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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.

Software Helps Mars Rovers Find Winter Havens

Columbus OH (SPX) Dec 12, 2007 - New software is helping NASA find safe places for the Spirit rover to ride out future Martian winters -- and also plan where Spirit and its companion rover, Opportunity, will explore in the future. The steep Martian mesa dubbed Von Braun would be a safe haven, the software and data analysis determined -- but the path that Spirit would have to follow to get there is a little too risky to travel with winter on the way, explained Ron Li, professor of civil and environmental engineering and geodetic science at Ohio State University.

Dec 12, 2007

Clues From Antarctica Help With Search For Water On Mars

Columbus OH (SPX) Dec 11, 2007 - Scientists have gathered more evidence that suggests flowing water on Mars -- by comparing images of the red planet to an otherworldly landscape on Earth. In recent years, scientists have examined images of several sites on Mars where water appears to have flowed to the surface and left behind a trail of sediment. Those sites closely resemble places where water flows today in the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica, the new study has found.

Dec 11, 2007

Mars Rover Investigates Signs Of Steamy Martian Past

San Francisco CA (SPX) Dec 11, 2007 - Researchers using NASA's twin Mars rovers are sorting out two possible origins for one of Spirit's most important discoveries, while also getting Spirit to a favorable spot for surviving the next Martian winter. The puzzle is what produced a patch of nearly pure silica -- the main ingredient of window glass -- that Spirit found last May. It could have come from either a hot-spring environment or an environment called a fumarole, in which acidic steam rises through cracks.

Dec 11, 2007

Opportunity Grinds Into Rock In Victoria Crater

Pasadena CA (JPL) Dec 11, 2007 - Opportunity spent part of the past week carefully grinding a hole into the surface of a light-colored ring of rock inside Victoria Crater known as Smith, despite the previous loss of encoders that enabled two of the motors of the rock abrasion tool to operate under control of the tool's flight software.

Dec 11, 2007

NASA Study Reveals Less Water In Clouds Of Mars

Moffett Field CA (SPX) Dec 07, 2007 - Martian clouds may contain less water than previously thought, according to a new NASA study. New NASA laboratory measurements of simulated martian clouds reveal that scientists may have been overestimating the amount of water in the planet's atmosphere.

Dec 7, 2007

Multi-Tasking Rover Supports Multiple Missions

Pasadena CA (JPL) Dec 04, 2007 - Opportunity continues to investigate the rock exposure known as Smith2 in the second of three bathtub ring-like layers of rock inside Victoria Crater as well as test communications for Phoenix, NASA's next mission to Mars. The rover is healthy and all subsystems are normal.

Dec 4, 2007

Spirit Breaks Free In Race For Survival

Pasadena CA (JPL) Dec 04, 2007 - In typical unflagging fashion, Spirit has managed to break free of piles of soil built up around the wheels in a low, sandy area that the rover's handlers have nicknamed Tartarus, after a deep, underworld dungeon in Greek mythology. Team members are pulling out all the stops to get Spirit to a winter location where, based on solar power projections, the rover has a chance at survival.

Dec 4, 2007

Noctis Labyrinthus, Labyrinth Of The Night

Paris, France (ESA) Dec 03, 2007 - These images taken by the High-Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC), onboard ESA's Mars Express imaged the Noctis Labyrinthus region, the 'labyrinth of the night' on Mars. The HRSC took these pictures on 25 June 2006 in orbit 3155, with a ground resolution of approximately 16 m/pixel. Noctis Labyrinthus lies at approximately 6.5 south and 260 east. The Sun illuminates the scene from the north-west, top right in the image above.

Dec 3, 2007

Rover Perseveres Despite Stall In Robotic Arm

Pasadena CA (JPL) Nov 30, 2007 - Opportunity spent much of the week conducting ongoing studies of a layer of rock known as Smith, part of a bathtub ring of rocks that circumvent Victoria Crater beneath the rim. Opportunity acquired images and studied the composition and abundance of iron-bearing minerals in the rock. During tests of the rock abrasion tool on the Earthbound engineering rover similar to the rover on Mars, engineers discovered that unbending the brush on Opportunity's rock abrasion tool may not be possible.

Nov 30, 2007

Russia Conducts First Experiment In Preparation For Mars-500

Moscow (RIA Novosti) Nov 30, 2007 - Russian scientists have completed the first stage of preparations for an experimental Mars mission simulation, Mars-500, a medical research institute announced on Thursday. The purpose of the main experiment, expected to begin in late 2008, is to simulate a space flight to Mars taking into account all ramifications, including a 250-day trip to the Red Planet, a 30-day period on its surface, and a 240-day return flight.

Nov 30, 2007

Rover Slips In Sandy Terrain

Pasadena CA (SPX) Nov 29, 2007 - On the way to Winter Haven 3, the spot on the north face of Home Plate where NASA's Spirit rover is headed, the rover has driven into an area below a hummock (elevated area). Spirit has tried unsuccessfully during the past week to climb onto the hummock and make progress toward Winter Haven 3. Because it is critical to reach the north face while enough solar energy is available to get there, Spirit spends every available day driving. In-between drives, Spirit recharges the batteries and conducts very light remote sensing.

Nov 29, 2007

HiRISE Camera Views Spirit At Home Plate

Pasadena CA (SPX) Nov 28, 2007 - The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE, camera onboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has taken a new color image of the feature dubbed Home Plate in Gusev Crater on Mars. The Mars Exploration Rover Spirit shows up inside the perimeter of Home Plate, where it was when HiRISE took the image on Sept. 27, 2007, at 2:19 pm local Mars time, HiRISE team member Ken Herkenhoff of the U.S. Geological Survey, Flagstaff, said.

Nov 28, 2007

New Views Of Martian Moons

Laurel MD (SPX) Nov 28, 2007 - These two images taken by the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) show Mars' two small moons, Phobos and Deimos, as seen from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's low orbit around Mars. Both images were taken while the spacecraft was over Mars' night side, with the spacecraft turned off its normal nadir-viewing geometry to glimpse the moons. The image of Phobos, shown at the top, was taken at 0119 UTC on October 23 (9:19 p.m. EDT on Oct. 22), and shows features as small as 400 meters (1,320 feet) across.

Nov 28, 2007

Life on Mars – Viking Revisited

Moffett Field CA (SPX) Nov 27, 2007 - Mars is often suggested as a good location to search for alien life. Despite many missions to the red planet, it's still a mystery whether life existed there in the distant past or if it is thriving there today. Attempting to answer this question was an aim of the Viking missions of 1976, but the results of those experiments were frustratingly ambiguous.

Nov 27, 2007

Mars Express – 5000 Orbits And Counting

On 25 December 2003, Europe's first Mars explorer arrived at the Red Planet.

Nov 26, 2007

Opportunity Peers Beneath Surface Of Bathtub Ring

Pasadena CA (SPX) Nov 26, 2007 - Opportunity remains parked at the rock layer known as Smith -- part of the bathtub ring of rock layers beneath the edge of Victoria Crater - - at Duck Bay, the alcove where the rover entered the crater. During a test of the wire brush on the rock abrasion tool in a new mode of operation developed to work around recent encoder failures, Opportunity was mistakenly commanded to rotate the brush in the wrong direction.

Nov 26, 2007