{"id":799686,"date":"2025-12-12T10:38:42","date_gmt":"2025-12-12T15:38:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=799686"},"modified":"2025-12-12T10:38:42","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T15:38:42","slug":"mostly-monochromatic-the-planetary-society","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=799686","title":{"rendered":"Mostly monochromatic | The Planetary Society"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<\/p>\n<p><strong>Perseverance has recorded \u201cmini-lightning\u201d in Martian dust devils.<\/strong> The rover captured audio and electromagnetic data confirming that dust devils on Mars produce electrical sparks and mini-sonic booms. Research results like these are why The Planetary Society led a 25-year campaign to send microphones to Mars. <i>Pictured: A dust devil captured by another Mars rover, Curiosity, in 2020. Image credit: NASA\/JPL-Caltech\/SSI.<\/i><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/planetary.s3.amazonaws.com\/sites\/planetary\/images\/image_library_saturn.png\" alt=\"Saturn\" class=\"inline align-middle h-5 w-5 float-left mr-1 mt-1\"\/><\/p>\n<p><strong>ESA has identified Enceladus as its top target for a future mission.<\/strong> The European Space Agency\u2019s long-range plan has selected Saturn\u2019s icy, potentially habitable moon as the highest-priority \u201clarge-class\u201d mission target in the next decades. An Enceladus mission would include flybys and possibly sampling of plume material.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/planetary.s3.amazonaws.com\/sites\/planetary\/images\/image_library_earth.png\" alt=\"Earth\" class=\"inline h-5 w-5 float-left mr-1 mt-1\"\/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Jared Isaacman\u2019s nomination to lead NASA has cleared the Senate Commerce Committee.<\/strong> The billionaire entrepreneur and private astronaut\u2019s nomination was approved by a vote of 18-10. The final step will be for the full Senate to vote on the nomination.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/planetary.s3.amazonaws.com\/sites\/planetary\/images\/image_library_mars.png\" alt=\"Mars\" class=\"inline align-middle h-5 w-5 float-left mr-1 mt-1\"\/><\/p>\n<p><strong>NASA has lost contact with the MAVEN Mars orbiter.<\/strong> The spacecraft, which has been in Mars orbit since 2014, studies the loss of the Martian atmosphere to space and serves as a communications relay station for rovers on the Martian surface. NASA announced this week that ground stations lost contact with MAVEN on Dec. 6 and are working to understand the issue.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/planetary.s3.amazonaws.com\/sites\/planetary\/images\/image_library_mars.png\" alt=\"Mars\" class=\"inline align-middle h-5 w-5 float-left mr-1 mt-1\"\/><\/p>\n<p><strong>The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine published a vision for the first humans on Mars.<\/strong> A committee of expert scientists recently published its consensus report on the science priorities and technological capabilities required for a series of human missions to Mars. The report emphasizes the search for life, accessing Martian resources for a sustained human presence, and the complementary roles of humans and robots in conducting science from the surface.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.planetary.org\/the-downlink\/mostly-monochromatic?rand=772267\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Perseverance has recorded \u201cmini-lightning\u201d in Martian dust devils. The rover captured audio and electromagnetic data confirming that dust devils on Mars produce electrical sparks and mini-sonic booms. Research results like&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":799687,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-799686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-planetary-society"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=799686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/799687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=799686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=799686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=799686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}