core an international team of researchers used the satellite's topography mapping tools to feed data into a new computer model designed to simulate ice flow on Mars and it led to some very interesting results to start we have to go back to 2018 when the Mars Express Orbiter found that the southern ice cap shrank and Rose with the seasons at the time it was suggested that this movement was due to liquid water just like our own ice caps but many scientists were not convinced liquid water below a massive sheet of ice would require geothermal heat and as far as anyone knew Mars isn't geothermally active at all it's just a solid frozen Rock so without more data scientists suggested the movement could also be explained by some dry material moving around like sand or Shale and let the issue go until other methods could be used this is where we jump back to 2022 the Mars Global surveyor satellite is equipped with more sensitive instruments specifically a laser altimeter which can map the shape of the upper surface in greater d detail than the Mars Express radar not only did the surveyor confirm the previously found movement but they detected undulations or waves in the surface of the ice now on Earth we've used similar equipment to measure how our own ice sheets move with the liquid water channels that we know run underneath them this data let the researchers build a computer-driven simulation model for Mars using the unique Martian conditions and gravity to find out exactly how these ice caps were moving the model showed that this movement could only come from liquid water moving below the surface and here's where this study goes from being about water to potentially making a huge discovery about the planet's core as well the model showed that liquid water must be present for this glacial movement to exist in the Martian gravity and conditions but it also showed that the temperatures on the planet were so low that liquid water simply couldn't exist without another Factor geothermal activity up until now scientists believed that there was no activity remaining in the planet's core no active volcanoes geysers or Springs have been found in any of our observations to date this was the reason there was so much doubt back in 2018 when Mars Express recorded the movement but with the new data the researchers now believe that we should open up our thinking to the possibility that there is still some movement happening below the Martian crust we will likely need to wait until a polar Mission can drill deep enough to find water but the success of the model in using the laser altimeter data from the Mars Global surveyor is fantastic news for any group trying to find water on another icy world like Enceladus or Titan as we get better at finding water we'll get better at finding life NASA's Hubble Telescope a 32 year old veteran piece of equipment is in dire need of an orbital rescue to stay afloat and SpaceX is stepping up to offer their help last week NASA announced that the Aging telescope would be the subject of a study with SpaceX to see if the commercial rocket company could possibly service Hubble something that hasn't been done in over 12 years Hubble was launched on the space shuttle in 1990 and it was designed to be serviced and upgraded with those same shuttles obviously that hasn't been happening since the program was scrapped in 2011 but the last service call to the telescope was in 2009. since then the telescope has been slowly degrading and losing altitude but Hubble has been the Workhorse of NASA's Stellar observation programs for decades now and even the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope has only underlined the pivotal role the Hubble still plays the extremely detailed images the James Webb gives us are only possible because of Hubble's wide field cameras providing targets otherwise it would take forever for the web to find the right place to focus on and maybe that increased importance in the face of a slowly deorbiting Hubble was exactly the reason SpaceX reached out to NASA a few months ago with a proposal they had the idea for a study to see whether a commercial crew would be able to boost Hubble back up to its operating orbit and give it a long overdue servicing NASA agreed and signed a space act agreement for the study last week the six-month study will focus on the technical side of the proposal specifically if a Dragon capsule could even be modified to do the work and this is actually where the SpaceX Polaris team is stepping in the Polaris missions are a series of commercial crude operations the first flight Polaris Dawn due to launch no later than March of 2023 is planned to take a commercial crew into the highest altitude Earth orbit ever achieved and make a spacewalk this is likely the biggest reason SpaceX is getting Polaris involved because servicing Hubble is going to take some extensive refits to the Dragon capsule the shuttles all came equipped with a cargo bay and Armature used to capture and secure the telescope during work it was like having a floating garage up there dragon is a crew capsule designed with similar functionality to the old Apollo capsules however for Polaris Dawn the dragon already has to go through some refits to allow for a spacewalk so the Polaris team would probably be the best people to talk about the ways in which a dragon could be modified and still operate properly adding to that the second Polaris mission is not exactly planned out yet or if it is we haven't had much information on it we do know that the goal of the Polaris missions in general is to push the boundaries of their Tech that's stated right on their site Polaris lead Jared isaacman has said that a Hubble service Mission would be a logical second mission for the program but with all the refits needed a study is absolutely the way to go about this idea first NASA has mentioned that this wouldn't be a closed study they want any other company or International agency to add suggestions if they think it would benefit Northrop Grumman a long-standing NASA partner was already working on an idea to service older satellites like Hubble with a robotic vehicle and SpaceX says that they are open to that idea too when speaking to the Press about the study SpaceX manager Jessica Jensen said there could be something that comes out of this study that says hey it does not make sense to have a human Mission going to do this we want to benefit Hubble it's good seeing NASA jump into more Cooperative work Hubble has been an important tool for the whole world and its operation lifetime was extended many times by the shuttle given how important it is for future observation missions it's hard to imagine a topic that would better showcase teamwork between commercial and government agencies last Wednesday the 26th of September NASA's 330 million dollar Dart Mission ended when their satellite slammed into an asteroid on purpose that was the point of the mission the double asteroid redirect test was launched last November to a large asteroid named didymus the plan was to orbit the Rock and slam into dimorphos and while you could be forgiven for thinking this mission is a spectacular waste of 330 million bucks the success of the dart mission is the first time humanity has proven we can defend ourselves against incoming asteroids Earth collectively has several agencies watching the skies for chunks of wayward Rock That Could threaten us we've been hit before if anyone remembers what happened to the dinosaurs and the chances of us being threatened by a world-ending asteroid like that might be slim but never zero given enough time we will see one headed right for us so what do we do when that happens there are a lot of suggestions we could nuke it using lasers or a gravity tug might work a Plucky team of oil drillers seems like it could work but none of those are as easy to test as just smacking the rock with something solid that simple solution done far away enough from Earth could easily deflect an incoming Planet Killer so NASA and their Partners created Dart to prove that a simple kinetic impact could be all it takes the satellite is actually made up of two vehicles the main Dart kinetic impactor and a little Cube satellite which detached from Dart 15 days before impact and provided extra Telemetry and observed the impact itself because of the complexity of the Maneuvers needed Dart was equipped with a powerful Draco camera to get a fix on its Target but it's also equipped with a smart nav top-notch navigation Tech that is normally used for guiding missiles working together Draco and smart were able to guide the craft to within 17 meters of the intended target didymus and dimorphos orbit each other in a way that makes it relatively easy for NASA to measure the results of this test so now all we have to do is wait to see just how much movement the dart impact are caused so let's just take a second here to realize what NASA did they found an asteroid near enough to Earth and with a stable enough orbit that we could test on it then they shot a satellite at this rock that we had never surveyed and actually hid it this was all happening at speeds so high that if Dart wasn't under the the control of the smart nav system there wouldn't have been time for a person on the ground to do anything the math behind this is mind-bending but more than just the technical stuff Dart is amazing because this is the first time we've ever tested a planetary defense system up until now our answer to what if asteroid was entirely theoretical this is a huge deal and while NASA says it hasn't detected any potentially damaging asteroids threatening us yet it is only a matter of time until we do dart's success will make some of us sleep a little easier meet us back here every week for more updates on everything Aerospace industry and Interstellar exploration related make sure to give the video a thumbs up today if you liked it that really helps us out for real and subscribe to the Space Race for more videos just like this we do one long form essay and one news update every week and if you'd like more we've got two more on the screen for you right now

Channel: The Space Race

Views: 232,527

Keywords: nasa, mars, mars discovery, water on mars, nasa mars discovery, mars water, nasa dart mission, nasa launch

Id: 9Oitw73JxWU

Length: 12min 45sec (765 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 05 2022