Carnival of Space 332

The Carnival of Space 332 is up at Everyday Spacer blog

Universe Today – This picture above from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is one of a series showing changing dark lines on an equatorial hillside — which could be an indication of salty water, scientists said.

A series of images from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show how the appearance of dark markings on Martian slope changes with the seasons. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona.

Chandra Xray Space Telescope Blog – Neutron stars like the one found in B1509 give scientists an opportunity to study forces in nature so extreme that they are impossible to recreate here on Earth.

NASA’s Widefield Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), originally built to map the sky in infrared, was repurposed to search for small Solar System objects after it completed its mission. It now continues that work to hunt for NEO’s, and is part of NASA’s Asteroid initiative to find a suitable asteroid, and bring it to Earth orbit so we can better understand how to deal with any impending asteroid impacts.

Nextbigfuture – Elon Musk compared the biological adaptations that could be required for humans or other organisms to live on Mars to the process of breeding cows to conform to our needs as a society. The problem is that modern cattle are the product of hundreds of generations of tweaking to various breeds, but future space explorers won’t have the luxury of being bred for the job of colonizing Mars through the centuries. NASA-funded scientists are designing plants that can survive the harsh conditions on Mars. These plants could provide oxygen, fresh food, and even medicine to astronauts while living off their waste. They would also improve morale as a lush, green connection to Earth in a barren and alien world. Gluthathione Reductase (GOR) from Colwellia psychrerythraea was cloned and overexpressed in E coli and is cold active.

Nextbigfuture – China landed its robot rover on the moon and there are many more moon missions that will follow over the next few years

Nextbigfuture – We are making progress towards Spanks in space. A new MIT spacesuit is more like a diving wetsuit instead of the old builk Apollo spacesuits.

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