Nearly two years after NASA’s twin rovers parachuted to Mars, a Jekyll-and-Hyde picture is emerging about the planet’s past and whether it could have supported life. Both Spirit and Opportunity uncovered geologic evidence of a wet past, a sign that ancient Mars may have been hospitable to life. But new findings reveal the Red Planet was also once such a hostile place that the environment may have prevented life from developing. “For much of its history, it was a very forbidding place,” said mission principal investigator Steven Squyres of Cornell University.
November 22nd, 2005
Spirit
If the Spirit rover were your typical 1-year-old, there’d be lots of pictures of the happy tot, perhaps even with a frosting-smeared face. Of course, Spirit is a bot, not a tot, and this is definitely not your typical birthday. In fact, Sunday’s big day actually marked 687 Earth days of operations on the Red Planet
October 25th, 2005
Mars rover begins descent from summit
Spirit, the robot on wheels that reached the top of a Martian hill this summer after an epic climb, is heading back down toward its next target for exploration. After two months at the summit of Husband Hill, the six-wheeled rover is descending to a basin where the scientific instruments it carries will examine an outcrop dubbed “home plate” because from orbit it looks like home on a baseball field.
October 10th, 2005
“Spirit” and “Opportunity”
By the time Spirit and Opportunity made Time’s “What’s Next” list in 2003, the pair were already millions of miles into their journey to Mars. Earth’s grounded citizens already had been dazzled by the journey of Sojourner, a much smaller rover that ventured to Mars in 1997. But Sojourner was a test run for its larger siblings. Spirit and Opportunity were well equipped to bring back a plethora of scientific information about the planet that once inspired popular visions of little green people.
September 29th, 2005
WUSTL Mars team describes water detection at Gusev crater The Record
Led by WUSTL earth and planetary scientists, a large team of NASA scientists has detailed the first solid set of evidence for water having existed on Mars at the Gusev crater, the exploration site of the rover Spirit. Alian Wang, Ph.D., senior research scientist in earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences, and Larry A. Haskin, Ph.D., professor of earth and planetary sciences, who died March 24, used an array of sophisticated equipment on Spirit to find that the volcanic rocks at Gusev crater near the rover’s landing site were much like the olivine-rich basaltic rocks on Earth. The researchers also found that some of the rocks possessed a coating rich in sulfur, bromine, chlorine and hematite, or oxidized iron.
September 11th, 2005
Spirit Rover Captures Animation of Martian Moons
The Spirit Mars rover perched high atop Husband Hill at Gusev Crater is stargazing. Imagery released September 9 by the NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California show the two moons of Mars
August 23rd, 2005
Mars Rover Reaches Summit, and the View is Spectacular
The Spirit Mars robot is closing in on a milestone moment in its roving history
August 17th, 2005
Summit in Sight for Mars Rover Spirit
At its Gusev crater exploration site, the Spirit Mars rover is wheeling to the summit of Husband Hill and likely to complete its climb this week. “I think we
July 20th, 2005
It’s one small step for a bug, a giant red face for NASA The Sunday Times
Far from discovering life on Mars, Nasa may have put it there. The American space agency believes the two rover spacecraft scuttling across the red planet are carrying bacteria from Earth, writes John Harlow. The bacteria, bacillus safensis, were found in a chamber in California that had been used to test the rovers. Officials believe it is likely some of the microbes, possibly from scientists