Boyertown - Mar 01, 2004 - How many of you would work fifteen hours a day in freezing rain, moving an unwieldy 800 pound piece of metal half a kilometer through mud and rough arctic terrain? And then go back repeatedly to do it all over again? If that appeals to you, then you just might be ready to go to Mars!
Pasadena - Mar 01, 2004 - Even before Spirit set foot on martian soil, she was returning stunning images of her new surroundings. And, with her first triumphant roll off the lander, she set out to accomplish lofty science goals. What she left in her wake makes for great bonus science too.
Paris (ESA) Mar 01, 2004 - It is the start of eclipse season for Mars Express. That means unavoidable passages of the spacecraft through the shadow of Mars, cutting it off from the sunlight that is converted into electrical power by the orbiter's solar arrays.
Huntsville - Feb 27, 2004 - When humans go to the moon or Mars, they'll probably take plants with them. NASA-supported researchers are learning how greenhouses work on other planets. Confused? Then you're just like plants in a greenhouse on Mars.
Moffett Field - Feb 25, 2004 - Opportunity has been getting the lion's share of the attention in recent weeks, because its twin sister Spirit has been engaged mostly in long-distance driving. But it may be about to steal the spotlight. For several sols, Spirit has been working its way towards nearby Bonneville crater. But even before it gets there, the mobile robot may make a critical discovery. It may find evidence of liquid water on Mars.
Moffett Field - Feb 25, 2004 - MER engineers at JPL are using a graphical planning tool to plot and scheme the perfect location to place the rock abrasion tool on the rock collection dubbed El Capitan near Opportunity's landing site. El Capitan is located within a larger outcrop nicknamed Opportunity Ledge.
Moffett Field - Feb 25, 2004 - We dug a nice big hole on Mars, said Jeffrey Biesiadecki, a rover planner at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. The rover alternately pushed soil forward and backward out of the trench with its right front wheel while other wheels held the rover in place. The rover turned slightly between bouts of digging to widen the hole. We took a patient, gentle approach to digging, Biesiadecki said. The process lasted 22 minutes.
Paris - Feb 24, 2004 - Before humans can leave their boot prints on the dusty surface of Mars, many questions have to be answered and many problems solved. One of the most fundamental questions - one that has intrigued humankind for centuries - is whether life has ever existed on Mars, the most Earthlike of all the planets.
Pasadena - Feb 20, 2004 - By inspecting the sides and floor of a hole it dug on Mars, NASA's Opportunity rover is finding some things it did not see beforehand, including round pebbles that are shiny and soil so fine-grained that the rover's microscope can't make out individual particles.
Huntsville - Feb 19, 2004 - It's a question of radiation, says Frank Cucinotta of NASA's Space Radiation Health Project at the Johnson Space Center. We know how much radiation is out there, waiting for us between Earth and Mars, but we're not sure how the human body is going to react to it.
Moffett Field - Feb 18, 2004 - The MER rovers Spirit and Opportunity, now traveling on the surface of Mars, are exploring a geography drier than the driest desert on Earth. Despite the polar ice caps and suspected pockets of liquid water beneath the martian surface, the amount of water on Mars is but a teaspoon compared to the vast watery reserves of Earth. Why is Mars so dry?
Moffett Field - Feb 16, 2004 - As you saw with Spirit, said Tim McElrath of the Opportunity's navigation team, we have a number ways to locate a rover. The 44 by 5 miles across, that error ellipse was what we worked for six months to define before landing. We were fortunate to have two Deep Space Network tracking stations, so we could see two-way Doppler data all the way down during descent until the parachute opened.
Pasadena - Feb 13, 2004 - A pioneering demonstration of communications between NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit and the European Space Agency (ESA) Mars Express orbiter succeeded. On February 6, while Mars Express was flying over the area Spirit was examining, the orbiter transferred commands from Earth to the rover and relayed data from the robotic explorer back to Earth.
Paris (ESA) Feb 13, 2004 - View from overhead of the complex caldera (summit crater) at the summit of Olympus Mons on Mars, the highest volcano in our Solar System. Olympus Mons has an average elevation of 22 km and the caldera has a depth of about 3 km. This is the first high-resolution colour image of the complete caldera of Olympus Mons.
Honolulu - Feb 13, 2004 - My friend Dr. X is really getting interested in Mars. Yesterday he challenged me about those mysterious spherical beads at the Opportunity landing site. The MER guys are struggling to choose between a bunch of wildly different explanations. I suppose you have an instant snap analysis of them based on your crazy Aloha Mars model that relates everything on Mars to something in Hawaii.
London - Feb 13, 2004 - Beagle 2, the British-built element of ESA's Mars Express mission, has failed to communicate since its first radio contact was missed shortly after it was due to land on Mars on Christmas Day. The Beagle 2 Management Board met in London on Friday 6 February and, following an assessment of the situation, declared Beagle 2 lost.
