The launch of the latest Mars rover, delayed several times in the past two weeks, has been pushed back again. NASA officials said late Saturday that battery problems forced the cancellation of Sunday night’s planned launch of the rover Opportunity. NASA wants to try again Monday night.
May 17th, 2003
Small NASA division tries to make sci-fi dreams come true
Scientist Bradley Carl Edwards envisions an elevator that could carry people and cargo from a platform in the Pacific Ocean 62,000 miles up to a satellite in outer space. The idea may be science fiction today, but a small branch of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration located in downtown Atlanta thinks it might work – just give it a few decades. “This is a little out there,” Edwards admits. “NASA usually likes to fund things that are already developed.” The NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts picks the top research ideas that simply aren’t possible with today’s technology – and it tries to do them anyway.
March 25th, 2003
European Space Agency Plans Mars Mission
The European Space Agency will send an unmanned mission to Mars in 2009 to put a roving vehicle on the planet to search for evidence of life, the agency said Tuesday. The ESA hopes the mission, known as ExoMars, also will provide new insight into the planet’s surface and atmosphere. The trip is part of ESA’s preparation for eventual manned missions to Mars.
March 13th, 2003
Mars Odyssey May Pose Radiation Risk
NASA’s Mars Odyssey spacecraft has confirmed suspicions that the radiation on Mars is so intense that it could endanger astronauts sent to explore the Red Planet, scientists said Thursday. The high radiation levels measured by the unmanned probe also suggest that any extraterrestrial life that might call Mars home would have little chance of surviving unless it were shielded beneath the planet’s dusty, cold surface, said Cary Zeitlin of the National Space Biomedical Research Institute in Houston.
February 3rd, 2003
After Columbia disaster, China reaffirms commitment to space
The scientists and visionaries waging China’s struggle to become Earth’s third space-traveling nation have a message for a world contemplating the shuttle Columbia’s destruction: We’re still reaching for the sky. As the Chinese government laments the demise of the American craft and crew of “real heroes,” it is looking beyond the disaster and intimating that its own dreams of the stars remain undaunted – including a first manned flight reportedly planned for later this year.
January 20th, 2003
NASA plans to send two rovers to Mars
NASA is readying identical twin rovers for a mission to Mars, where the six-wheeled buggies will prospect for geologic evidence that the Red Planet was once wet enough to support life.
January 14th, 2003
NASA wrapping up work on twin Mars-bound rovers
Two hundred years after Meriwether Lewis and William Clark began preparing for their journey of exploration, NASA is readying two scouts to probe a landscape as alien to much of the world today as was the Northwest in 1803. Engineers at the space agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory are scrambling to finish assembling and testing the identical twin robotic rovers for launch on separate rockets to Mars in May and June. The $800 million double mission marks NASA’s second and most ambitious bid yet to roam the surface of Mars.
December 16th, 2002
2,800-year-old frozen microbes found
In ice that has sealed a salty Antarctic lake for more than 2,800 years, scientists have found frozen bacteria and algae that returned to life after thawing. The research may help in the search for life on Mars, which is thought to have subsurface lakes of ice.
December 8th, 2002
NASA: Water everywhere on Mars, but scant evidence it’s done much
New observations by a NASA spacecraft orbiting Mars show a planet rich in water, but suggests that for billions of years it has done little other than remain frozen in the soil. The finding challenges theories that Mars was once a warm, wet place hospitable to life. Instead, the current Martian surface
November 28th, 2002
Damien Hirst unveils painting destined for Mars
Damien Hirst, the British artist who pickled a shark and displayed sliced livestock preserved in formaldehyde, is heading for outer space. On Thursday Hirst unveiled his latest creation