by Jennifer Laing - Mars Society Australia announced today that an Australian scientific team will travel to outback South Australia and the Northern Territory on October 27 to examine suitable sites for a Mars analogue research facility.
The vibrating eyes of jumping spiders have inspired a new breed of vision sensors that could give the next generation of Mars rovers sharper eyesight, say researchers in California.
Los Angeles - Sept. 19, 2000 - Since March 1999 the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter aboard the MGS spacecraft has been sending back data on the topology of Mars. NASA kindly made the data available and in March of this year I started downloading it to create my own 3D model of Mars.
Pasadena (PAO) August 17, 2001 - One answer to roving across the surface of Mars may be blowing in the wind. Literally.
Moffett Field - Jan. 8, 2001 - Mars may once have been a very wet place. A host of clues remain from an earlier era, billions of years ago, hinting that the Red Planet was host to great rivers, lakes and perhaps even an ocean. But some of the clues are contradictory -- they don't all fit together in a coherent whole. Little wonder, then, that the fate of water on Mars is such a hotly debated topic.
Pasadena - Sol 6-A, 2004 - Although it will be several more days, perhaps as much as a week, before Spirit engineers certify that the rover is ready to leave the safety of its landing platform and go exploring, scientists have already begun to make a list of places they'd like to visit. A cluster of distant hills to the east are high on their list.
Pasadena CA (JPL) Jan 9, 2006 - This image (shown) from the panoramic camera on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity shows the best examples yet seen in Meridiani Planum outcrop rocks of well-preserved, fine-scale layering and what geologists call cross-lamination.
Fayetteville - Dec. 12, 2000 - University of Arkansas School of Architecture researchers and students, in cooperation with NASA, have developed concepts for long-term habitation of Mars in response to the Mars Reference Mission, developed at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Pasadena - Sept. 20, 2001 - If there is life on Mars, our robotic probes may have brought it there. In 1976, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) sent two Viking landers to the red planet. They set down on the surface and searched the soil for signs of life. The results were inconclusive. But, what if the spacecraft and others like them brought tiny forms of Earth life to Mars? Could it have survived there? If so, what does this mean for the future exploration of Mars?
Paris (ESA) Dec 19, 2003 - Any football or rugby fan knows that when a player kicks the ball, there is no longer anything they can do to influence its path. The player must trust to their own skill for the ball to reach its intended destination.
for NASA Science News - It's been nearly 25 years since NASA sent biological experiments to Mars. Chris McKay, a planetary scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center and a member of the NASA Astrobiology Institute, thinks it's time to try again.
Rolla - Nov. 3, 2000 - In the wake of last month's announcement that scientists have found what they believe to be a living microbe that pre-dates Tyrannosaurus rex, Dr. Melanie Mormile is keeping one eye on salt crystals that contain ancient earth-bound bacteria and another on Mars.
Pasadena (JPL) Apr 30, 2002 - NASA and JPL are sending RATS to Mars to work as field geologists. A RAT is not quite a furry little friend, but rather a high-tech robot with diamond teeth, called a Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT).
Brisbane - Nov. 6, 2000 - Australia could one day become a player in the international effort to send people to Mars, with the recent announcement of a grant to Mars Society Australia for design and construction of the Human Operations Prototype (HOP) as part of Project Marsupial.
Pasadena (JPL) Mar 25, 2002 - Just one of the many problems in landing on another planet, after it's been determined where to land and the method to get there, is landing safely. For JPL, a safe landing is the name of the game, as engineers work to prepare two rovers for the journey to Mars.
Greenbelt - Jan. 17, 2001 - NASA's Mars Global Surveyor will complete its primary mapping mission of Mars on January 31, 2001 after a mapping mission that lasted one full Mars year (687 days). During this time MGS was able to globally map the planet while monitoring seasonal changes.
