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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.

Hawaii Reveals Steamy Martian Underground

Greenbelt MD (SPX) Oct 18, 2007 - Is Mars dead, or is it only sleeping? The surface of Mars is completely hostile to life as we know it. Martian deserts are blasted by radiation from the sun and space. The air is so thin, cold, and dry, if liquid water were present on the surface, it would freeze and boil at the same time. But there is evidence, like vast, dried up riverbeds, that Mars once was a warm and wet world that could have supported life. Are the best times over, at least for life, on Mars?

Oct 18, 2007

Hummocky And Shallow Maunder Crater

Paris, France (ESA) Oct 17, 2007 - The High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on ESA's Mars Express orbiter has obtained pictures of the Noachis Terra region on Mars, in particular, the striking Maunder crater. The images were taken in orbits 2412 and 2467 on 29 November and 14 December 2005 respectively, with a ground resolution of approximately 15 metres per pixel. Maunder crater lies at 50 South and 2 East, approximately in the center of Noachis Terra. The sun illuminates the scene from the north-east (top left in the image).

Oct 17, 2007

NASA extends Mars probes’ mission for 5th time

Washington (AFP) Oct 16, 2007 - NASA Tuesday announced it was extending for the fifth time the mission of Mars space probes Spirit and Opportunity, in their indefatigable exploration of the Red planet.

Oct 16, 2007

Opportunity Begins Sustained Exploration Inside Crater

Pasadena CA (SPX) Oct 12, 2007 - NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity finished the last step of a test in-and-out maneuver checking wheel slippage at the rim of Victoria Crater today. Then the rover immediately drove back into the crater as the start of a multi-week investigation on the big bowl's inner slope.

Oct 12, 2007

HiRISE Releases Color Images, Movie Of Prospective Landing Sites On Mars

Tempe AZ (SPX) Oct 11, 2007 - The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE, on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has added a new dimension to its views of Mars. The dimension is color. The University of Arizona-based HiRISE team today released 143 color images valuable to researchers studying possible landing sites for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory, a mission to deploy a long-distance rover carrying a deck of sophisticated science instruments on Mars in 2010.

Oct 11, 2007

Duck Bay, Victoria Crater, Planet Mars

Pasadena CA (JPL) Oct 01, 2007 - Image taken by the panoramic camera on the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity reveal a stunning view of Victoria Crater below the deck at Duck Bay. Opportunity reached Victoria Crater on Sol 951 (September 27, 2006) after traversing 9.28 kilometers (5.77 miles) since her landing site at Eagle Crater. Victoria Crater is roughly 800 meters (one-half mile) wide -- about five times wider than Endurance Crater, and 40 times as wide as Eagle crater.

Oct 1, 2007

Are manned missions needed to explore Mars and beyond?

Paris (AFP) Sept 30, 2007 - The United States has pledged to colonize the Moon by 2020 and send astronauts to Mars, but many scientists say dangerous and costly manned space missions should be a thing of the past, not the future.

Sep 30, 2007

Are manned missions needed to explore Mars and beyond

Paris (AFP) Sept 30, 2007 - The United States has pledged to colonize the Moon by 2020 and send astronauts to Mars, but many scientists say dangerous and costly manned space missions should be a thing of the past, not the future.

Sep 30, 2007

Spirit Arrives At Stratigraphic Wonderland In Columbia Hills On Mars

Pasadena CA (JPL) Sep 28, 2007 - Spirit completed the rover's longest 5-wheel drive to date en route to a platy rock surface nicknamed Texas Chili in an area scientists are calling a stratigraphic wonderland. The platy outcrop is at site 3 on top of Home Plate and is the focus of in-depth scientific investigation. Two sols after not receiving a scheduled data transmission, Spirit drove 19.21 meters (63.02 feet) to the rover's current location about 15 meters (49 feet) away from a field of boulders.

Sep 28, 2007

Spirit Makes Progress Across Home Plate

Mars Exploration Rover Spirit is healthy after finishing a remote sensing campaign at Site 2 on "Home Plate." The work included collecting…

Sep 28, 2007

Opportunity Reaches First Target Inside Crater

Pasadena CA (JPL) Sep 27, 2007 - Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has reached its science team's first destination for the rover inside Victoria Crater, information received from Mars late Tuesday confirms. Opportunity has descended the inner slope of the 800-meter-wide crater (half a mile wide) to a band of relatively bright bedrock exposed partway down.

Sep 27, 2007

Tracing Martian Water

Moffett Field CA (SPX) Sep 26, 2007 - NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) is examining several features on Mars that address the role of water at different times in Martian history. Liquid water is essential for life as we know it, and determining the history of water on Mars is vital in understanding whether or not the planet could have supported life in its past. Studying locations where water may have flowed and pooled on the martian surface will also help researchers choose the most interesting and scientifically important landing sites for future Mars missions.

Sep 26, 2007

MIT Observations Give Precise Estimate Of Mars Surface Ice

Boston MA (SPX) Sep 26, 2007 - An MIT-led team of planetary scientists has found that the southern pole of Mars contains the largest deposit of frozen water in the inner solar system, outside of Earth. The new results show that water, not carbon dioxide, is the predominant frozen liquid found in the southern polar region of Mars, said Maria Zuber, MIT professor of geophysics.

Sep 26, 2007

NASA aims to put man on Mars by 2037

Hyderabad, India (AFP) Sept 24, 2007 - NASA aims to put a man on Mars by 2037, the administrator of the US space agency indicated here Monday.

Sep 24, 2007

NASA Orbiter Finds Possible Cave Skylights On Mars

Pasadena CA (SPX) Sep 24, 2007 - NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft has discovered entrances to seven possible caves on the slopes of a Martian volcano. The find is fueling interest in potential underground habitats and sparking searches for caverns elsewhere on the Red Planet. Very dark, nearly circular features ranging in diameter from about 100 to 250 meters (328 to 820 feet) puzzled researchers who found them in images taken by NASA's Mars Odyssey and Mars Global Surveyor orbiters. Using Mars Odyssey's infrared camera to check the daytime and nighttime temperatures of the circles, scientists concluded that they could be windows into underground spaces.

Sep 24, 2007

Shaking Off The Dust And Getting Back To Work

Pasadena CA (JPL) Sep 21, 2007 - The skies continue to clear over the Opportunity site, and the dust is falling from both the sky and the rover. The last week was dedicated to evaluating the payload and assessing dust accumulation on the instruments. Fortunately, the solar array energy has improved to over 350 Watt-hours for the last four sols. This has given the vehicle enough power to support two alpha particle X-ray spectrometer integrations and two Mars Express UHF overflights.

Sep 21, 2007