Moffett Field - Apr 28, 2004 - NASA's Spirit Rover continues to take more panoramic images of the Columbia Hills as it progresses on its long trek across the Gusev Crater floor. Spirit is estimated to be approximately 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) and 52 sols away from its destination at the western base of the hills.
Moffett Field CA - Apr 27, 2004 - A new ground-based science planning support system developed for the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission is helping NASA scientists create plans and program computer command sequences for the twin rovers' daily operations.
Pasadena (JPL) Apr 27, 2004 - After a successful weekend of driving on sols 108 and 109, Spirit kicked off its week with a 140-meter (459.3 feet) drive over sols 110 and 111 toward its destination at the base of the Columbia Hills.
Pasadena (JPL) Apr 26, 2004 - In his office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Optics Engineer Larry Scherr sits before a buzzing computer, sketching geometrical shapes on a sheet of graph paper. He is calculating lens shapes to control the path of light rays.
Pasadena (JPL) Apr 26, 2004 - Spirit spent most of sol 106, which ended at 4:32 a.m. PDT on April 21, performing remote sensing on the inside of Missoula Crater. It acquired panoramic camera and mini thermal emission spectrometer panoramas and navigation camera images of the crater, along with some panoramic camera images looking back toward Bonneville crater.
Pasadena (JPL) Apr 23, 2004 - Spirit spent most of sol 106, which ended at 4:32 a.m. PDT on April 21, performing remote sensing on the inside of Missoula Crater. It acquired panoramic camera and mini thermal emission spectrometer panoramas and navigation camera images of the crater, along with some panoramic camera images looking back toward Bonneville crater.
London - Apr 22, 2004 - A unique meteorite that fell on a Soviet military base in Yemen in 1980 may have come from one of the moons of Mars. Several meteorites from the Red Planet have been found on Earth, but this could be the only piece of Martian moon rock reports Jenny Hogan in this week's issue of New Scientist.
Moffett Field - Apr 21, 2004 - One engineering obstacle to overcome when landing on Mars is the treacherous descent and landing. From start to finish, this mission phase can last six minutes. Because of its nail-biting drama, it is often referred to as the six minutes of hell.
Greenbelt - Apr 21, 2004 - Scientists have found clues that dust devils on Mars might have high-voltage electric fields, based on observations of their terrestrial counterpart. This research supports NASA's Vision for Space Exploration by helping to understand what challenges the Martian environment presents to explorers, both robotic and eventually human.
Pasadena - Apr 19, 2004 - Spirit had a busy weekend, culminating with a 75-meter (246-feet) drive toward Missoula Crater on sol 103, which ended at 2:33 a.m. PST on April 18. The sol before the drive, Sol 102, which ended at 1:54 a.m. on April 17, was an easier day for Spirit. Its main objectives were to use the panoramic camera and mini thermal emission spectrometer to acquire photometric and atmospheric measurements.
Washington (UPI) Apr 16, 2004 - It is a typical case of one of a pair of siblings breezing along and getting all the glory, while the other slogs away and receives little recognition. This particular analogy refers not to humans, however, but to the twin robotic landers currently operating on Mars, and to their achievements so far in searching for evidence the red planet once harbored liquid, flowing water.
Pasadena - Apr 16, 2004 - Three days after switching to new software with mobility-enhancing features, NASA's Opportunity shattered the record for a single day's driving on Mars. The rover covered 140.9 maters (462 feet) during its 82nd sol on Mars, ending at 2:15 p.m. PDT, Saturday, May 17. That is about 40 meters farther than either the best previous one-day drive, by Opportunity two weeks ago, or the total distance covered by NASA's smaller Sojourner rover during its entire three-month mission in 1997.
White Cliffs - Apr 16, 2004 - If you find layered sediments, they do not have to be either water-transported or the outpourings of volcanoes. They may be aeolian, that is, wind-blown. On Mars, they may also be a bit strange. Those are simple facts that the Martian Wet Worlders seem to generally forget, or, more to the point, resolutely ignore. Those good folk will not contemplate the simple proposition that the surface of Mars has mostly been shaped by wind-driven erosion and transport.
Pasadena CA - Apr 16, 2004 - NASA's Opportunity rover has examined an odd volcanic rock on the plains of Mars' Meridiani Planum region with a composition unlike anything seen on Mars before, but scientists have found similarities to meteorites that fell to Earth.
Pasadena - Apr 15, 2004 - Waking up to the Ramones' Teenage Lobotomy, Opportunity began operating with new flight software on its 79th sol on Mars, which ended at 12:16 p.m. PDT on April 14. Yestersol, the rover took daytime readings with its Moessbauer spectrometer on Jeff's Choice -- a soil target in the tailings of the trench that the vehicle dug on Sol 73.
Ann Arbor, Mich - Apr 15, 2004 - One of the big problems with space travel is that one cannot over pack. Suppose astronauts reach Mars. How do they explore the planet if they cannot weigh down the vessel with fuel for excursions?
