New Delhi, India (SPX) Nov 27, 2006 - Indian space scientists plan to send an unmanned mission to Mars by 2013 to look for evidence of life, a news report said on Sunday. The six-to-eight-month mission, likely to be launched in the next seven years, would cost three billion rupees (67 million dollars), the Hindustan Times reported.
Moscow (RIA Novosti) Nov 22, 2006 - China will participate in a Russian project to fly to a Martian moon, a deputy head of Russia's Federal Space Agency said Tuesday. An agreement is being prepared whereby a Chinese micro-satellite, worth some $1 billion, will be installed on the Russian station Phobos-soil, Yury Nosenko told a press conference.
NASA's Mars Global Surveyor has likely finished its operating career. The spacecraft has served the longest and been the most productive of any mission ever sent to the red planet.
Los Angeles (AFP) Nov 21, 2006 - The unexpectedly long 10-year-old mission of the Mars Global Surveyor probe is most likely over after contact with the orbiter was lost earlier this month, NASA said Tuesday. Scientists said they suspected a damaged solar panel had left the craft unable to communicate with Earth following its successful decade-long sojourn around the Red Planet.
Paris, France (ESA) Nov 21, 2006 - The Rosetta spacecraft and its payload are in excellent health and everything is set to prepare the Mars flyby on 25 February 2007. On 26 July the Rosetta spacecraft came out of the two-month Near Sun Hibernation Mode (NSHM). The spacecraft performance during that period was nominal. Subsequently it was reconfigured to Active Cruise Mode. Rosetta is back to two ground station passes per week, which are used for telemetry recovery and S/C maintenance operations.
Pasadena CA (JPL) Nov 19, 2006 - An orbiting NASA spacecraft just starting to study Mars with six science instruments has successfully tested another key part of its payload, a versatile radio for relaying communications with robots on the surface of Mars. During its first relay test since reaching Mars in March, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter used this radio payload, called Electra, in a two-way link with NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit.
Ithaca NY (SPX) Nov 17, 2006 - On Earth, Cornell astronomer Jim Bell says, he is an amateur photographer at best. But I've always been drawn to landscapes, he says. That's a good thing. These days he finds himself accumulating a lot of them: 160,000, actually, taken by two tireless faraway helpers called Spirit and Opportunity over the last two-and-a-half years.
Moffet Field CA (SPX) Nov 16, 2006 - Carol Stoker, a planetary scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center, is a team member for the upcoming Phoenix Lander. This mission, launching in 2007, aims to land in the high northern latitudes of Mars to search for frozen water and any indications of past habitable conditions. In this interview with Astrobiology Magazine's Leslie Mullen, Stoker describes what Phoenix can expect to find when it lands on the northern plains of Mars, and why astrobiologists have high hopes for finding the signs of life there.
Pasadena CA (JPL) Nov 14, 2006 - After Spirit's successful 0.71-meter (28-inch) bump on sol 1010, the team has new targets in the robotic arm's work volume for the first time in 204 sols. There is some interesting light and dark material within arm's reach and this week the team planned a robotic arm campaign including a microscopic imager mosaic, four hours of alpha particle X-ray spectrometer integration and 43 hours of Moessbauer spectrometer integration. Spirit is receiving a little over 320 Watt-hours now and is able to occasionally use the Moessbauer or alpha particle X-ray spectrometer overnight.
Chippenham, UK (SPX) Nov 14, 2006 - Space software experts SciSys have been awarded a key role in a 1.7 million pound technology development programme supporting Europe's return to Mars. The programme sponsor (the UK Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council or PPARC) has given its highest priority to a SciSys-led development known as the autonomous robotic scientist. This development includes academic support from Aberystwyth, Leicester and Strathclyde Universities.
Houston (UPI) Nov 13, 2006 - NASA engineers tried Monday to re-establish contact with the Mars Global Surveyor, which has quit communicating with Earth. The 10-year-old spacecraft has failed for a week to respond to communications to adjust a solar panel, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said.
Pasadena CA (SPX) Nov 13, 2006 - Opportunity is healthy and has driven away from the Cape Verde promontory for further exploration around the rim of Victoria Crater. Over the course of the next week, the rover will make its way clockwise around Victoria Crater to the next promontory, Cape St. Mary. Opportunity will then image the northeast-facing cliff of Cape Verde to characterize lateral changes in layers of the crater wall. Along the way, Opportunity will be using the panoramic camera to scout a safe place to drive into the crater.
Pasadena CA (SPX) Nov 10, 2006 - Navigators on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission don't have much free time. For weeks, they have been too frantic to chronicle their experiences during the critical aerobraking and orbit adjustment periods.
Pasadena CA (JPL) Nov 09, 2006 - Engineers are striving to restore full communications with NASA's Mars Global Surveyor on the 10th anniversary of the spacecraft's Nov. 7, 1996, launch. The orbiter is the oldest of five NASA spacecraft currently active at the red planet. Its original mission was to examine Mars for a full Martian year, roughly two Earth years.
Pasadena CA (SPX) Nov 08, 2006 - In 2007, The Planetary Society will send a specialized silica-glass DVD to Mars aboard Phoenix, NASA's newest Scout mission, led by Principal Investigator Peter Smith at the University of Arizona. The disk, which is attached to the deck of the Phoenix lander, will include Visions of Mars, a collection of 19th and 20th century stories, essays, and art inspired by the Red Planet.
Moscow (RIA Novosti) Nov 02, 2006 - The 438-day flight aboard the Mir orbiter by physician Valery Polyakov at the end of the last century showed there are no fundamental medical or biological restrictions to extended space missions. Radiation, however, is another matter. Its effects intensify multifold when the vehicle leaves the protection of the Earth's magnetosphere. This demands a special anti-radiation facility. It might be a radiation shelter that could absorb charged particles or an artificial electromagnetic field built up around the craft.
