Boston - Aug 11, 2003 - Late in August the planet Mars -- the most Earthlike world known beyond our own -- will pass closer to Earth than it has done in nearly 60,000 years.
Huntsville - Aug 11, 2003 - The south polar ice cap of Mars is receding, revealing frosty mountains, rifts and curious dark spots.
Tucson - Aug 11, 2003 - In May 2008, the progeny of two promising U.S. missions to Mars will deploy a lander to the water-ice-rich northern polar region, dig with a robotic arm into arctic terrain for clues on the history of water, and search for environments suitable for microbes.
Toronto - Aug 01, 2003 - Canadian engineers and scientists are playing an increasingly important role in the search for water and life on Mars. Two missions with Canadian-made components are now en route to the Red Planet, and more ambitious Canadian involvement may ensue in 2007 and 2009.
Scottsdale - Aug 01, 2003 - Recent evidence of vast amounts of water ice on Mars supports the possibility of indigenous life. At the same time, that water could enable human settlement and massive environmental engineering, or terraforming. A moral conflict could face us soon, pitting Terrestrial life against the Martian. The course of action we choose should be informed by broad debate: the ethics, as much as the biology, of Mars deserves full exploration.
London - Aug 01, 2003 - Europe's leading space and satellite company, EADS Astrium, whose Stevenage-based engineers and technicians designed and built the Beagle 2 Mars Lander, today announced that it has become Beagle 2's first commercial sponsor. EADS Astrium's backing, worth over ¿1 million, is the first sponsorship of its kind in space exploration.
Beltsville - Aug 01, 2003 - Spherix Incorporated reported this week that recent data on the Martian surface sent by the Odyssey spacecraft will be interpreted as evidence for liquid water, life's most essential need, in a paper to be presented at the Astrobiology session of the SPIE (International Society for Optical Engineering) meeting in San Diego on August 4.
Pasadena - Jul 29, 2003 - Living too close to a neighbor may not be very appealing, but when Earth's neighboring red planet moves closer than it's been in 50,000 years, observers expect nothing but acclaim.
Los Alamos - Jul 25, 2003 - Breathtaking new maps of likely sites of water on Mars showcase their association with geologic features such as Vallis Marineris, the largest canyon in the solar system.
Paris - Jul 24, 2003 - Is there life on other worlds or is planet Earth the only place in our Solar System where living organisms have evolved? ESA is inviting European and Canadian industry to participate in its exciting ExoMars mission in order to provide an answer to this age-old question.
Wright-Patterson - Jul 22, 2003 - As the Mars exploration rovers Spirit and Opportunity race toward the Red Planet, part of the Air Force Research Laboratory is soaring with them. The two rovers, expected to touch down and explore opposite sides of Mars in early 2004, are powered by rechargeable lithium-ion batteries researched and developed by experts at the laboratory's propulsion directorate. Spirit and Opportunity will act as robot geologists while on the surface of Mars.
Pasadena - Jul 19, 2003 - NASA's Opportunity spacecraft made its first trajectory correction maneuver today, a scheduled operation to fine-tune its Mars-bound trajectory, or flight path.
Pasadena - Jul 16, 2003 - Next year, if all goes well, NASA's two Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, along with the British rover Beagle 2, will begin streaming back reams of data about the Red Planet, much to the delight of Mars researchers everywhere.
Huntsville - Jul 10, 2003 - Something is happening on Mars and it's so big you can see it through an ordinary backyard telescope. On July 1st a bright dust cloud spilled out of Hellas Basin, a giant impact crater on Mars' southern hemisphere. The cloud quickly spread and by the Fourth of July was 1100 miles wide--about one-fourth the diameter of Mars itself.
Berkeley - Jul 08, 2003 - Could life once have existed on planets other than Earth, perhaps on Mars? A team of researchers led by the University of California, Berkeley, has joined the quest to find the answer.
Moffett Field - Jun 30, 2003 - The milestone launch of NASA's latest Mars mission--called Spirit--along with the scheduled end-of-June launch for its twin--Opportunity--together, provide the impetus to revisit the remarkable journey of the earliest martian missions.
