Short Science, February 24, 2013

'Red' planet is actually grey under the surface

Nasa's Curiosity rover has scooped up a sample from the interior of a Martian rock and found that the powdery soil just beneath the planet's rust-coloured exterior was actually a light grey colour, the US space agency said last week. "The science team is really excited about the fact that the tailings from our drill operation aren't the typical rusty orange-red that we associate with just about everything on Mars," said Joel Hurowitz, sampling system scientist for Curiosity. "When things turn orange, it's because there's a rusting process of some kind going on that oxidises the iron in the rock," he said during a press conference at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Nasa said earlier this month that Curiosity had obtained the first sample collected from the interior of a rock on another planet. AFP

Mini planet found far beyond solar system

Astronomers have found a mini planet beyond our solar system that is the smallest of more than 800 extra-solar planets discovered. Kepler-37b is one of three planets circling a yellow star, similar to our sun, in the constellation Lyra, about 210 light years away. Reuters

India to launch Mars mission 'this year'

India will launch its first mission to Mars this year, President Pranab Mukherjee said on Thursday, as it looks to play catch up in the global space race alongside the US, Russia and China. "Several space missions are planned for 2013, including India's first mission to Mars and the launch of our first navigation satellite," he said. Reuters

Slight temperature rise would melt permafrost

A global temperature rise of 1.5 degrees Celsius would be enough to start the melting of permafrost in Siberia, scientists have warned. A team from Oxford University used radiometric dating techniques on Russian cave formations to measure historic melting rates. Any widespread thaw in Siberia's permanently frozen ground could have severe consequences for climate change. Permafrost covers about 24 per cent of the land surface of the northern hemisphere, and widespread melting could trigger the release of hundreds of gigatonnes of carbon dioxide and methane, which would have a massive warming effect. Any such melting would be likely to take many decades, so the initial release of greenhouse gas would probably be on a much smaller scale. The researchers studied stalactites and stalagmites in Siberian caves that formed over many thousands of years. AFP