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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Huntsville - Dec 18, 2003 - It's wintertime in the northern hemisphere of Mars, and a flying saucer is about to land. Back on Earth where it comes from, the craft is known as the Beagle 2, sent to Mars by the European Space Agency in search of life. More accurately, the Beagle 2 will be looking for chemical traces of life--telltale signs that life once existed, or perhaps, exists right now on the red planet.
Santa Clara - Dec 18, 2003 - Speedera Networks, a leading global provider of on-demand distributed application and content delivery services, and Capcave, an Internet systems integrator based in the Netherlands, today announced that the two organizations are working directly with the European Space Agency (ESA) to provide live streaming of the Mars Express probe scheduled to arrive on Mars at Christmas.
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.
London - Dec 17, 2003 - Science Minister Lord Sainsbury unveiled Tuesday the Government's new three-year space strategy, citing the Beagle 2 Mars lander as a benchmark for the UK's ambitions in space. Unveiled as the British-built lander prepares for the final stages of its journey to the Red Planet, the UK Space Strategy sets out three objectives. They are:
London - Dec 17, 2003 - As the time for Beagle 2 separation approaches a 3D representation of the landing site is available for download. Keyhole is a revolutionary software product that enables computer users to interact with a 3D model of a planet directly on the own PC.
Pasadena - Dec 14, 2003 - In an article appearing on page 1 of the science section of the New York Times December 9, Times reporter Mathew Wald grossly misrepresented the danger posed by cosmic radiation to astronauts on a human Mars mission.
Pasadena - Dec 14, 2003 - On the phone, tones can signal a connection. On paper, they can add shape and dimension. On Mars, they can do both. This is why members of the Mars Exploration Rover Entry Descent and Landing team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory will be on the lookout for a series of tones during the mission's landings in January 2004.
Paris - Dec 11, 2003 - After a journey of 400 million km, ESA's Mars Express is now approaching its final destination. On 19 December, the spacecraft is scheduled to release the Beagle 2 lander it has been carrying since its launch on 2 June.
Los Alamos - Dec 09, 2003 - Mars may be going through a period of climate change, new findings from NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter suggest.
Tokyo (AFP) - Dec 08, 2003 - Japan's trouble-plagued first mission to Mars is set to be abandoned in the latest of a series of costly failures to hit the country's space development programme, news reports and officials said Monday.
Paris - Dec 04, 2003 - Mars Express, ESA's first probe to Mars, still has some challenges to face. The spacecraft has successfully come through its first power test after the gigantic solar flare on 28 October.
