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Mars Daily Editorial Team
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.

Legacy Reports

Mars Winds Could Pose Stiff Challenge For NASA’s Phoenix Lander Team

Ann Arbor MI (SPX) Jul 27, 2007 - Martian winds probably won't cause serious problems for NASA's upcoming Phoenix Mars Lander mission but could complicate efforts to collect soil and ice at the landing site, according to University of Michigan atmospheric scientist Nilton Renno. New results from U-M wind tunnel tests suggest that winds could blow away some of the laboriously collected soil and ice, but probably not enough to affect onboard laboratory experiments, said Renno, a member of the Phoenix science team.

Jul 27, 2007
Legacy Reports

Search For Life In Martian Ice Relies On UK Technology

London UK (SPX) Jul 26, 2007 - The Martian surface will be explored for conditions favourable for past or present life thanks to micro-machine technology supplied by Imperial College London. The NASA mission, planned for August 2007, represents the first chance for UK hardware to contribute to the exploration of Mars since the failed Beagle 2 spacecraft launched in 2003. Dr Tom Pike and his team at Imperial's Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering have provided substrates-surfaces used to hold samples for imaging-for the Mars Phoenix mission.

Jul 26, 2007
Legacy Reports

Creating Martian Clay

Fayetteville AK (SPX) Jul 24, 2007 - A study of the thermodynamics of clays found on Mars suggests that little carbon dioxide could have been present during their formation, which contradicts a popular theory of the early martian atmosphere and will send researchers looking for other explanations for clay formation. In addition, understanding the early atmosphere of Mars is vital in determining whether or not life could have developed in the early Martian environment.

Jul 24, 2007
Legacy Reports

Digging Deep For Martian Life

Moffett Field CA (ARC) Jul 24, 2007 - The European Space Agency (ESA), like NASA, has a plan to explore the solar system. ESA's Aurora Programme includes orbiters, landers, rovers, and ultimately, human exploration of the moon and Mars. ExoMars, a rover scheduled to launch in 2011 and to land on Mars in 2013, is one of Aurora's flagship missions. The ExoMars rover will be capable, for the first time since NASA's Viking missions in the 1970s, of searching for direct evidence of martian life.

Jul 24, 2007
Legacy Reports

Opportunity Calls Home After Some Solar Juice Cranks Up The Batteries

Los Angeles CA (JPL) Jul 24, 2007 - NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity sent signals Monday morning, July 23, indicating its power situation improved slightly during the days when it obeyed commands to refrain from communicating with Earth in order to conserve power. Dust storms on Mars in recent weeks have darkened skies over both Opportunity and its twin, Spirit. The rovers rely on electricity that their solar panels generate from sunlight. By last week, output from Opportunity's solar panels had dropped by about 80 percent from a month earlier.

Jul 24, 2007
Legacy Reports

HiRISE Catches A Dust Devil On Mars

Tucson AZ (SPX) Jul 21, 2007 - The University of Arizona-based High Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) group this week released a good look at a dust devil on Mars. This is not the storm bedeviling NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity. The HiRISE camera captured the dust twister by chance in its photographic swath of a region in the southern hemisphere near Hellas Planitia during a Martian mid-afternoon early last month. The HiRISE camera is orbiting the Red Planet on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Jul 21, 2007
Legacy Reports

NASA Robots Practice Moon Survey In The Arctic Circle

Moffett Field CA (SPX) Jul 21, 2007 - Two NASA robots are surveying a rocky, isolated polar desert within a crater in the Arctic Circle. The study will help scientists learn how robots could evaluate potential outposts on the moon or Mars. The robots, K10 Black and K10 Red, carry 3-D laser scanners and ground-penetrating radar. The team arrived at Haughton Crater at Devon Island, Canada, on July 12 and will operate the machines until July 31.

Jul 21, 2007
Legacy Reports

Raytheon Celebrates Math And Science Education On MARS Day

Waltham, MA (SPX) Jul 21, 2007 - Did the Mars Exploration Rovers find evidence of life on the Red planet? How long is a Martian year? Today, nearly 100 Washington area YMCA summer campers, ages 11-13 years, learned the answers to these questions when they teamed with Raytheon for a celebration of the planet Mars. Raytheon, as part of its MathMovesU middle school initiative, is showing young people how engaging math and science can be with a series of Mars-related activities, including hosting the YMCA campers at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's annual MARS Day and recognizing the winner of the national MathMovesU Mission to MARS online math challenge.

Jul 21, 2007
Legacy Reports

Mars Rovers Brave Dust Storms But Outcome Increasingly Grim

Pasadena CA (JPL) Jul 20, 2007 - Having explored Mars for three-and-a-half years in what were missions originally designed for three months, NASA's Mars rovers are facing perhaps their biggest challenge. For nearly a month, a series of severe Martian summer dust storms has affected the rover Opportunity and, to a lesser extent, its companion, Spirit. The dust in the Martian atmosphere over Opportunity has blocked 99 percent of direct sunlight to the rover, leaving only the limited diffuse sky light to power it.

Jul 20, 2007
Legacy Reports

Clay Studies Alter View Of Early Mars Environment

Fayetteville AR (SPX) Jul 19, 2007 - A study of the thermodynamics of clays found on Mars suggests that little carbon dioxide could have been present during their formation, which contradicts a popular theory of the early Martian atmosphere and will send researchers looking for other explanations for clay formation. Vincent Chevrier of the University of Arkansas and Francois Poulet and Jean-Pierre Bibring of the Universite Paris-Sud in Orsay, France, reported their findings in the journal Nature.

Jul 19, 2007
Legacy Reports

Layers Exposed In Crater Near Mawrth Vallis

Tempe AZ (SPX) Jul 19, 2007 - This image covers an impact crater roughly 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) in diameter. The subimage shows just a small segment of the crater rim (1336 x 889; 3 MB). The surface outside the crater (top) is relatively dark, while the interior wall of the crater has a lighter tone. A few dark patches on the crater wall have small dunes or ripples on their surfaces, and are likely pits filled with dark sand.

Jul 19, 2007
Legacy Reports

Hunt For Life On Mars Goes Underground In New NASA Mission

Washington (AFP) Jul 17, 2007 - The hunt for evidence of life on Mars will go underground next year when a NASA probe digs beneath the surface of the red planet's arctic northern plains, US scientists revealed Monday. In a departure from previous missions -- which have seen robotic vehicles explore the planet's hills and craters -- NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander will instead dig into Martian soil for conditions favorable to past or present life.

Jul 17, 2007
Legacy Reports

Opportunity Waiting For Dust To Settle

Pasadena CA (JPL) Jul 17, 2007 - Due to extensive dust storms in Mars' southern hemisphere causing record atmospheric opacity levels, Opportunity is currently experiencing its lowest power levels to date. The tau measurement as of sol 1225 is 4.12, resulting in a mere 280 watt-hours of array energy. A tau measurement of 5.0 would result in approximately 150 watt-hours. If tau begins to approach 5.0, the team will have to begin deleting communications windows in order to conserve energy and keep from draining the batteries.

Jul 17, 2007
Legacy Reports

The Origin Of Perennial Water-Ice At The South Pole Of Mars

Paris, France (ESA) Jul 16, 2007 - Thanks to data from ESA's Mars Express mission, combined with models of the Martian climate, scientists can now suggest how the orbit of Mars around the Sun affects the deposition of water ice at the Martian South Pole. Early during the mission, the OMEGA instrument (Visible and Infrared Mineralogical Mapping Spectrometer) on board Mars Express had already found previously undetected perennial deposits of water-ice. They are sitting on top of million-year old layered terrains and provide strong evidence for a recent glacial activity.

Jul 16, 2007