Using a neutron gun and an infrared imaging camera at a location dubbed “Yellowknife Bay,” researchers found signs of hydration: water molecules bound to minerals in Martian rock.

“With Mastcam, we see elevated hydration signals in the narrow veins that cut many of the rocks in this area,” Melissa Rice, a CalTech researcher, said in a NASA statement. “These bright veins contain hydrated minerals that are different from the clay minerals in the surrounding rock matrix.”

Detection of water is important as NASA scientists attempt to determine if Mars ever supported life in the past … and if it could again in the future.

One interesting facet of the Curiosity rover is its international composition. The Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons (DAN) instrument, which detects hydrogen, is Russian-made. The Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) that investigated the clay-like material is from Canada. And, of course, the majority of the rover is of American manufacture.

“We definitely see signal variation along the traverse from the landing point to Yellowknife Bay,” said Maxim Litvak from the Moscow-based Space Research Institute. “More water is detected at Yellowknife Bay than earlier on the route. Even within Yellowknife Bay, we see significant variation.”

Curiosity is seven months into a scheduled two-year mission.

photo credit: nasa hq photo via photopin cc

It’s MacWorld’s 29th year, and it’s the fourth year since Apple unceremoniously took its ball and left. But it could just be the best MacWorld yet, with star power, fan power, and … ecosystem power.

“The show really has become the ultimate iFan festival,” MacWorld general manager Paul Kent told me last week. “We have training classes, celebrities, noted experts, tips and tricks … before it was really a platform for Apple, but now it’s really about the ecosystem.”

Kutcher and Gad will provide some of that celebrity star power, but not all of it.

Will.i.am will also be present to talk about technology, gadgets, and creativity with Intel futurist Brian David Johnson. And the NASA team behind the Mars rover Curiosity will also be in the Moscone Center, home of so many of Apple’s iconic product announcements, to talk about their use of Apple products.

“But perhaps the most interesting story is going to be the innovation in the products,” Kent said. “We have the accessory companies, over 100 app companies … it’s like walking into an Apple store, except that the products kind of come life at MacWorld.”

Forty percent of the companies demoing products are new to the market, Kent said, adding that MacWorld was sort of like “CES for Apple fans,” and perhaps the last great consumer-focused technology convention.

MacWorld/iWorld 2013 starts on Jan. 31st, in just over a week. IDG World Expo, the company behind the convention, expects “more than 25,000″ attendees.

Image credit: The Jobs Movie

Ever wanted to explore Mars just like you can explore Earth on Google Maps? Now you can, thanks to an incredible new 360-degree panorama on 360Cities.

Photographer Andrew Bodrov has created a way to explore the Mars surface by stitching together photos from the Mars Curiosity rover. While the rover’s camera isn’t top-notch by today’s standards, it still does a great job showing us the surface of the Red Planet, especially rocky soil and the Marian horizon.

The explorable image lets you zoom, pan, and easily navigate the landscape. It’s the closet thing we have yet to feeling like we’re actually on Mars.

Click here to explore Mars’ surface in 360 degrees.

You can view more photos from Curosity at NASA.gov or in the gallery below:

Photo: 360Cities.com

When we first saw pictures from NASA’s Curosity mission to Mars, many of us asked, “That’s it?” Yes, the images weren’t as detailed as we wanted, but they were from another planet, so we happily gobbled them up.

But why does the Mars rover feature paltry 2-megapixel sensors on its main imaging cameras? The decision stems from planning of the rover’s systems back in 2004, Malin Space Science Systems project manager Mike Ravine told Digital Photography Review.

The planning team selected the 2-megapixel sensor on Curiosity for several reasons. First, it had to produce a reasonable amount of data for transmission back to Earth via a UHF transmitter. Second, it had to meet the needs of four different camera types. Third, the team had deep familiarity with this imaging technology.

“We developed all four cameras around a common architecture, so the choice of sensor was hedged across all of them,” Ravine said. “We wanted to be able to capture high frame rates, particularly with the descent camera. We also looked at a 4MP sensor, but it would have run around half as fast. And the state of CMOS sensors wasn’t credible in 2004. They’re an interesting option now, but they weren’t then.”

In light of advanced camera technology featured on today’s smartphones, Ravine seems slightly disappointed the images on Mars aren’t more breathtaking.

“There’s a popular belief that projects like this are going to be very advanced, but there are things that mitigate against that,” Ravine said. “These designs were proposed in 2004, and you don’t get to propose one specification and then go off and develop something else. 2MP with 8GB of flash [memory] didn’t sound too bad in 2004. But it doesn’t compare well to what you get in an iPhone today.”

As you might know, the latest iPhone features an 8-megapixel sensor with 1080p HD video recording. It’s ultimately more powerful than what Curiosity has, showing how far camera technology has come in the past few years. Heck, Nokia even has a 41-megapixel camera in one of its phones.

To compensate for having less powerful sensors, Curiosity’s Mastcam can take multiple images and stitch them together. In the photo above, you can see how this function can create panoramas and better detail.

You can view more photos from Curosity at NASA.gov. Or check out the gallery below:

This post is part of a series produced by Singularity University.

After more than eight years of planning and a 254-day journey through the cold emptiness of space, NASA’s Curiosity rover has finally landed on Mars.  Curiosity is the most advanced mobile robotic science lab to ever explore another planet and thus this is an exciting moment for NASA and the world.

But robotics and artificial intelligence continue to advance at an exponential rate. As we look towards the future of space exploration in the next decade and beyond, we can expect the next generation of space robots to be orders of magnitude more powerful and intelligent, while at the same time costing a fraction of Curiosity’s $2.5 billion price tag.

Regardless of the success of the Mars rover Curiosity, debates will rage again about robotic versus human space exploration. We don’t have the budgets to build the right technology to send humans to the planets and beyond. So we’ve been sending probes out into the solar system as precursor missions for the day we step on another planet and explore other worlds ourselves. But the bigger question for now is about the technology we are using. How do we make sure what we send in space is current? True, Curiosity is the most advanced rover ever made. The development started over eight years ago. How does it compare to recent technological advancements?

Some of the technologies Curiosity carries are similar to what a person might carry on a vacation trip to an exotic destination: several cameras with 4 GB flash cards, a 200 MHz computer, and a transportation vehicle the size of a small rental car.  Like a tourist in a remote location, most days Curiosity can only send messages back home at dial-up speeds (just enough to send emails and some Twitter posts). But it does get “broadband” for 8 minutes a day to send HD images and video from Mars.

At the beginning of Curosity’s exploration of Mars, we look forward to the new images and discoveries. The rover aims to explore for a Martian year, but the nuclear power source may last for 14 years. What does the future hold for Curiosity?

I hope that today’s landing will be followed by a step that has become routine on interplanetary missions: The software on the rover will be updated. Even though spacecraft travel at high speeds through the solar system, the travel times are long enough that software advances can be significant. The software has already been updated once during its 8-month flight.

Beaming software is one way robots throughout the solar system can take advantage of exponential advances on Earth. In a few more years, the computing systems on interplanetary robots will be able to run extremely complex AI programs due to further advances in exponential technology. Perhaps advanced chips will be sent out to be fitted onto older spacecraft, and extend the life of rovers like Curiosity.

Advancement in autonomous navigation systems, such as those used by the Google Cars, and intelligent data understanding (reacting to unexpected events) are current technologies. The rise of semantic technologies (such as a future version of Watson or Siri on Mars) and machine learning will drastically change robotic missions in the near future.

Advanced software could be hosted on the next generations of Mars rovers, or even retrofitted into rovers like Curiosity. Around the time AI systems are creating the next AI systems on Earth, we may be able to beam AI programs out to robots on Mars with a complexity beyond human understanding.

When this happens, would there even be a reason to leave Earth to explore the Universe? Do we enhance our experience through the robots we send out into the cosmos with highly sophisticated exponential sensor technologies that will serve as our eyes and ears – beaming back fully immersive experiences, without traveling for years – or do we even get superseded by super-robots who could one day think for themselves?

Through radical advances in processors including quantum computing, on-board decision making and exponential learning, a robotic intelligence on Mars may eventually “wake up.” How will we know? A sign might be when we tell the rover to go a certain direction, and it disagrees, and then goes a different way based on its own interest. One day, Curiosity itself may become curious.

Emeline Paat-Dahlstrom is VP of Operations for Singularity University. She spent two decades in the private space sector working on program development and operations for companies and organizations like Space Adventures, Odyssey Moon and the International Space University. She co-authored the book Realizing Tormorrow: The Path to Private Spaceflight.

Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech