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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

Scientists Find That Earth And Mars Are Different To The Core

Oxford UK (SPX) Jul 06, 2007 - Research comparing silicon samples from Earth, meteorites and planetary materials, published in Nature (28th June 2007), provides new evidence that the Earth's core formed under very different conditions from those that existed on Mars. It also shows that the Earth and the Moon have the same silicon isotopic composition supporting the theory that atoms from the two mixed in the early stages of their development. This latest research which was carried out by scientists from Oxford University along with colleagues from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH) compared silicon isotopes from rocks on Earth with samples from meteorites and other solar system materials.

Jul 6, 2007
Legacy Reports

One Image Planned During Descent Of Phoenix

Pasadena CA (JPL) Jul 06, 2007 - Extensive testing of NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander in preparation for an August launch has uncovered a potential data-handling problem in time to modify plans for use of a camera during the final minutes of arrival at Mars. The testing results led to a decision to take just one photograph with the spacecraft's Mars Descent Imager. The mission will still be capable of accomplishing all of its science goals. The issue is not the camera itself, which is capable of taking multiple downward-looking images of the landing area during the final three minutes of flight.

Jul 6, 2007
Legacy Reports

Spirit Independently Approaches And Studies A Rock

Pasadena CA (JPL) Jul 06, 2007 - Spirit remains healthy after attempting to wrap up scientific studies on an outcrop that contains several tantalizing, high-silica targets. High-silica targets are of interest to scientists because water might have been involved in forming them. Spirit still has some work to do on two targets, known as Eileen Dean and Innocent Bystander, before moving on to the elevated, circular plateau known as Home Plate.

Jul 6, 2007
Legacy Reports

Spirit Solar Power Levels Continue To Rise

Pasadena CA (JPL) Jul 06, 2007 - Spring cleaning continued on NASA's Spirit rover, as atmospheric turbulence on Mars cleared away more dust from the solar panels on the rover's 1,233rd sol, or Martian day, of exploration (June 22, 2007). As a result of this most recent dust-clearing event, Spirit out-produced the electrical energy of Spirit's twin, the Opportunity rover on the opposite side of Mars, by about 50 watt-hours. (That's the amount of electricity needed to burn a 50-watt light bulb for one hour.)

Jul 6, 2007
Legacy Reports

An Opportunity For A One-Way Trip To The Bottom Of Crater Victoria

Pasadena CA (JPL) Jul 06, 2007 - NASA's Mars rover Opportunity is scheduled to begin a descent down a rock-paved slope into the Red Planet's massive Victoria Crater. This latest trek carries real risk for the long-lived robotic explorer, but NASA and the Mars Rover science team expect it to provide valuable science. Opportunity already has been exploring layered rocks in cliffs around Victoria Crater. The team has planned the descent carefully to enable an eventual exit, but Opportunity could become trapped inside the crater or lose some capabilities. The rover has operated more than 12 times longer than its originally intended 90 days.

Jul 6, 2007
Legacy Reports

ESA Wants Space Pioneers For 520-Day Mars Experiment

Le Bourget, France (AFP) June 19, 2007 - The European Space Agency (ESA) on Tuesday called for applications for one of the most demanding human experiments in space history: a simulated trip to Mars in which six astronauts will spend 17 months in an isolation tank on Earth. Their spaceship will comprise a series of interlocked modules in an research institute in Moscow, and once the doors are closed tight, the volunteers will be cut off from all contact with the outside world except by a delayed radio link.

Jun 19, 2007
Legacy Reports

Simulating The Effects Of Martian Dust On The Phoenix Lander

Ann Arbor MI (SPX) Jun 15, 2007 - Gusting winds and the pulsating exhaust plumes from the Phoenix spacecraft's landing engines could complicate NASA's efforts to sample frozen soil from the surface of Mars, according to University of Michigan atmospheric scientist Nilton Renno. Set to launch Aug. 3 from Florida, the $414 million Phoenix Mars Lander will use descent engines to touch down on the northern plains, where vast stores of ice have been detected just below the surface.

Jun 15, 2007
Legacy Reports

Wandering Poles May Explain Ups And Downs Of Ancient Mars Shoreline

Berkeley CA (SPX) Jun 13, 2007 - A paper in this week's issue of Nature by University of California, Berkeley, geophysicists demolishes one of the key arguments against the past presence of large oceans on Mars. Even from Earth, a large plain surrounding the planet's north pole looks like a sediment-filled ocean basin. In the 1980s, Viking spacecraft images revealed two possible ancient shorelines near the pole, each thousands of kilometers long with features like those found in Earth's coastal regions.

Jun 13, 2007