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Editorial Team

Mars Daily Editorial Team

Editorial Team

The Mars Daily Editorial Team produces Mars Daily's coverage of Mars exploration and science. We report on rovers and orbiters, sample-return and human-Mars planning, and the geology, atmosphere and astrobiology of the Red Planet. Articles reflect our team's collective editorial process, source verification, drafting, technical review, and editing, rather than a single writer's work. Mars Daily takes editorial responsibility for content under this byline. For more on how we work, see our editorial policy.

Status of Japan’s Mars Explorer Nozomi

Tokyo - Nov 24, 2003 - It has been reported that Nozomi the Japanese made Mars exploration probe is to collide with Mars. This is not correct. The truth is that Nozomi will, if going as it is, approach Mars on December 14 by 894km passing above Martian surface at its closest approach, but there would not be excluded a theoretical possibility of colliding with Mars by more or less one percent, if we take the error of orbit determination into account.

Nov 24, 2003

Rovers On Course For Mars

Pasadena - Nov 20, 2003 - NASA's Spirit spacecraft made its third trajectory correction maneuver on Friday, Nov. 14, fine tuning its flight path toward Mars with an engine-firing operation planned into the seven-month trip.

Nov 20, 2003

Delta-Like Fan on Mars Suggests Ancient Rivers Were Persistent

San Diego - Nov 17, 2003 - Newly seen details in a fan-shaped apron of debris on Mars may help settle a decades-long debate about whether the planet had long-lasting rivers instead of just brief, intense floods.

Nov 17, 2003

The Calm Before The Storm: An Interview With Dr. Gilbert Levin

Los Angeles - Nov 17, 2003 - In a little over one month, the British built Beagle 2 exobiology lander will look for signs of extinct or extant life on the surface of Mars. Not since NASA's Viking mission 27 years ago has another search for life on Mars been attempted.

Nov 17, 2003

Damaged Japanese Spacecraft Might Contaminate Mars If It Hits

Tokyo - Nov 14, 2003 - Japan's leading national daily the Yomiuri Shimbun is reporting that the ill fated Nozomi explorer that is Japan's first Mars probe, is expected to crash into the red planet on Dec. 14 if it remains on its current course.

Nov 14, 2003

ESA’s First Step Towards Mars Sample Return

Paris - Nov 13, 2003 - What is the next best thing to humans landing on Mars and exploring the wonders of the Red Planet? The answer: touching, imaging and analysing carefully preserved samples of Martian rock in a state-of-the-art laboratory on Earth.

Nov 13, 2003

Go To Mars Says Planetary Society

Pasadena - Nov 11, 2003 - The Planetary Society is mobilizing its members and the general public to write President Bush in support of a human space exploration program geared towards the ultimate goal of landing men and women on Mars.

Nov 11, 2003

Mars Rocks With Marsapalooza!

Pasadena - Nov 11, 2003 - Marsapalooza, part of NASA's Mars 2004 (M2K4) effort to promote the Mars Exploration Rovers mission and NASA Mars education initiatives, is a tour during which a team of youthful scientists and engineers (the M-Team) will visit five cities across the country to raise public literacy about the Mars mission, to reach out to students in underserved communities, and to present themselves as role models to inspire the next generation of explorers.

Nov 11, 2003

Mars-Like Atacama Desert Could Explain Viking No Life Results

Moffett Field - Nov 10, 2003 - A team of scientists from NASA, the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Louisiana State University and several other research organizations has discovered clues from one of Earth's driest deserts about the limits of life on Earth, and why past missions to Mars may have failed to detect life.

Nov 10, 2003

Mars Rover Spirit Mission Status

Pasadena - Nov 05, 2003 - A series of tests of one of the science instruments on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit has enabled engineers and scientists to identify how to work around an apparent problem detected in August.

Nov 5, 2003

Sand Ripples Taller On Mars

Seattle - Nov 04, 2003 - Mars is kind of like Texas: things are just bigger there. In addition to the biggest canyon and biggest volcano in the solar system, Mars has now been found to have sand ripples twice as tall as they would be on Earth.

Nov 4, 2003

NASA Testing K9 Rover In Granite Quarry For Future Missions

Moffett Field - Oct 31, 2003 - NASA scientists and engineers are testing new technologies using the K9 rover in a granite quarry near Watsonville, Calif., in preparation for future missions to Mars.

Oct 31, 2003

Mars and Muddied Waters?

Images taken from orbit on Mars show good evidence for the effects of erosion and flowing (fluvial) water at one time in the martian past.

Oct 30, 2003

Are The Oceans And Rivers Of Mars A Fiction?

Sydney - Oct 29, 2003 - NASA has collected over 100,000 images from Mars. Many are breathtaking, and all the folk there deserve a standing ovation. But maybe they have not done quite as fine a job of interpreting them. For several years, NASA has contended that, in the distant past, rivers of liquid water flowed on Mars and that vast oceans resulted.

Oct 29, 2003

Amber Waves Of Grain On A Mission To Mars

Washington - Oct 24, 2003 - Mars came nearer to Earth this year than it has in more than 50,000 years, but a new technology could bring it closer still. Scientists have developed a fully sustainable disposal system to deal with waste on long-range space flights using a simple byproduct of wheat.

Oct 24, 2003

Green Mineral Indicates Red Planet Is Dry

Tempe - Oct 24, 2003 - The presence of a common green mineral on Mars suggests that the red planet could have been cold and dry since the mineral has been exposed, which may be more than a billion years according to new research appearing in the Oct. 24 edition of Science.

Oct 24, 2003