Pasadena CA - May 25, 2004 - Like a sweet, older sibling standing quietly to the side as the baby of the family gets all the ooh's and aah's, the 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter has blended into the background noise of cheers for the Mars Exploration Rover discoveries.
Pasadena CA (SPX) May 24, 2004 - NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has begun sampling rocks blasted out from a stadium-sized impact crater the rover is circling, and the very first one may extend our understanding about the region's wet past.
Moffett Field (SPX) May 24, 2004 - Dr. William L. Red Whittaker is a principal scientist with the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. He is also director of the Field Robotics Center, which he founded in 1986. Projects under his direction include unmanned robots to explore planetary surfaces and volcano interiors, and autonomous land vehicle navigation. Some of this work is funded by NASA's ASTEP (Astrobiology Science and Technology for Exploration of Planets) and the Mars Technology Program.
Moffett Field (SPX) May 24, 2004 - To the Presidential Commission on Moon, Mars and Beyond, Dr. Marianne Frey, Professor Emeritus School of Aerospace Medicine, Wright State University, presented her views about the challenges to long-duration human exploration of the moon and Mars
London (AFP) May 23, 2004 - Severe organisational failures lie behind the loss of Beagle 2, the UK-lead space probe to Mars which vanished shortly before it landed on the Red Planet late last year, an official inquiry reported Monday.
Pasadena (JPL) May 18, 2004 - NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has begun sampling rocks blasted out from a stadium-sized impact crater the rover is circling, and the very first one may extend our understanding about the region's wet past.
Moffett Field - May 17, 2004 - Skating delicately around the rim of Endurance Crater, the Mars' Opportunity rover has traversed approximately 13 meters (about 43 feet) farther south along the eastern rim. On sol 104, the rover approached Lion Stone, a rock at the crater's edge that stands about 10 centimeters tall (about 4 inches) and is about 30 centimeters long (12 inches). This brought Opportunity's total mission odometry to greater than half a mile, or 1,054 meters (3,458 feet)!
Washington - May 13, 2004 - I am a strong advocate for robotic exploration of Mars. I am also an advocate for the human exploration of Mars, but in the future, after this robotic exploration has fulfilled certain requirements. Let me just talk a little about human exploration and why I think it is inevitable that we will ultimately go to Mars.
Pasadena - May 12, 2004 - Opportunity awoke on sol 102 from its first deep sleep. This set of activities was initiated to conserve the energy that is being used by the instrument arm's stuck-on heater switch.
Paris (ESA) May 12, 2004 - The overall operational performance of all spacecraft subsystems is good. Following difficulties encountered with the Solid State Mass Memory (SSMM) in the March-April timeframe, the upload of a new Solid State Mass Memory software version took place successfully in mid-April. No science operations were possible during the few days dedicated to this operation.
Paris (ESA) May 11, 2004 - These images were taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA's Mars Express of the Acheron Fossae region, an area of intensive tectonic (continental 'plate') activity in the past.
Pasadena - May 06, 2004 - Scientists and engineers celebrated when they saw the first pictures NASA's Opportunity sent from the rim of a stadium- sized crater that the rover reached after a six-week trek across martian flatlands.
Houston TX (SPX) May 06, 2004 - The scientific debate over whether a meteorite contains evidence of past life on Mars continues to intensify, with colleagues of the team that announced the possibility in 1996 revealing new findings that may cast doubt on some of that earlier work.
Pasadena - May 06, 2004 - Spirit is now less than 1,600 meters away from the base of the Columbia Hills after three long sols of driving. Its odometer now reads currently reads over 1,660 meters (1.03 miles) and counting.
Pasadena (SPX) May 05, 2004 - According to a daily briefing note made available to SpaceDaily.com NASA's Mars Exploration Rover A - Spirit - is having communication problems. The current information available suggests the problems are not overly critical and can probably be fixed. However the root cause of the problem remains unknown.
Pasadena (JPL) May 04, 2004 - After a 50-meter (164-foot) drive on sol 94, which ended at 10:10 p.m. April 29 PDT, and the final approach of 17 meters (56 feet) on sol 95, which ended at 10:49 p.m. April 30 PDT, Opportunity arrived on the western rim of Endurance Crater and began surveying the spectacular new view.
