author, research scientist
Witness TubesPerseverance must meet extraordinary cleanliness requirements to avoid contaminating Martian samples with terrestrial contaminants that may have inadvertently been brought from Earth. Strict rules limit the amount of inorganic, organic, and biological materials from Earth in the rover and its sample handling system.Perseverance carries five “witness tubes” along with sample collection tubes. The witness…
One more trick of perspective: how Venus looks through binoculars or a telescope. Keep watch over many months, and you’ll notice that Venus has phases, just like our Moon – full, half, quarter, etc. The complete cycle, however, new to full, takes 584 days, while our Moon takes just a month. And it was this…
Further, Venus may hold lessons about what it takes for life to get its start – on Earth, in our solar system, or across the galaxy. The ingredients are all there, or at least, they used to be. By studying why our neighbor world went in such a different direction with regard to habitability, we…
