Hunstville - Jan 01, 2004 - On January 3, Spirit, NASA's 400-pound rover, is scheduled to land on what may be a dried-up lake bed on Mars. There's not much doubt: this site contained a body of liquid water, at least for some amount of time, says Jim Garvin, NASA's Lead Scientist for Mars Exploration.
It may even be that the same short-lived thin films of liquid water -- forming briefly but repeatedly on the surfaces of larger Martian rocks throughout the…
Pasadena - Dec 30, 2003 - Leave it to Bill Nye the Science Guy to turn a traditional piece of calibration equipment into a really cool, state-of-the-art scientific instrument. As he was looking over the designs for instruments to be carried aboard NASA's 2001 Mars Surveyor Lander, Nye noticed that the solar-panel calibration device for the lander's Pancam panoramic camera - a small aluminum square with an upright post in the center of it - looked familiar.
London - Dec 30, 2003 - As part of the Media update on 27th December, Professor Alan Wells (Lander Operations Control Centre, University of Leicester) outlined details of the work being undertaken by the Beagle 2 team to assess the current situation. A specialist team, titled the Analysis and Recovery Think Tank, has been established to concentrate on understanding the reasons for Beagle 2's apparent failure to make contact with Earth, and to address the steps that may be taken to resolve these problems.
Pasadena - Dec 30, 2003 - The Cornell University-developed, mast-mounted panoramic camera, called the Pancam, on board the rovers Spirit and Opportunity will provide the clearest, most-detailed Martian landscapes ever seen.
Pasadena - Dec 30, 2003 - NASA's Spirit rover spacecraft fired its thrusters for 3.4 seconds on Friday, Dec. 26, to make a slight and possibly final correction in its flight path about one week before landing on Mars.
London - Dec 26, 2003 - Early Christmas morning GMT time, the Beagle 2 spacecraft reached the surface of Mars at the end of a 250 million mile (400 million km), six-month trek to the Red Planet. Although the first attempt to use NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter to communicate with the lander three hours later was unsuccessful, scientists and engineers are still awaiting the best Christmas present possible - the first faint signal to tell them that Beagle 2 has become only the fourth spacecraft to make a successful landing on Mars.
Paris - Dec 25, 2003 - At 09:30 CET today [0830 UTC], the Mars Express orbiter was 200,000 kilometres from Mars and 156,000,000 kilometres from Earth. The orbiter is on its final planned course for Mars Orbit Insertion (MOI).
Pasadena - Dec 23, 2003 - Steven Squyres, the principal investigator for the science instruments aboard the Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers, juggles his commitments to the four space missions he is actively involved in, as well as to his teaching and advising duties, with an energetic ease that makes some wonder if he has found the secret to a 25-hour day.
Paris - Dec 22, 2003 - Now that Mars Express has successfully released Beagle 2 on its way to Mars the next step in Europe's exciting journey to Mars will be completed on Christmas Day, with the arrival of ESA's Mars Express orbiter, and the delivery of the Beagle 2 lander to the planet's dusty plains.
Pasadena - Dec 22, 2003 - After the twin Mars Exploration Rovers bounce onto the red planet and begin touring the Martian terrain in January, onboard spectrometers and cameras will gather data and images --- and the rovers' wheels will dig holes.
Paris - Dec 22, 2003 - On Saturday at 11:50 CET [1050 UTC], flight controllers at the European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt confirmed the success of a crucial repointing manoeuvre, setting Mars Express on its final course for Mars Orbit Insertion.
Pasadena - Dec 22, 2003 - Facelifts can sag. Botox is temporary. But modern science has a new way to return youth to weathered faces: the rock abrasion tool (RAT). If your dermatologist hasn't heard of it, ask your local Mars scientist.
Los Angeles - Dec 22, 2003 - Human Mars exploration advocates emerged as the winners this week from the decision by President Bush to defer any decision about America's next major goal in space into 2004.
London (AFP) Dec 19, 2003 - Europe's mission to search for life on Mars cleared a vital hurdle on Friday as its unmanned orbiter ejected a probe that should land on the Red Planet on Christmas Day.
Sacramento - Dec 18, 2003 - But, again, we simply don't know yet. Indeed -- since Mars' ancient surface is vastly better preserved than Earth's -- one of the major goals of Mars exploration is to find preserved traces of the very complex organic compounds that must have represented intermediate steps in the first evolution of life on Earth, since on Earth itself all this invaluable evidence has long since been destroyed by tectonic crustal recycling (continental drift), broken down by Earth's huge supply of liquid water, or simply eaten up by the life forms that came after.
