Washington - Apr 14, 2004 - GeoFusion, Inc., a leading innovator in geospatial visualization, announces GeoPlayer Mars, created with the high performance GeoMatrix Toolkit technology. This Interactive 3D Demo allows users to interactively fly around the planet of Mars which is comprised of global imagery and terrain derived from NASA/JPL data.
Pasadena - Apr 14, 2004 - On Sol 98, which ended at 10:36 p.m. PST on April 12, Spirit woke up to the song Where Is My Mind? by The Pixies in honor of its software transplant. The good news is that Spirit's mind is updated and operating as expected.
Berkeley CA - Apr 13, 2004 - The same cutting-edge technology that speeded sequencing of the human genome could, by the end of the decade, tell us once and for all whether life ever existed on Mars, according to a University of California, Berkeley, chemist.
Pasadena - Apr 13, 2004 - Spirit began a four-sol stand-down on sol 94, which ended at 8:37 p.m. on April 8, 2004. During this time, the rover will receive a flight software update that should make its remaining martian days even safer and more productive.
Moffett Field - Apr 13, 2004 - As both rovers approach their third month resident on Mars, the mission planners have returned to Earth time. Both rover teams look to make rapid progress toward distant hills, with a possible second September extension continuing with any remaining mission science.
Pasadena - Apr 08, 2004 - NASA has approved an extended mission for the Mars Exploration Rovers, handing them up to five months of overtime assignments as they finish their three-month prime mission.
Pasadena - Apr 06, 2004 - Spirit woke up on sol 91, which ended at 6:38 p.m. PDT on April 5, 2004, as if it were any other martian day, but this one was special. Finishing 90 sols of surface operations since landing day marked completion of the last of the official success criteria for Spirit's prime mission. The rover team at JPL had checked off the next-to-last box for mission success two days earlier, when a drive of 50.2 meters (165 feet) took Spirit's total travel distance over the 600-meter (1,969 feet) mark.
Portsmouth - Apr 05, 2004 - Following the award of the 600,000 Euro study contract by ESA, EADS Space has made significant progress in completing the first definition of a European Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission. While EADS Astrium is defining the overall mission and the spacecraft, EADS Space Transportation is responsible for the re-entry systems and a 'Mars Ascent Vehicle' - a small rocket to carry the precious sample up through the Martian atmosphere.
Pasadena - Apr 02, 2004 - Clues from a wind-scalloped volcanic rock on Mars investigated by NASA's Spirit rover suggest repeated possible exposures to water inside Gusev Crater, scientists said Thursday.
Paris - Apr 01, 2004 - Since the last status report, the overall operational performance of the spacecraft and payload continued to be satisfactory. Some temporary problems were encountered with the Solid State Mass Memory (SSMM), which are currently under investigation.
Milton Keynes - Apr 01, 2004 - These are exciting times for space exploration. For the first time in a generation, human missions beyond Earth orbit are being seriously considered by space agencies on both sides of the Atlantic. Europe has initiated the Aurora programme, with the ultimate aim of landing people on Mars by 2033, while the US has recently redirected its human space activities towards a return to the Moon.
Moffett Field - Mar 31, 2004 - Considered suggestive of life, an atmosphere of methane on another planet is considered one of the four best candidates for detecting habitable conditions using remote sensing and telescope spectrographs.
Paris - Mar 31, 2004 - Observations from the ESA Mars Express spacecraft in orbit around Mars, methane have detected in its atmosphere. Whilst it is too early to draw any conclusions on its origin, exciting as they may be, scientists are thinking about the next steps to take in order to understand more.
Moffett Field - Mar 31, 2004 - NASA is testing intelligent 'mobile agent' software this week that some day may help astronaut-robot teams on Mars to communicate with Earth.
Paris - Mar 30, 2004 - The biggest postcard in the world does not fit into any known terrestrial letterbox. It measures 24 metres by 1.35 metres and shows a 3700-kilometre long, 166-kilometre wide strip of Martian landscape in south-north direction.
Pasadena - Mar 29, 2004 - NASA's Spirit will begin trekking toward hills on its eastern horizon in the next few days, entering a new phase of the rover's exploration of Mars just before its prime three-month mission ends and its extended mission begins, rover team members said today.
