Spectacular View Of Mars Mountain Revealed In New NASA Curiosity Rover

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has taken some dazzling new photos of the Red Planet landscape, showing in sharp detail where it's been and the long road that lies ahead.

One of the new images, which the 1-ton Curiosity rover snapped on Feb. 19, depicts rows of rocks in the foreground and the towering Mount Sharp looming in the distance. The base of the 3.4-mile-high (5.5 kilometers) mountain is Curiosity's ultimate science destination, and mission scientists hope to reach it by the middle of this year.

"Images taken from orbit and used in planning the rover's route toward lower slopes of Mount Sharp had piqued researchers' interest in the striations on the ground that are formed by these rows of rocks," NASA officials wrote in a description of the image, which was released Wednesday (Feb. 26). "This particular outcrop is called 'Junda.' Similar striations are apparent on other patches of ground along the planned route." 

When Curiosity reaches Mount Sharp, it will climb up through the mountain's foothills, reading the record of the Red Planet's changing environmental conditions that is preserved in the rocks there. Mission scientists hope to gain a better understanding of how and why Mars shifted from a relatively warm and wet world billions of years ago to the cold, dry world it is today.

The rover, which touched down on Mars in August 2012, will do some science work on the long trek to Mount Sharp. It will study, and perhaps drill into, rocks at an outcrop dubbed Kimberley, which lies along the route and also features some Junda-like striations, researchers said.

Sun Releases Biggest Solar Flare of 2014

The sun's period of peak activity may be beginning to fade, but our star doesn't plan on moving out of its 'solar maximum' quietly. 

At 00.49 GMT this morning, a huge sunspot released a massive X4.9-class flare - the biggest of 2014.

Because of its location on the sun's southeastern limb, the flare is not expected to impact satellites or radio communication, scientists claim.

'If such a fast-moving cloud did strike Earth, the resulting geomagnetic storms could be severe. However, because its trajectory is so far off the sun-Earth line, the CME will deliver a glancing blow, at best.'

The flare follows a newly-released image of the strongest solar flare to be pictured by Nasa's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (Iris) since it launched in the summer of 2013. 

On January 28, an M-class flare -- which is the second strongest class flare after X-class – erupted from the sun, sending light and x-rays deep into space.

Iris peers into a layer of the sun's lower atmosphere just above the surface, called the chromosphere, with unprecedented resolution.

However, the probe can't look at the entire sun at the same time, so the team have to anticipate where they will see the most solar activity. 

Earlier in January, the sun unleashed a massive solar flare seven times the size of Earth from one of the largest sunspots seen on the star’s surface.

The stunning X1.2-class flare, the first major one of the year, peaked at 6:32pm GMT on January 7th and followed on the heels of a mid-level flare earlier in the day.

Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation. Their energy travels at the speed of light to reach Earth in just eight minutes.

At Earth, a part of the atmosphere called the ionosphere absorbs it.

Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth's atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground.

However, when intense enough, flares can disturb the atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel. 

This disrupts the radio signals for as long as the flare is on-going, anywhere from minutes to hours.

The latest flare already delayed the launch of a private cargo ship to the International Space Station which was due to lift off today.

The sun is currently in an active phase of its 11-year solar weather cycle. The current cycle, known as Solar Cycle 24, began in 2008.

In November, the sun fired off a similarly huge solar flare causing a wide-area blackout of high frequency signal.

Is Starfleet On Mars?

Is this an image from Mars or a scene from "Star Trek"?

It may be difficult to tell, but NASA swears the photo below shows a field of Martian dunes. Yet, the formations happen to bear an uncanny resemblance to the insignia worn by Starfleet officers in the "Star Trek" series.

That`s the photo -- captured by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's HiRISE camera on Dec. 30 -- of these dunes in a v-shape.

And here's a photo of Captain Jean-Luc Picard from "Star Trek: The Next Generation" for comparison. (Note the insignia below his right shoulder.):