Mars Rover That Crashed

There have been four successful robotically operated Mars rovers, all managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory: Sojourner, Opportunity, Spirit and Curiosity. On January 24, 2016, NASA reported that current studies on Mars by Curiosity and Opportunity (the latter now defunct) would be searching for evidence of ancient life, including a biosphere based on autotrophic, chemotrophic or chemolithoautotrophic microorganisms, as well as ancient water, including fluvio-lacustrine environments (plains related to ancient rivers or lakes) that may have been habitable. The search for evidence of habitability, taphonomy (related to fossils), and organic carbon on Mars is now a primary NASA objective. In June 2018, Opportunity went out of contact after going into hibernation mode in a dust storm. NASA declared the end of the Opportunity mission on February 13, 2019, after numerous failures to wake up the rover.


"Titan is a very active moon. We already know that about its geology and exotic hydrocarbon cycle. Now we can add another analogy with Earth and Mars: the active dust cycle, in which organic dust can be raised from large dune fields around Titan's equator," Dr. Sebastien Rodriguez explained in a September 24, 2018 NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) Press Release. Dr. Rodriguez is an astronomer at the Universite Paris Diderot, France, and the paper's lead author. The JPL is in Pasadena, California. Saturn is the smaller of the two gas-giant planets, twirling around our Sun, in the outer regions of our Solar System--far from the delightful warmth of our lovely incandescent roiling gas-ball of a Star. Jupiter is the larger of the duo of gas-giants dwelling in our Solar System, as well as the largest planet in our Sun's bewitching family, which is composed of eight major planets, an assortment of moons and moonlets, and a rich menagerie of smaller objects. Saturn is the second-largest planet in our Solar System--and probably the most beautiful. The ring around the Earth eventually began to condense into blobs that then proceeded to merge and create a large and brightly glowing sphere--our primordial Moon. Our Moon would have appeared to be ten times larger than it does today in Earth's ancient sky--if anyone had been around to see it.