Curiosity Rover Shakes, Bakes, and Tastes Mars with SAM

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    ID: 12951 Produced Video

    Ancient Organics Discovered on Mars

    June 7th, 2018
    (updated Aug. 25th, 2023)

    The Curiosity rover has discovered ancient organic molecules on Mars, embedded within sedimentary rocks that are billions of years old. Complete transcript available.Watch this video on the NASA Goddard YouTube channel.Music provided by Killer Tracks: "Crystalline" by Enrico Cacace & Manuel Bandettini, "Based On True Events" by Eric Chevalier, "Mirrored Cubes" by Laurent Dury, "Lost In The Sky" by Matthews Samar || Since arriving at Mars in 2012, NASA's Curiosity rover has drilled into rocks in search of organics – molecules containing carbon. Organics are the building blocks of all life on Earth, though they can also come from non-living sources. The surface of Mars readily destroys these molecules, making them difficult to detect. Now, Curiosity has discovered ancient organics that have been preserved in rocks for billions of years. This finding helps scientists better understand the habitability of early Mars, and it paves the way for future missions to the Red Planet.Learn more about this discovery, or visit NASA's Mars Exploration Program. For an in-depth explanation of the results, watch the NASA-TV broadcast featuring members of the Curiosity science team. ||

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    ID: 12903 Produced Video

    Discovering the Sun’s Mysteriously Hot Atmosphere

    July 25th, 2018
    (updated May 3rd, 2023)

    Something mysterious is going on at the Sun. In defiance of all logic, its atmosphere gets much, much hotter the farther it stretches from the Sun’s blazing surface.Temperatures in the corona — the tenuous, outermost layer of the solar atmosphere — spike upwards of 2 million degrees Fahrenheit, while just 1,000 miles below, the underlying surface simmers at a balmy 10,000 F. How the Sun manages this feat remains one of the greatest unanswered questions in astrophysics; scientists call it the coronal heating problem. A new, landmark mission, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe — scheduled to launch no earlier than Aug. 11, 2018 — will fly through the corona itself, seeking clues to its behavior and offering the chance for scientists to solve this mystery.From Earth, as we see it in visible light, the Sun’s appearance — quiet, unchanging — belies the life and drama of our nearest star. Its turbulent surface is rocked by eruptions and intense bursts of radiation, which hurl solar material at incredible speeds to every corner of the solar system. This solar activity can trigger space weather events that have the potential to disrupt radio communications, harm satellites and astronauts, and at their most severe, interfere with power grids.Above the surface, the corona extends for millions of miles and roils with plasma, gases superheated so much that they separate into an electric flow of ions and free electrons. Eventually, it continues outward as the solar wind, a supersonic stream of plasma permeating the entire solar system. And so, it is that humans live well within the extended atmosphere of our Sun. To fully understand the corona and all its secrets is to understand not only the star that powers life on Earth, but also, the very space around us.Read more on NASA.gov. ||

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