Pasadena CA (SPX) Feb 09, 2007 - Since April of 2006, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit has been sojourning in a place called Winter Haven, where the robotic geologist spent several months parked on a north-facing slope in order to keep its solar panels pointed toward the sun.
Pasadena CA (SPX) Feb 09, 2007 - NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft this month is set to surpass the record for the most science data returned by any Mars spacecraft. While continuing to produce data at record levels, engineers are examining why two instruments are intermittently not performing entirely as planned. All other spacecraft instruments are operating well and continue to return science data.
Pasadena CA (JPL) Feb 08, 2007 - NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity extended its cumulative Martian driving record to more than 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) by crossing 50.51 meters (165.7 feet) of flat ground during the 1,080th Martian day since arriving on Mars. This view shows the surroundings at the completion of the day's drive. It is a mosaic of frames taken by Opportunity's navigation camera.
Moffett Field CA (SPX) Feb 06, 2007 - More than 30 years ago, when NASA's two Viking landers looked for signs of life on Mars, the results were ambiguous. Although no strong evidence has since emerged for life on Mars, the planet now seems considerably more hospitable than it once did - especially since the announcement last December that liquid water had flowed on its surface within the last few years.
Berlin, Germany (SPX) Feb 06, 2007 - Exactly three years ago today, the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) onboard the Mars Express probe captured its first image data of our neighbouring planet. After more than 3800 orbits of Mars, the camera has imaged an area larger than North and South America with a resolution of between ten and twenty metres per pixel, in colour and in 3D. The camera experiment onboard the European Space Agency's (ESA) first planetary probe is being managed by the German Aerospace Center (DLR). The Freie Universit Berlin (FUB) is playing the leading scientific role in the HRSC.
Pasadena CA (JPL) Feb 05, 2007 - Opportunity spent the last week moving around the end of Cape Desire to three different imaging locations, each about 2 to 3 meters (6.6 to 9.8 feet) apart. Right now, Opportunity is driving about 2.5 meters (8.2 feet) to the final position to finish collecting long-baseline stereo images in the direction of Cabo Corrientes (to the east) and Cabo Anonimo (to the west).
Pasadena CA (JPL) Feb 05, 2007 - Spirit is healthy and continues to scan the Martian terrain for the dust devils of spring. The rover has completed its scientific studies of a layered rock exposure known as Montalva on an outcrop called Troll. The rover is now en route toward a patch of bright soil churned up by the rover's wheels in March 2006. Known as Tyrone, the patch of bright material, white and yellow in color, is possibly analogous to salty soils discovered by the rover earlier in the mission.
Pasadena CA (SPX) Feb 02, 2007 - With the rover's third Martian spring just around the corner, Spirit is healthy and has started acquiring movies with the navigation camera in search of dust devils wheeling across the terrain. Spring officially begins on Martian day, or sol 1103 (Feb. 8, 2007). During the past week, Spirit acquired microscopic images of a soil target called Londonderry, which is an active wind drift shaped by the motion of bouncing sand grains.
Washington DC (SPX) Jan 31, 2007 - Probes seeking life on Mars must dig deeply into young craters, gullies, or recently exposed ice to have a chance of finding any living cells that were not annihilated by radiation, researchers report in a new study. One promising place to look for them is within the ice at Elysium, site of a recently discovered frozen sea, they say. Current probes designed to find life on Mars cannot drill deeply enough to find living cells that may exist well below the surface, according to the study.
Pasadena CA (JPL) Jan 31, 2007 - NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity captured a view of wispy afternoon clouds, not unlike fair weather clouds on Earth, passing overhead on the rover's 956th sol, or Martian day (Oct. 2, 2006). With Opportunity facing northeast, the clouds appear to drift gently toward the west in this movie taken with the rover's navigation camera. The 10 frames, taken 32 seconds apart, show the formation and evolution of what are likely mid-level, convective water clouds.
Paris, France (ESA) Jan 30, 2007 - This view of Mars (visible towards the top of the image) and of the Milky Way was taken by the OSRIS camera on board the Rosetta orbiter on 3 December 2006, during the last series of instrument check-outs. In this image Mars is heavily overexposed and therefore surrounded by a halo of scattered light. OSIRIS (Optical, Spectroscopic, and Infrared Remote Imaging System) will continue to image Mars during the next major mission phase: the swing-by of planet Mars at the end of February 2007.
Pasadena CA (JPL) Jan 30, 2007 - After driving around the Bay of Toil onto Cape Desire, a promontory overlooking Victoria Crater, Opportunity began testing various techniques for visually determining the rover's precise location after moving across sandy, somewhat slippery terrain. Because the sandy surface is largely flat and featureless (except for the dropoff into Victoria Crater), the rover's primary reference points are the long rows of repeating ridges and holes in its own tracks.
Tucson AZ (SPX) Jan 29, 2007 - Three years after embarking on a historic exploration of the red planet and six miles away from its landing site, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity is traversing Victoria Crater ridge by ridge, peering at layered cliffs in the interior. To identify various alcoves and cliffs along the way, science team members are using names of places visited by the 16th-century Earth explorer Ferdinand Magellan and his crew aboard the ship Victoria, who proved the Earth is round. (All names are unofficial unless approved by the International Astronomical Union.)
Tuscon AZ (SPX) Jan 25, 2007 - The HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took a huge, detailed image of Mars' Mojave crater on Jan. 7, 2007. Part of that photograph shows the central uplift structure in the crater. Rocks that form this peak were several kilometers beneath the surface until an impact formed the 37 mile-diameter (60 kilometer) crater just north of Mars' equator. The HiRISE image shows that boulders as large as 50 feet across (15 meters) have eroded from the massive uplifted rock and rolled downslope.
Pasadena (SPX) Jan 24, 2007 - An image of sunset on Mars, taken by Spirit, won in a public poll. This contest, and other new multimedia pieces, help mark the twin rovers' third anniversary on the red planet. On May 19th, 2005, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit captured this stunning view as the Sun sank below the rim of Gusev crater on Mars. This Panoramic Camera (Pancam) mosaic was taken around 6:07 in the evening of the rover's 489th martian day, or sol.
Pasadena CA (JPL) Jan 23, 2007 - Spirit is healthy and continues to make progress on scientific studies of a rock exposure known as Montalva, which is one of the lower layers of an outcrop known as Troll. Compositional data that Spirit collected using the alpha-particle X-ray spectrometer suggest the rock has high potassium content. To confirm this, scientists selected an adjacent exposure for further scrutiny.
