Pasadena - Mar 29, 2004 - As the Opportunity rover left Eagle Crater, it took a retrospective look at the scientific treasures that its two month laboratory had presented. The rover landed in what looked from orbit to be a flat plain, but one rich in an iron oxide called hematite. No one knew exactly how the iron got there or why it was concentrated in an equatorial region the size of Oklahoma.
Pasadena - Mar 29, 2004 - After nearly three months working on Mars' time, a trimmed down engineering team plans to service the rovers' daily operation with a more terrestrial turn. According to Matt Wallace, a JPL mission manager, the staff likely to realize the benefits will be about three-quarters of what has manned the consoles round-the-clock since January: Next week, we transition off Mars' time. It has been a trying schedule.
Moffett Field - Mar 26, 2004 - The rocks in the outcrop that NASA's Opportunity rover has been exploring for the past several weeks were not just altered and modified by water; they were actually formed in water, perhaps [in] a shallow salty sea, NASA Associate Administrator Ed Weiler said Tuesday.
Tucson AZ - Mar 26, 2004 - The spiral troughs of Mars' polar ice caps have been called the most enigmatic landforms in the solar system. The deep canyons spiraling out from the Red Planet's North and South poles cover hundreds of miles. No other planet has such structures.
Pasadena CA - Mar 26, 2004 - The engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, home of some of the best six-wheeled exo-atmospheric off-roaders anywhere, have really done it this time. Their 2004 series MERs (Mars Exploration Rovers) are jam-packed with so many cutting-edge technologies (several literally with cutting edges) it takes a stack of owner's manuals the height of a Sherman tank to do them justice.
Moffett Field CA - Mar 24, 2004 - The story of water on ancient Mars just got more interesting. Scientists working on the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission announced last week that the small spherules of rock, referred to as blueberries, embedded in the bedrock outcrop near the Opportunity landing site contain the iron oxide hematite.
Washington (UPI) March 24, 2004 - The British social historian James Burke is fond of saying any time humanity's view of reality is changed by new knowledge, reality itself is changed. That is exactly what has happened with the discovery by the Mars rover Opportunity that the red planet once harbored liquid, flowing water.
Huntsville AL - Mar 24, 2004 - Sludge. That's what most people think of when they envision the gray, powdery soil ¿ called regolith ¿ covering the airless surface of the Moon. Not Dr. Mike Duke. He sees gold.
Pasadena - Mar 23, 2004 - NASA today released details on news findings on Mars that point to the first strong evidence that a sea once covered part of Mars in the Meridiani Planum area where Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity is currrently exploring.
Pasadena - Mar 22, 2004 - After a slightly slippery start yestersol, Opportunity made it out of Eagle Crater on sol 57, which ends at 8:45 p.m. PST on March 22. The drive along the crater's inner slope that was initiated on the last sol continued this sol until Opportunity exited its landing-site crater.
Moffett Field - Mar 22, 2004 - Astronomers have known for years that Mars possessed polar ice caps, but early attempts at chemical analysis suggested only that the northern cap could be composed of water ice, and the southern cap was thought to be carbon dioxide ice.
Pasadena - Mar 22, 2004 - NASA's Opportunity tried driving uphill out of its landing-site crater during its 56th sol, ending at 10:05 p.m. March 21, PST, but slippage prevented success.
NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit took this pair of microscopic imager pictures of the drift dubbed "Serpent" on Spirit's 73rd martian day on Mars after successfully digging into the side of the drift.
Pasadena (JPL) Mar 18, 2004 - A major ingredient in small mineral spheres analyzed by NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity furthers understanding of past water at Opportunity's landing site and points to a way of determining whether the vast plains surrounding the site also have a wet history.
Pasadena - Mar 17, 2004 - This image shows the transit of Mars' moon Phobos across the Sun. The images were taken by the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity on the morning of the 45th martian day, or sol, of its mission. This observation will help refine our knowledge of the orbit and position of Phobos.
Pasadena - Mar 16, 2004 - Here I was: 26 years old, I had never worked on a flight project before, and all eyes were on me. Every time I walked by the Pathfinder project office, Tony Spear, the project manager, would throw his arm around me and announce, Hey everybody, the whole mission is riding on this guy right here.
