Pasadena CA (SPX) Jul 11, 2006 - From its winter outpost at Low Ridge inside Gusev Crater, NASA's Spirit rover took this view of the nearby hilly, sandy terrain that includes two potential iron meteorites. The two light-colored, smooth rocks about two-thirds of the way up from the bottom of the frame have been labeled Zhong Shan and Allan Hills.
Pasadena CA (SPX) Jul 10, 2006 - Spirit has been busy receiving new flight software upgrades, both directly from Earth via the rover's high-gain antenna and indirectly via relay from NASA's Odyssey spacecraft. Engineers anticipated that all flight software upgrades would be on board the rover by early in the week of July 10, 2006.
University Park PA (SPX) Jul 10, 2006 - It may be difficult for two people to have a conversation on Mars, according to a research paper by Amanda Hanford and Lyle Long of the aerospace engineering department at Penn State University.
Pasadena CA (SPX) Jul 07, 2006 - With electrical power from Spirit's solar array down to about 300 watt-hours per Martian day, or sol, the science team is able to plan only one major activity per sol and often needs to devote one sol to recharging the rover's batteries.
Pasadena CA (SPX) Jul 06, 2006 - This image from the Mars Orbiter Camera aboard the Mars Global Surveyor shows Opportunity's position as it approaches Beagle crater on the way to Victoria crater. North is to the left. Opportunity's locations at Martian mission days, or sols, 804 (April 29) and 855 (June 20) are marked, as are the left and right edges of the rim of Victoria from the rover's point of view.
London, England (SPX) Jul 06, 2006 - A mysterious shiny coating found on rocks in many of Earth's most arid environments could reveal whether life once existed on Mars. Research published in the July edition of the journal Geology suggests the dark coating known as desert varnish creates a record of life around it by binding traces of DNA, amino acids and other organic compounds to desert rocks.
Pasadena CA (SPX) Jul 04, 2006 - This image from the panoramic camera on Opportunity shows the outcrop-rimmed Beagle Crater appearing on the horizon as the Mars rover approaches it. Beagle Crater is 35 meters (115 feet) in diameter. The Opportunity science and engineering teams hope to have the rover visit it on the way to Victoria Crater.
Pasadena CA (SPX) Jul 04, 2006 - Stretching along a formation mission team members have named Low Ridge, lying in front of the Martian winter haven for NASA's Spirit rover, are several continuous rock layers that make up the ridge.
McLean VA (SPX) Jun 28, 2006 - Northrop Grumman announced Tuesday that NASA has awarded it a task order to verify and validate mission-critical software on the Mars Science Laboratory. Independent verification and validation is a systems-engineering process applied throughout the software-development lifecycle to verify the system does what it was designed to do, and validate that it meets NASA's objectives.
Moffett Field CA (SPX) Jun 27, 2006 - The city of Hammerfest lies at the northern tip of Norway, well above the Arctic Circle. If you board a ship heading north from there, just before you reach the polar ice cap you run into a group of islands known as the Svalbard archipelago.
Pasadena CA (SPX) Jun 26, 2006 - NASA's Opportunity Mars rover remains healthy some 29 months - and 26 months beyond its designed operational lifetime - after bouncing to a stop on the red planet's surface. JPL mission controllers report the rover has started receiving a new flight software load.
Pasadena CA (SPX) Jun 26, 2006 - For the first time in its 29-month mission on Mars, NASA's Spirit rover turned on its battery heaters. The rover took the action automatically at 8:15 a.m. local solar time on Mars on Sol 865 (June 9).
Washington DC (SPX) Jun 22, 2006 - With the continuing success and spectacular images of NASA's two Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, it might be easy to overlook the passing of a historic milestone this week of a previous mission to the red planet - the twin Viking landers.
Pasadena CA (SPX) Jun 21, 2006 - NASA mission controllers report that Spirit continues to be productive even as Martian winter conditions harshen. Controllers at Jet Propulsion Laboratory report that Spirit now receives about one-third as much solar energy as the rover received during the Martian summer while it explored Husband Hill, in the Columbia Hills of Gusev Crater.
Tucson AZ (SPX) Jun 20, 2006 - The software that simulates the workings of the Phoenix Mars Lander spacecraft and runs its science payload and telecommunications system is now ready for action, technicians at the Phoenix Science Operations Center at the University of Arizona announced Monday.
Pasadena CA (SPX) Jun 20, 2006 - NASA's newest spacecraft at Mars has already cut the size and duration of each of its orbits by more than half, just 11 weeks into a 23-week process of shrinking its orbit. The orbits are getting shorter and shorter, said Dan Johnston, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter deputy mission manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
