NASA’s Mars rovers have returned new evidence for past water, pictures of Earth-like clouds seen for the first time from the planet’s surface, and a rock that doesn’t look like anything scientists have ever seen. Meanwhile, officials say both robots are in surprisingly good health and could continue their science investigations for months more, despite nagging health problems.
December 3rd, 2004
Conditions on vast plain on Mars could have been suitable for life, Cornell rover scientist Squyres states in special Science issue Cornell
Scientists have long been tantalized by the question of whether life once existed on Mars. Although present conditions on the planet would seem to be inhospitable to life, the data sent back over the past 10 months by NASA’s two exploration rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, showed a world that might once have been warmer and wetter — perhaps friendly enough to support microbial organisms. Now a Cornell University-led Mars rover science team reports on the historic journey by the rover Opportunity, which is exploring a vast plain, Meridiani Planum, and concludes with this observation: “Liquid water was once present intermittently at the martian surface at Meridiani, and at times it saturated the subsurface. Because liquid water is a key prerequisite for life, we infer that conditions at Meridiani may have been habitable for some period of time in martian history.”
November 12th, 2004
Opportunity Rover to Pack Up and Leave Crater
NASA’s Mars rover Opportunity will back its way out of a crater it has spent four months exploring after reaching terrain that appears too treacherous to tread. Sitting at an incline inside “Endurance Crater” in Meridiani Planum, Opportunity has apparently reached in impasse. To the rover’s right, slopes are too steep to pass, while on the left the terrain appears to contain sandy patches where Opportunity could bog down.
November 11th, 2004
Mars answers spur questions Rocky Mountain News
Five spacecraft are circling Mars and creeping across its ruddy surface, looking for traces of long-gone waters and signs that the cold, arid planet may once have been hospitable to life. The robotic martian invasion – three orbiters and two six-wheeled rovers – has already uncovered strong evidence that water once flowed on Mars and is now locked in subsurface ice. But big questions about water on Mars remain. When did it flow? How long did it last? How much was there? Where did it come from? Where did it go? Perhaps the most tantalizing question: Were there long-lived watery environments where microbial life could have gained a foothold?
November 5th, 2004
Rover control shifts to Ithaca The Ithaca Journal
Getting to drive two rovers on Mars all the way from Ithaca is a dream come true for Cornell University’s Steven Squyres. “It’s home,” Squyres said of Ithaca. Principal investigator and lead scientist for the NASA-funded Mars Exploration Rover project, Squyres moved back to Ithaca in September after spending about eight months steering the mission from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. — the mission’s headquarters.
November 5th, 2004
Mars rover overcomes uphill struggle New Scientist
The Mars rover Opportunity has emerged safely from days of struggling through loose sand and is set to analyse its most tantalising targets yet.
Spinning wheels nearly thwarted the rover’s six-wheeled climb inside the stadium-sized Endurance crater. But it is expected to arrive within a robotic-arm’s length of a rock exposure dubbed Burns Cliff on Friday, where deep exposures of heavily layered bedrock are visible.
October 31st, 2004
NASA’s Mars Rovers Pass the 50,000-Picture Mark
A view of the sundial-like calibration target on NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Spirit, with a bit of martian terrain in the background, is the 50,000th image from the twin rovers that have been exploring Mars since January. The images stock a treasury of scientific information on scales from microscopic detail to features on the horizon scores of kilometers or miles away, and even include glimpses of Mars’ moons, Earth and the Sun. They also provide an always-current understanding of the surrounding terrain for use by the team of rover wranglers planning each day’s activities on Mars.
October 22nd, 2004
Mars rover enjoys mysterious power boost New Scientist
Not only are NASA’s seemingly unstoppable Mars rovers continuing their progress half a year beyond their design lifetimes, but Opportunity has recently shown an unexplained increase in its solar-cell power output, NASA has revealed. Spirit is faring less well, however, with intermittent wheel problems.
Opportunity
October 21st, 2004
Getting the scoop on Mars U of Buffalo Reporter
Steven Squyres, principal investigator of the Mars Exploration Rover Project, is actually a teen-age boy speaking to audiences in the guise of a fully grown scientist. Or so it seems after hearing him talk excitedly