NASA upgraded the bandwidth connection to its pokey twin Mars rovers, a boost that will allow scientists to send and receive data like pictures more quickly, a mission manager said Friday. The rate is now nearly five times the speed of home dial-up Internet connections.
February 8th, 2004
Mars Rover Examines Bedrock for Water
NASA’s Opportunity rover took microscopic images Sunday of a bedrock outcropping on the surface of Mars that scientists hope will answer questions about whether the rock could have formed in water. The images will help scientists understand what the environment was like when the rock was formed, said Jim Erickson, deputy mission manager.
February 7th, 2004
Spirit Rover Drills Into First Mars Rock
Fresh from being given a clean bill of health, the Spirit rover drilled its first tiny hole in a rock on the surface of Mars, NASA scientists said Saturday. “We made some history here. We put the first planned hole on Mars,” said Stephen Gorevan, a scientist handling some of Spirit’s workload.
February 3rd, 2004
Super-Sized Mars Photos Brought to Earth
Thirty pints of ink, 3,000 square feet of photographic paper
February 3rd, 2004
European Scientists Plan Mars Mission
European scientists set out a route map Tuesday for manned missions to Mars that aims to land astronauts on the Red Planet in less than 30 years. Like U.S. President George W. Bush’s proposed mission to Mars, the plan put forward by the European Space Agency involves a “stepping stone” approach, which includes robotic missions and a manned trip to the Moon first.
February 1st, 2004
NASA works to resolve bug that threatens twin Mars rovers
NASA said Sunday its Spirit rover was a week away from rolling on Mars again and that the software problem vexing the spacecraft may threaten both it and its twin, Opportunity, for the duration of their double-barreled mission. Engineers deleted more files from Spirit’s flash memory but delayed until Monday reformatting it completely, giving them more time to diagnose the rover’s ongoing problems, mission manager Mark Adler said. NASA originally planned to perform the task Saturday.
January 31st, 2004
BYU Study May Help Get Man to Mars
If man ever steps foot on Mars, they may say it looks like the Utah desert. Members of the Brigham Young University’s Mars Research Group already knows that. The group has spent the last year working with the Mars Desert Research Station, a simulated Mars base seven miles outside of Hanksville, or 180 miles southeast of Salt Lake City. Owned by the Mars Society, an international organization devoted to the exploration and settlement of Mars, the station includes a habitat module measuring about 15 to 20 feet in diameter with a laboratory on the first floor and crew quarters on the second level.
January 28th, 2004
NASA official: Shuttle tanks may have future use
The towering fuel tanks manufactured in New Orleans for the space shuttle could have a new life as space cargo trucks once the shuttles are retired, a top NASA official says. The tanks have been manufactured since the early 1970s by Lockheed Martin Space Systems. The future of the plant and its 2,000 employees has been in question since the shuttle disaster last year.
January 26th, 2004
Shuttle “Columbia” widows support missions to moon and Mars
Widows of two of the seven “Columbia” astronauts say they support President Bush’s plan to send astronauts back to the moon and eventually to Mars. Evelyn Husband and Sandy Anderson addressed Sunday worshipers at their church in Houston. Anderson said her husband Michael always used to joke that they would be the first family on Mars, so “he would have been thrilled.” She added, “I think it is a good thing too.” The widow of Columbia Commander Rick Husband agreed and said that she believes President Bush’s plan will “recapture the imagination” of Americans.
January 25th, 2004
Second Rover Lands Successfully on Mars
NASA’s Opportunity rover landed on Mars late Saturday, arriving at the Red Planet exactly three weeks after its identical twin set down, and prompting whoops and cheers of delight from mission scientists.