Pasadena (AFP) Jan 25, 2004 - Opportunity, the second of two roving US Mars probes, transmitted its first images of the Martian surface Sunday as NASA scientists tried to resurrect its crippled twin.
Pasadena (AFP) Jan 25, 2004 - Opportunity, the second of two NASA rovers, is scheduled to land on Mars early Sunday as its troubled but recovering twin, Spirit, was upgraded by NASA from critical to serious.
Washington - Jan 23, 2004 - The US space agency NASA received a transmission on Friday from the troubled Mars rover Spirit, the first in two days, but the spacecraft is in a critical state and may not recover fully, officials said.
Moffett Field - Jan 21, 2004 - With Spirit on the ground and Opportunity speeding toward Mars, more than three hundred scientists and engineers here on Earth are learning on the job how to act in unison and master the art of commanding two very complex robots to do science on another world.
Pasadena - Jan 21, 2004 - There was nothing unlucky about the thirteenth day on Mars. Rover scientists got their first chance to stretch Spirit's tool-carrying arm, while taking the highest resolution image ever on another planet.
Pasadena - Jan 21, 2004 - I started my career [studying] lunar samples, said Dr. Dave Des Marais, who is from NASA's Ames Research Center and lead scientist for the Spirit rover's long-range planning group. So this is a repeat of that rewarding experience...Beyond the challenge of adjusting in the first week, the big challenges are in dealing with the outside world, being careful when calling people. We all wear two watches on our wrist--one for Mars' time, the other for Earth. [For science, the challenge] is not to be hostage to having learned geology on Earth.
Edwards AFB - Jan 21, 2004 - Before NASA's first successful Mars Exploration Rover landed on the planet Mars January 3, 2004, a rover prototype helped refine navigational software at a unique site on Earth that replicates Martian terrain.
Pasadena - Jan 20, 2004 - NASA's Spirit rover has successfully driven to its first target on Mars, a football-sized rock that scientists have dubbed Adirondack. The Mars Exploration Rover flight team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., plans to send commands to Spirit early Tuesday to examine Adirondack with a microscope and two instruments that reveal the composition of rocks, said JPL's Dr. Mark Adler, Spirit mission manager. The instruments are the M¿ssbauer spectrometer and the alpha particle X-ray spectrometer.
Pasadena - Jan 19, 2004 - With the deployment of the Spirit Rover, a robotic arm built by Alliance Spacesystems is now in action. The robotic arm (formally known as the Instrument Deployment Device, or IDD) has five rotating joints and an extended length of more than one meter. The arm is mounted to the forward structure of the Spirit rover and was secured during launch, landing, and rover positioning by ASI-designed restraint mechanisms at the arm elbow and the instrument turret at its outboard end.
Pasadena - Jan 19, 2004 - With barely a week before reaching Mars, NASA's Opportunity spacecraft adjusted its trajectory, or flight path, today for the first time in four months.
Paris - Jan 19, 2004 - Every day, people around the world tune in weather forecasts to plan their days ahead. Soon ESA will be delivering the same service for Mars, thanks to an ingenious experiment on board Mars Express.
Paris - Jan 19, 2004 - ESA's Mars Express orbiter flew almost directly over NASA's Spirit rover on at Gusev Crater on January 16 at an altitude of about 300 kilometres. Mars Express uses four instruments to look down, while Spirit looks up.
Bozeman - Jan 19, 2004 - If you think the Mars rovers are interesting, wait until you see a mini-van clambering over the planet's red rocks and dusty lake beds. The two golf-cart size rovers that are mesmerizing the country now are preparing the way for a 2009 mission to Mars called the Mars Scientific Laboratory, says William Hiscock, head of the physics department and director of the Montana Space Grant Consortium based at Montana State University-Bozeman. The 2009 mission will involve a rover, too, but that vehicle will be the size of a mini-van.
Pasadena - Jan 19, 2004 - Last week as NASA was only just beginning to pivot Spirit around for egress the science exploration and mapping teams were deciding their travel plans beyond the landing zone.
Ithaca - Jan 19, 2004 - During the most recent early afternoon on Mars, the temperature at the rover Spirit landing site in Gusev crater was an admittedly chilly minus 11 degrees Celsius (12 degrees Fahrenheit). But it was still warmer than most cities in the upper Northeast, gripped in a frigid winter chill.
Boston - Jan 19, 2004 - Students and researchers at MIT are designing a space mission to learn about the effects of Mars-level gravity using pint-sized astronauts. The 15 mouse-trounauts will orbit Earth for five weeks to help researchers learn how Martian gravity -- about one-third that of Earth -- will affect the mammalian body.
