NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander has successfully landed on Mars on May 25 in an arctic region called Vastitas Borealis.
Below is an approximate-colour image taken shortly after landing by the spacecraft’s Surface Stereo Imager, which shows a polygonal pattern in the ground, similar in appearance to icy ground in the arctic regions of earth.
Image Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / University of Arizona
The mission aims to study the geologic history of water, the key to unlocking the story of past climate change; and to search for evidence of a habitable zone that may exist in the ice-soil boundary. Updates about the mission is available on NASA’s website.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has released the video of Japanese astronaut Takao Doi experimenting with a special-designed boomerang at the International Space Station (ISS) in March 2008…
Conclusion… the boomerang reacted just the same under zero gravity as it would be on the ground. Aerodynamics expert David Caughey of Cornell said that the result is as expected; the looping paths are the result of uneven forces on the curved devices by the air they travel through… not the influence of gravity. [Newscientist]
The boomerang was working in the space station, but would not work in the real space though. Boomerang expert and designer Gary Broadbent said that a boomerang would not work in the vacuum of space, as air molecules are needed to generate the lift to make the boomerang turn. [Universetoday]
