Mars Exploration Digest: Issue April 2023

by Dr. Jozef Kozár · Published May 18, 2023 · Updated October 4, 2023

A regular monthly digest of Mars research news for April 2023. PDF: Issue 7, Volume 2, ISSN 2788-225X.

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[SK] Slovenskú verziu článku si môžte prečítať tu: Výber z výskumu Marsu: Apríl 2023

Welcome folks, colleagues, and Mars exploration fans. Maybe you noticed, that the last two issues of the Mars Exploration Digest (MXD) were published with some delay. This delay was caused by some technical changes and changes in how the further issues will look like. The content of the further issues will be slightly modified. MXD will not contain full-text articles anymore, except those contributed by other authors (researchers, engineers, students).

The content will now consist of overviews of Mars research and related space technologies, including planetary science, robotics, and artificial intelligence. This content will be linked directly to original sources, such as direct NASA sources, publishers, conferences, and the like. In this way, you as users will get a clear monthly list of the most important information on the given topic. If you don’t want to miss another issue of MXD (Mars Exploration Digest), sign up for its email subscription in the form at the bottom of this website (on the left marked as “GET NOTIFIED ABOUT NEW CONTENT”). Individual issues will continue to be published in electronic form and will remain available for free on this website.

Mars Exploration Digest – April 2023

Let’s discover what is new in the Mars exploration for the latest month.

Mars Sample Return Mission

Animation credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

How on Earth will we get rock samples from Mars back to our planet? Find out how multiple spacecraft would work together to get the job done. Continue to the website (by NASA) with much useful detailed information.

Who’s at work on the quest to return Mars samples to Earth? Explore this interactive map to see which institutions around the world are teaming up for this enormous challenge. [1]

What is new in the Mars planetary exploration?

The first sample gathered in the Perseverance rover’s new science campaign may have formed from rock deposits swept downstream by an ancient river.

Perseverance Samples ‘Berea’: This image shows the rocky outcrop the Perseverance science team calls “Berea” after the NASA Mars rover extracted a rock core (right) and abraded a circular patch (left). Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

NASA’s Perseverance rover cored and stored the first sample of the mission’s newest science campaign on Thursday, March 30. With each campaign, the team explores and studies a new area. On this one, the rover is exploring the top of Jezero Crater’s delta. Perseverance has collected a total of 19 samples and three witness tubes, and it recently deposited 10 tubes as a backup cache on the Martian surface as part of the NASA-ESA (European Space Agency) Mars Sample Return campaign. [2]

Engineers Track Fuel Supply of Oldest Mars Orbiter

It’s a tricky task monitoring Odyssey’s fuel levels after 22 years in Mars orbit since it has no fuel gauge or low-fuel warning light like cars on Earth. Read more here. [3]

Perseverance’s Mastcam-Z Views Ingenuity’s 47th Takeoff

Watch the video captured by the rover as Ingenuity lifted off on its 47th flight, kicking up a dust cloud, climbing higher, then flying horizontally and heading out of view to land safely.

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter is seen here at the starting point of its 47th flight on Mars. This video shows the dust initially kicked up by the helicopter’s spinning rotors, as well as Ingenuity taking off, hovering, and beginning its 1,444-foot (440-meter) journey to the southwest. The rotorcraft landed – off camera – at Airfield “Iota.” [4]

Early Morning Clouds Drift Over Mars

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover used one of its navigation cameras to take a series of images of drifting clouds just before sunrise on March 18, 2023, the 738th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

The cloudy season is back at Jezero Crater, and Perseverance has been watching the skies, glimpsing ethereal clouds just before sunrise. [5]

The possibility of contributing to the monthly magazine about Mars

Are you looking for a professional journal or magazine where you could publish your text, research, or scientific-popular article? Do you like planets and space? Are you a student, researcher, astronomer, teacher, or space enthusiast? Here is a unique opportunity for you to publish your text in a new professional periodical.

The cover of the January 2023 edition. Image credit: Jozef Kozar, Ph.D.

Use this opportunity to publish in the new magazine “Mars Exploration Digest” (abbreviation “MXD”). This new monthly magazine is starting its second year. It is available to everyone for free (open access). It is published in PDF format in two languages – English and Slovak (posts in Czech are also welcome).

The focus of this monthly magazine is not commercial. Its goal is not only to provide information from the world of Mars exploration but also to help in education and publishing new knowledge.

And a bonus for you? You can contribute your text for free. You can use this published article as a reference in your list of publications because Mars Exploration Digest is a professional journal. The readership of this magazine is growing rapidly, as it is a very specific periodical. So don’t hesitate and take your chance now. Mars Exploration Digest is registered under ISSN 2788-225X by the Czech National Technical Library in Prague (The Czech Republic, EU).

~ Jozef Kozár, PhD.

PDF: Issue 7, Volume 2, ISSN 2788-225X.

Sources:

[1] Mars Sample Return Mission. May 18, 2023; NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.
[2] NASA’s Perseverance Collects First Mars Sample of New Science Campaign; May 2023, http://mars.nasa.gov/msl
[3] Engineers Track Fuel Supply of Oldest Mars Orbiter. NASA Mars Exploration [online]. Available at: https://mars.nasa.gov/news/9344/nasas-curiosity-finds-surprise-clues-to-mars-watery-past/
[4] Perseverance’s Mastcam-Z Views Ingenuity’s 47th Takeoff. NASA, Jet Propulsion Laboratory Newsletter, April 2023
[5] Perseverance Views Drifting Clouds. NASA, Jet Propulsion Laboratory Newsletter, April 2023

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