Pasadena - July 26, 2001 - NASA's Mars Technology Program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., has awarded three industry contracts for the development of concepts for a small rocket that will lift science samples gathered by NASA's Mars Sample Return mission from the Martian surface and support their return to Earth.
Providence - July 25, 2001 - New images of the surface of Mars provide the first direct evidence that the climate of Mars changed during the last 100,000 years, much more recently than the hundreds of millions of years scientists had previously thought, according to Brown University geologist John Mustard. The high- resolution images show evidence of water ice closer to the equator than had previously been observed.
Tempe - July 23, 2001 - Though there has been a fair amount of evidence that the Earth's atmosphere is undergoing global warming, the process is slow enough that there are plenty of skeptics, including some very influential people, who argue that it may not be happening at all.
Tucson - July 23, 2001 - Scientists have known for decades that Mars, at least in its ancient past, has had a considerable amount of water.
Washington - July 9, 2001 - Frosty white water ice clouds and swirling orange dust storms above a vivid rusty landscape reveal Mars as a dynamic planet in this sharpest view ever obtained by an Earth-based telescope.
Devon Island - July 9, 2001 - When most people go on vacation, they want to forget all about their jobs. But ESA physicist-engineer Vladimir Pletser, who develops ISS payloads and organizes zero-gravity parabolic flights for the agency, is taking the ultimate working holiday. This week, he's off to Mars.
Devon Island - July 9, 2001 - When the first humans go to Mars, they will need to pack very carefully. Everything for a three-year trip will need to fit into one small spacecraft. Once on the journey, the astronauts will throw nothing away, including human waste. Precisely how to turn such waste into food, oxygen and water is the subject of an ESA project, which is building a small pilot plant outside Barcelona, Spain.
Edinburgh - June 27, 2001 - The search for liquid water is key for finding habitable environments on Mars today--places where prebiotic chemistry and/or life could still be going on.
Le Bourget - June 21, 2001 - For the first time, a European space probe is to fly to Mars and land on the planet by the end of 2003. Mars Express shall investigate whether there was once water on our neighboring planet Mars and whether life was formed at that time.
Fairfax - June 19, 2001 - Xybernaut wearable computers have been selected for field trials as Mobile Assistants for the 2001 Haughton-Mars Project in the Canadian arctic this summer.
Bern - June 18, 2001 - Geologists from Bern University and from the Natural History Museum Bern have found more than 180 meteorites in Oman in January/February 2001. The most exciting find is a piece of Mars rock.
Washington - June 16, 2001 - If there is an area of science where extreme creativity is needed, it is in planetary exploration, where the logistics are difficult, the unknowns are great and the costs are high.
Sydney - June 12, 2001 - A possible mechanism for transfer of life between planets is via rocks ejected by major asteroid or comet impacts. The term transpermia was coined by Oliver Morton to describe the transfer of lifeforms by this method and to distinguish it from the more general concept of panspermia.
Paris - Jun 11, 2001 - Phobos, the tiny innermost moon of Mars, is to come under unprecedented scrutiny after Europe's mission to Mars goes into orbit around the Red Planet late in 2003. Mars Express is due to pass within 3000 km of the 22 km diameter moon a few hundred times during its two-year nominal mission lifetime.
Los Angeles - June 6, 2001 - Newly formed Pendragon Pictures is gearing up to produce a new rendition of the H.G. Wells classic War Of The Worlds. Described as a non-campy, live action production, the latest version will be directed by Timothy Hines and produced by Susan Goforth.
Reykjavik, Iceland (SPX) June 5, 2001 - New remarkable MOC images captured over a deeply incised valley system on the northeast Pavonis Mons flank show how erosion has nearly destroyed the pattern of young impact craters. Comparable age for an undisturbed impact crater pattern at Arisa Mons is 40-100 million years (Hartmann et al., 1999). After this erosion event a few scattered impact craters have formed. It is concluded that a major fluvial erosive event took place within valley floor on the northeast Pavonis Mons flank.
