Cape Canaveral FL (SPX) Aug 04, 2007 - NASA's Phoenix Mars Mission blasted off Saturday, aiming for a May 25, 2008, arrival at the Red Planet and a close-up examination of the surface of the northern polar region. Perched atop a Delta II rocket, the spacecraft left Cape Canaveral Air Force Base at 5:26 a.m. Eastern Time into the predawn sky above Florida's Atlantic coast.
Pasadena CA (JPL) Aug 02, 2007 - Rover engineers are growing increasingly concerned about the temperature of vital electronics on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity while the rover stays nearly inactive due to a series of dust storms that has lasted for more than a month. Dust in the atmosphere and dust settling onto Opportunity's solar panels challenges the ability of the solar panels to convert sunlight into enough electricity to supply the rover's needs.
Paris, France (ESA) Aug 02, 2007 - ESA's Mars Express will keep an eye on NASA's Phoenix lander as it makes its way to the Martian surface, setting an example for international cooperation and interplanetary networking. Phoenix's launch is scheduled for 4 August this year and it is expected to land on the Red Planet in the spring of 2008. The mission will investigate the Martian environment and will look beneath the frigid, arctic landscape in search of conditions favourable to past or present life.
Cape Canaveral FL (SPX) Aug 02, 2007 - A NASA robotic explorer equipped to dig up and analyze icy soil on Mars sits atop a 13-story tall stack of rocket engines prepared for liftoff before sunup on Saturday. A Delta II launch vehicle will carry the Phoenix Mars Lander into Earth orbit and, about 90 minutes later, give it the push needed to send it to Mars. A three-week period when planetary positions are favorable for this launch begins with an opportunity at 2:26:34 a.m. PDT (5:26:34 a.m. EDT) on Aug. 4. A second opportunity the same day, if needed, will come at 3:02:59 a.m. PDT (6:02:59 a.m. EDT).
Washington (AFP) Aug 02, 2007 - NASA on Saturday is to launch space probe Phoenix on a nine-month journey to Mars' arctic region, where it will dig through ice for clues to past or present microbial life on the red planet. The Phoenix Mars Lander is scheduled for blastoff from Cape Canaveral, Florida on August 4, with a first attempt at 5:36 am (0936 GMT), and a second attempt, should it be needed, at 6:02 am (1002 GMT). It was originally scheduled to launch on Friday, but postponed 24 hours after adverse weather Tuesday prevented fueling of the two-stage Delta II rocket that will propel Phoenix into space.
Washington DC (SPX) Aug 01, 2007 - When the Phoenix Mars Lander reaches the Red Planet in 2008, the $386-million robotic mission will begin exploring the icy Martian soil. Meanwhile, in a remote field station here on Earth, Canadian and American scientists have been engaged in a simulated expedition to Mars. There is no place on Earth like Mars, except perhaps the arctic polar desert where Canadian geologist Melissa Battler commands a simulated mission at the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station, 1400 kilometers from the North Pole on Devon Island.
Paris, France (ESA) Aug 01, 2007 - The High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA's Mars Express obtained images of the Tyrrhena Terra region on Mars. On 10 May 2007, the pictures of the region located at 18 South and 99 East were taken during orbit number 4294 with a ground resolution of approximately 15 metres per pixel. Tyrrhena Terra is part of the ancient, heavily cratered southern Martian highlands. The region is located north of Hellas Planitia, the largest impact basin on Mars.
Moffett Field CA (ARC) Jul 31, 2007 - To date, only NASA has succeeded in sending a rover to explore our neighboring planet Mars. That is about to change. In 2011, the European Space Agency will send ExoMars to the Red Planet in search of signs that Mars is, or was, a living world. Astrobiology Field Research Editor Henry Bortman recently interviewed the ExoMars project scientist, Jorge Vago. In this, the second part of a two-part interview, Vago explains why ExoMars will focus on looking for fossil evidence of ancient life and why such evidence may be easier to find on Mars than it is on Earth.
Washington (AFP) July 31, 2007 - Adverse weather Tuesday at Cape Canaveral, Florida, delayed by 24 hours the launch of Mars probe Phoenix on its novel mission to dig in Martian soil for water and signs of life, NASA said. Weather conditions prevented fueling of the two-stage Delta II rocket atop which Phoenix was scheduled to blast off on Friday, the US space agency said in a statement. The two available launch times on Saturday, Aug. 4, are 2:26:34 and 3:02:59 a.m. Pacific Time (5:26:34 a.m. and 6:02:59 a.m. Eastern Time). Due to a forecast for severe weather around the Kennedy Space Center launch pad on Tuesday afternoon, fueling of the second stage will not be completed Tuesday afternoon.
Pasadena CA (SPX) Jul 31, 2007 - The Planetary Society's silica-glass DVD is ready to launch to Mars on board Phoenix, NASA's newest Scout mission led by Principal Investigator Peter Smith at the University of Arizona. Attached to the deck of the Phoenix lander, the DVD includes Visions of Mars, a collection of 19th and 20th century stories, essays and art inspired by the Red Planet, as well as the names of over a quarter million inhabitants of Earth. The disk will appear in some of the calibration images that Phoenix sends back from the Martian surface.
Pasadena CA (JPL) Jul 30, 2007 - As of Thursday, July 26, NASA rovers Spirit and Opportunity are both enduring levels of reduced power supply. The rovers can survive at these levels, but NASA continues to sharply restrict their activities. Spirit is under the dustiest sky ever seen at that location. Sunlight at Spirit's location is more obscured than current conditions for Opportunity, though not as severe as what Opportunity faced a week ago.
Cape Canaveral FL (KSC) Jul 30, 2007 - Mission: Phoenix Location: Launch Pad 17-A Launch Vehicle: Delta II 7925 Launch Date: Aug. 3, 2007 Launch Time: 5:35:21 a.m. EDT Phoenix was transported to Pad 17-A at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station for mating to the Delta II on Monday, July 23. The flight program verification test was conducted successfully on Wednesday, July 25. This is an electrical test that confirms the Delta II and Phoenix are working together as an integrated system. Technicians installed the Delta II payload fairing around the Phoenix spacecraft Friday.
Cannes, France (UPI) Jul 27, 2007 - The European Space Agency has asked Cannes, France, satellite manufacturer Thales Alenia Space to quote a price on the construction of a Mars rover. The French-Italian satellite company announced it will convene a meeting of its major contractors next week to discuss the rover, which the ESA is planning to send to Mars in 2013, the BBC reported Thursday.
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.
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.
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.
