Paris - Jan 05, 2004 - ESA's Mars Express spacecraft successfully executed an essential planned manoeuvre to reduce its orbit around the Red Planet January 4 at 1313 UTC. A five minute burn of its main engine brought Mars Express from an orbit apocentre (highest point) of 190,000 km to 40,000 km with a pericentre (lowest point) of about 250 km.
Pasadena (JPL) Jan 04, 2004 - Anyone who's been blindfolded and spun around knows how hard it is to pin the tail on the donkey, even though players are pointed in the right direction when they last look at their target. To land in a precise location on Mars after traveling over 300 million miles, navigators at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) had to overcome the head-spinning challenges of calculating the exact speeds of a rotating Earth, a rotating Mars, and a rotating spacecraft, while they all simultaneously are spinning in their own radical orbits around the Sun.
Pasadena (JPL) Jan 04, 2004 - NASA's Spirit Rover is starting to examine its new surroundings, revealing a vast flatland well suited to the robot's unprecedented mobility and scientific toolkit. Spirit has told us that it is healthy, Jennifer Trosper of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., said today. Trosper is Spirit mission manager for operations on Mars' surface. The rover remains perched on its lander platform, and the next nine days or more will be spent preparing for egress, or rolling off, onto the martian surface.
Pasadena (AFP) Jan 03, 2004 - NASA's Spirit rover sent its first images of Mars to jubilant scientists here early Sunday after surviving a jarring landing on the red planet, an achievement so stunning it left mission managers almost speechless.
Pasadena (AFP) Jan 03, 2004 - A US-made robotic rover was to touch down on the bumpy surface of Mars early Sunday after a seven-month space odyssey, to begin the most ambitious exploration of the red planet ever undertaken.
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.
Pasadena - Jan 01, 2004 - Biff Starling - one of two intrepid spacefarers in The Planetary Society's web adventure, the Astrobot Diaries - is preparing for arrival on Mars when NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit bounces down on Saturday, January 3, 2004.
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 - 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 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 - 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 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.
