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Editorial Team

Mars Daily Editorial Team

Editorial Team

The Mars Daily Editorial Team produces Mars Daily's coverage of Mars exploration and science. We report on rovers and orbiters, sample-return and human-Mars planning, and the geology, atmosphere and astrobiology of the Red Planet. Articles reflect our team's collective editorial process, source verification, drafting, technical review, and editing, rather than a single writer's work. Mars Daily takes editorial responsibility for content under this byline. For more on how we work, see our editorial policy.

NASA Instrument Will Identify Clues To Martian Past

Pasadena CA (JPL) Jun 29, 2010 - NASA's Curiosity rover, coming together for a late 2011 launch to Mars, has a newly installed component: a key onboard X-ray instrument for helping the mission achieve its goals. Researchers will use Curiosity in an intriguing area of Mars to search for modern or ancient habitable environments, including any that may have also been favorable for preserving clues about life and environment.

Jun 29, 2010

Wet Era On Early Mars Was Global

Paris, France (SPX) Jun 28, 2010 - Conditions favourable to life may once have existed all over Mars. Detailed studies of minerals found inside craters show that liquid water was widespread, not only in the southern highlands, but also beneath the northern plains.

Jun 28, 2010

Brown Team Finds Widespread Glacial Meltwater Valleys On Mars

Providence RI (SPX) Jun 25, 2010 - Planetary scientists have uncovered telltale signs of water on Mars - frozen and liquid - in the earliest period of the Red Planet's history. A new claim, made public this month, is that a deep ocean covered some of the northern latitudes.

Jun 25, 2010

New Clues Suggest Wet Era On Early Mars Was Global

Pasadena CA (JPL) Jun 25, 2010 - Minerals in northern Mars craters seen by two orbiters suggest that a phase in Mars' early history with conditions favorable to life occurred globally, not just in the south.

Jun 25, 2010

Study indicates life was possible all over Mars

Paris (AFP) June 25, 2010 - Conditions suitable for life -- most notably the presence of water -- may once have existed all over Mars, the European Space Agency (ESA) said Friday.

Jun 25, 2010

Opportunity Completes Three Drives This Week

Pasadena CA (SPX) Jun 25, 2010 - Opportunity has been making good progress toward Endeavour crater with three drives in the past week.

Jun 25, 2010

Teen project one-ups NASA, finds hole in Mars cave

Washington (AFP) June 23, 2010 - A teen school project on Mars uncovered a surprise -- what appears to be a hole in the roof of a cave on the red planet, researchers said Wednesday.

Jun 23, 2010

Spirit Catching More Rays

Pasadena CA (JPL) Jun 21, 2010 - Spirit remains silent at her location called Troy on the west side of Home Plate. No communication has been received from the rover since Sol 2210 (March 22, 2010).

Jun 21, 2010

Opportunity Breaks The 13 Mile Mark

Pasadena CA (JPL) Jun 21, 2010 - Opportunity is driving again and has now covered 21 kilometers (13 miles) of odometry on Mars.

Jun 21, 2010

Middle-School Project Discovers Cave Skylight On Mars

Tempe AZ (SPX) Jun 18, 2010 - They went looking for lava tubes on Mars - and found what may be a hole in the roof of a Martian cave. The 16 students in Dennis Mitchell's 7th-grade science class at Evergreen Middle School in Cottonwood, Calif., chose to study lava tubes, a common volcanic feature on Earth and Mars.

Jun 18, 2010

UK Space Agency Funds International Mars Rover

London, UK (SPX) Jun 16, 2010 - The UK Space Agency is announcing Pounds 10.5M for the development of instruments to search for signs of past or present life on Mars. The instruments are part of the scientific payload on the ExoMars rover to be launched in 2018 as part of a joint mission between the European Space Agency (ESA) and US space agency NASA. ExoMars is a flagship project in the UK Space Agency's science and exploration programme.

Jun 16, 2010

Spirit Remains Silent At Troy

Pasadena CA (JPL) Jun 16, 2010 - Spirit remains silent at her location called Troy on the west side of Home Plate. No communication has been received from the rover since Sol 2210 (March 22, 2010).

Jun 16, 2010

NASA Dryden Hosts Radar Tests For Next Mars Landing

Pasadena CA (JPL) Jun 16, 2010 - Engineers with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., are running diverse trials with a test version of the radar system that will enable NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission to put the Curiosity rover onto the Martian surface in August 2012.

Jun 16, 2010

Ancient Ocean May Have Covered One-Third Of Mars

Boulder CO (SPX) Jun 15, 2010 - A vast ocean likely covered one-third of the surface of Mars some 3.5 billion years ago, according to a new study conducted by University of Colorado at Boulder scientists.

Jun 15, 2010

Opportunity Could Resume Driving Soon

Pasadena CA (JPL) Jun 15, 2010 - The pancam mast assembly (PMA) azimuth error from Sol 2257 (May 30, 2010), is still being resolved on Opportunity, although with a likely explanation in hand.

Jun 15, 2010

A third of Mars once covered by ocean: study

Paris (AFP) June 13, 2010 - A huge, potentially life-giving sea likely covered more than a third of Mars some 3.5 billion years ago, according to a study released Sunday.

Jun 13, 2010