Pasadena CA (JPL) Oct 01, 2004 - Spirit has successfully transitioned back to normal operations from conjunction operations, when Mars and Earth were on opposite sides of the Sun. During conjunction (sols 244 through 255), engineers and scientists did not attempt normal operations due to the low probability of successful communications.
Houston (SPX) Sep 30, 2004 - It will be drilling for information first, then for resources, though oil is not likely to be among exploration targets.
Pasadena CA (JPL) Sep 28, 2004 - NASA's Mars Global Surveyor, starting its third mission extension this week after seven years of orbiting Mars, is using an innovative technique to capture pictures even sharper than most of the more than 170,000 it has already produced.
Paris, France (ESA) Sep 28, 2004 - Recent results from the ASPERA-3 instrument on board Mars Express confirm that a very efficient process is at work in the Martian atmosphere, which could explain the loss of water. Water is believed to have once been abundant on the Red Planet. Professor Rickard Lundin, leader of the ASPERA-3 team, describes these findings in a paper published in the latest issue of 'Science'.
Moffett Field CA (SPX) Sep 27, 2004 - If the martian canyon, Valles Marineris, were on Earth, it would stretch from New York to Los Angeles. It is the largest canyon in the solar system (more than 4,000 kilometers (2,500 miles) long with 5 to 10 kilometers (3 to 6 miles) relief from floors to tops of surrounding plateaus).
Moffett Field CA (SPX) Sep 23, 2004 - Carol Stoker is the principal investigator for the Mars Analog Research and Technology Experiment (MARTE). MARTE has just begun its second field season drilling into the subsurface near the headwaters of the Rio Tinto in Spain, searching for novel forms of microbial life.
Pasadena CA (JPL) Sep 22, 2004 - As NASA's Spirit and Opportunity resumed reliable contact with Earth, after a period when Mars passed nearly behind the sun, the space agency extended funding for an additional six months of rover operations, as long as they keep working.
Moffett Field CA (SPX) Sep 21, 2004 - Carol Stoker is the principal investigator for the Mars Analog Research and Technology Experiment (MARTE). MARTE has just begun its second field season drilling into the subsurface near the headwaters of the Rio Tinto in Spain, searching for novel forms of microbial life.
Washington (UPI) Sep 21, 2004 - The old saying that big things can come in small packages might be exactly appropriate for a tiny but explosive amount of data that researchers have produced concerning Mars.
Paris, France (ESA) Sep 21, 2004 - Recent analyses of ESA's Mars Express data reveal that concentrations of water vapour and methane in the atmosphere of Mars significantly overlap.
Pasadena CA (JPL) Sep 20, 2004 - The Spirit rover is now in a safe place to continue daily science observations automatically throughout its solar conjunction period when engineers and scientists will be unable to send commands reliably to the rover.
Pasadena CA (JPL) Sep 20, 2004 - This 360-degree view from a site dubbed Engineering Flats combines several frames taken by the navigation camera on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit during the rover's 182nd martian day, or sol (July 7, 2004).
Moffett Field CA (SPX) Sep 16, 2004 - Perhaps the most famous of the martian meteorites was discovered at Allen Hills, Antarctica, and spawned a controversy about fossil-shapes and whether Mars could once have supported more favorable conditions than today.
Pasadena CA (JPL) Sep 15, 2004 - On sol 215 Opportunity completed a reading with its Moessbauer spectrometer of a target called Kirchner, where a wire brush on the rover's rock abrasion tool had scrubbed a circular patch on the surface of a rock called Escher.
Paris (ESA) Sep 13, 2004 - This image, taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA's Mars Express spacecraft, shows part of a heavily eroded impact crater at Solis Planum, in the Thaumasia region of Mars.
Pasadena CA (JPL) Sep 10, 2004 - Spirit is in safe place to continue daily science observations automatically throughout the solar conjunction period when engineers and scientists will be unable to send commands reliably to the rover.
