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Stargazer

HPR’s Dave Lawrence and Christopher Phillips hosted Stargazer on Mondays to discuss the latest developments in astronomy. Stargazer is no longer in production. The last episode aired on Oct. 16, 2023.

December 22 - 28, 2014 Stargazer: Curiosity's Martian Odyssey

Hawaiʻi Public Radio | By Dave Lawrence

Published December 22, 2014 at 1:14 PM HST

We’ve got a trio of planets to try and spot through the evening this week, a well-known satellite cruises past, and we return to the Red Planet for an update on one of our missions there as HPR’s Dave Lawrence speaks with Christopher Phillips from the Mauna Kea Astronomy Outreach Committee for this week’s Stargazer report.

This graphic from NASA displays the massive spike in methane detected by a series of measurements made with the Tunable Laser Spectrometer (TLS) instrument in the Curiosity rover's Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) laboratory suite.

In this explanation from NASA, the graphic displays comparisons between the amount of an organic chemical named chlorobenzene detected in the "Cumberland" rock sample and amounts of the same compound in samples from three other Martian surface targets analyzed by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover.

Below is the latest Curiosity Rover report video by NASA (for December 8th):