Lansdorp told Business Insider that his organization had expected “a slow start,” that would eventually build toward their 500,000 applicant goal by the August 31st deadline. Instead they got nearly a sixth of their goal in a fraction of the expected time. According to Lansdorp, many applicants say that they have been following the project since before the application process began.

According to information released by Mars One on Tuesday, applicants come from more than 120 countries, and have a variety of backgrounds. The countries contributing the most applicants are, as you might expect, the United States with 17,324, China with 10,241, and the United Kingdom with 3,581.

The application deadline is August 31st. Once applications are closed, Mars One will begin the process of selecting the best candidates. While you might think that scientists and engineers would be the most desirable, Lansdorp says that the program isn’t that picky about applicants’ backgrounds. According to Dr. Norbert Kraft, the program’s chief medical officer, the key qualities they look for in applicants are commitment, creativity, and resiliency.

The selection process will consist of four rounds and will seek to identify the 28-40 most qualified candidates. Those candidates will then undergo seven years of training before the final team will be chosen to go to Mars.

The initial Mars One expedition will be a four-person mission designed to establish a foothold on Mars. This team will begin laying the groundwork for a full permanent settlement on Mars.

Many of the Mars One applicants have submitted videos discussing their qualifications and their motivations for applying. You can check out some of the videos and even apply yourself (if leaving the planet forever is your thing) at applicants.mars-one.com.

Mission controllers this week found Opportunity in a standby mode. NASA has stated that it appears the rover “sensed something amiss” during a camera check on April 22 and entered standby. Team members have prepared commands for Opportunity to bring it back to full operative status.

“Our current suspicion is that Opportunity rebooted its flight software, possibly while the cameras on the mast were imaging the sun,” said John Callas, Mars Exploration Rover Project Manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “We found the rover in a standby state called automode, in which it maintains power balance and communication schedules, but waits for instructions from the ground. We crafted our solar conjunction plan to be resilient to this kind of rover reset, if it were to occur.”

Opportunity was one of two rovers that landed on Mars in 2004 as part of the Mars Exploration Rover Project. The other rover, Spirit, became stuck in soft soil in 2009, and ceased communications in 2010.

The newest rover on Mars, Curiosity, is reported to be fully operational following the solar conjunction. Researchers are planning on sending it commands starting tomorrow.

(Image courtesy ASA/JPL-Caltech)

NASA announced today the results of a study conducted by its Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter satellite. The study sought to recreate “ancient water channels below the Martian surface” in full 3D. Mapping out these channels helped scientists realize that Mars was home to massive floods in the last 500 million years.

The floods that created these channels are comparable to the floods that created the Channeled Scablands in Washington State during ancient times.

“Our findings show the scale of erosion that created the channels previously was underestimated and the channel depth was at least twice that of previous approximations,” said Gareth Morgan, a geologist at the National Air and Space Museum’s Center for Earth and Planetary Studies in Washington and lead author on the paper. “This work demonstrates the importance of orbital sounding radar in understanding how water has shaped the surface of Mars.”

NASA found the flood channels in the Elysium Planitia, an area along the Martian equator. The existence of the flood channels were covered up when much of the area was subjected to intense and frequent volcanic activity. NASA says that there are other water channels on Mars’ surface that were covered up in a similar fashion.

[Image: JPL/NASA]

The swap to the rover’s redundant computer took place yesterday and placed the rover into a “safe mode.” Over then next several days the rover team will be bringing the rover into operational status.

“We switched computers to get to a standard state from which to begin restoring routine operations,” said Richard Cook, project manager for the Mars Science Laboratory Project at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

These computer issues are surfacing just as Curiosity is in the midst of a historical sample analysis. Earlier this week the rover had begun analyzing two small samples of rock powder taken from the inside of a Martian rock using the rover’s hammering drill.

The computer issue was revealed on Wednesday, February 27 when the rover failed to send recorded data back to Earth, instead sending only status information. It was found that Curiosity had not entered its latest planned “sleep mode.” The “memory issue” on Curiosity’s first computer is thought to be related to a corrupted flash memory.

The rover will now operate on its “B-side” computer, which was tested during its flight to Mars. The “A-side” computer was used from the rover’s landing on the red planet until this week.

“While we are resuming operations on the B-side, we are also working to determine the best way to restore the A-side as a viable backup,” said Magdy Bareh, leader of the mission’s anomaly resolution team at JPL.

(Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

“Data from the instruments have confirmed the deliveries,” said Jennifer Trosper, Curiosity Mission Manager oat NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

The rock powder comes from the inside of a rock on Mars – the first sample of its kind to be collected. The powder was taken from a small hole that Curiosity drilled in a rock earlier this month. Last week NASA researchers were able to confirm that the rover had actually collected the powder.

The powder had now been placed into Curiosity’s Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) and Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instruments. The CheMin instrument will examine the sample’s mineral composition, while the SAM instrument will determine its chemical composition. The analyses will take place over “the coming days and weeks.”

Both instruments were tested in late 2012 as Curiosity took several scoops of Martian soil while exploring the sandy “Rocknest” area.

The testing of the rover‘s hammering drill the successful rock powder sample gathering were described at the time to be “the biggest milestone accomplishment for the Curiosity team since the sky-crane landing last August.” Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) researchers at JPL have now declared Curiosity to be “fully operational.”

(Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

Today, NASA scientists have released images confirming that the first-ever sample of drilled rock dust is safely in one of Curiosity’s sample scoops.

“Seeing the powder from the drill in the scoop allows us to verify for the first time the drill collected a sample as it bore into the rock,” said Scott McCloskey, drill systems engineer for Curiosity at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). “Many of us have been working toward this day for years. Getting final confirmation of successful drilling is incredibly gratifying. For the sampling team, this is the equivalent of the landing team going crazy after the successful touchdown.”

In the coming days, the rock sample will be enclosed in Curiosity’s Collection and Handling for In-Situ Martian Rock Analysis (CHIMRA) instrument and sieved to remove particles larger than 150 microns (0.006 inches). Small portions of the sample will then be placed inside the rover’s Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) and Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instruments to determine its mineral and chemical make-up.

The historic drilling took place on February 8, when the rover used its drill to bore a 6.4 centimeter (2.5-inch) hole into a rock named “John Klein.” Researchers hope the rock dust will provide information about Mars’ wet past, and possibly about whether life could have once existed on the red planet.

(Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

Maxwell announced the news himself in a Google+ post on Saturday in which he called Google “perhaps my favorite company — not perfect, as no company (or person) can be, but very very good.”

“They’re also famous for their employee perks, which will be nice, but there was something that was far more important to me,” he added. “Google’s company mantra, as you might know, is ‘Don’t be evil.’ So both times I interviewed there, I asked every single person I talked to — a couple of dozen people in total — this question: ‘Is that ‘Don’t be evil’ stuff just something they worry about at the higher levels and not part of your life, or does it filter down to you?’”

Every person he talked to, he says, had a story when they had to choose between doing something that would make Google more money (but be evil) and something that would make the company less money (but not be evil), and that everyone chose the “non-evil” path every time. According to Maxwell’s account, these Googlers were always supported, or even rewarded for their choices.

Maxwell continued, “And I said to myself, these are people with integrity and a company with integrity — a company that has made sure to bake that integrity into its very DNA, all the way down to their lowest-level engineers, as insurance that it will keep itself honest (And there’s more: for example, they’ve encrypted user data and made it off-limits even to their own employees without several layers of authorization — and they’ve done it quietly, not for publicity, just because it’s the right thing to do.) This is a place I want to be. This is a place where I will feel at home.”

Maxwell starts his job at Google on March 4th.

The device, called a laser isotope ratio-meter, was developed from bulkier laser techniques that needed samples to be collected and brought to them. The new device, developed by the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) in England, is small enough that it could be used in space to detect trace gasses in small samples.

“You take a laser, whose optical frequency or ‘color’ can be continuously adjusted, beam it at a gas sample, and detect the level passing through the gas,” said Damien Weidmann, Laser Spectroscopy Team Leader at RAL Space. “Each molecule, and each of its isotopic forms, has a unique fingerprint spectrum. If, on the other hand, you know what you are looking for, you can simply set the laser to the appropriate frequency.”

Through an ESA program, Weidmann and his colleagues have been able to demonstrate that the laser can quickly detect counterfeit food. Fake honey made using sugar, for example, would be detected by the laser by scanning the carbon dioxide released from burning only a few milligrams of the product. Likewise, counterfeit olive oil and chocolate could also be detected.

Though Weidmann said it was important for his project to attract interest from industry, sending the laser to Mars is his real goal.

“I wanted to develop this to help gather evidence as to whether or not there was life on Mars,” said Weidmann.

Weidmann stated that using the laser to measure carbon isotopic ratios in methane on Mars could help determine where the hydrocarbon came from.

“If it’s bacterial in origin, it would mean a form of life occurred on Mars.”

Curiosity left a hole 0.63 inches (1.6 cm) wide and 2.5 inches (6.4 cm) deep in a flat, veiny rock named “John Klein.” As the rover drilled into the rock, rock powder traveled up flutes on the drill bit, which has holding chambers for the powder. The sample obtained by the rover should help researchers determine whether the rock was ever underwater.

“The most advanced planetary robot ever designed is now a fully operating analytical laboratory on Mars,” said John Grunsfeld, NASA associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate. “This is the biggest milestone accomplishment for the Curiosity team since the sky-crane landing last August, another proud day for America.”

Over the next few days, the rock powder will be processed and tested to determine its mineral make-up and chemical composition.

“We’ll take the powder we acquired and swish it around to scrub the internal surfaces of the drill bit assembly,” said Scott McCloskey, drill systems engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). “Then we’ll use the arm to transfer the powder out of the drill into the scoop, which will be our first chance to see the acquired sample.”

The successful drilling marks another milestone for the rover itself. All of Curiosity’s instruments have now been tested on Mars, and the rover has been deemed fully operational.

“Building a tool to interact forcefully with unpredictable rocks on Mars required an ambitious development and testing program,” said Louise Jandura, chief engineer for Curiosity’s sample system at JPL. “To get to the point of making this hole in a rock on Mars, we made eight drills and bored more than 1,200 holes in 20 types of rock on Earth.”

The “drill-on-rock checkout” left a mark on the rock, named “John Klein,” chosen as the target for the first drill sampling of rock material in the history of Mars exploration. It was another step in the drill testing announced last week.

There is still one more test to be performed before the actual drilling can commence. A “mini drill” test will use both the rotary and percussive capabilities of the drill to create a ring of rock powder around a hole. The test will, say researchers, allow them to test the material and see if it is a dry powder that can be tested by Curiosity’s sample handling equipment.

The rover team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has been preparing to use Curiosity’s drill for almost two Earth months now. The event has been carefully prepared for in detail, with researchers taking time to choose a suitable rock target and test every aspect of the drill. Mars Science Laboratory Project Manager Richard Cook has called the event “this mission’s most challenging activity since the landing.”