Two out of three missions to the red planet have failed. One reason there have been so many losses is that there have been so many attempts. “Mars is a favorite target,” says Dr. Firouz Naderi, manager of the Mars Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “We — the United States and former USSR — have been going to Mars for 40 years. The first time we flew by a planet, it was Mars. The first time we orbited a planet, it was Mars. The first time we landed on a planet it was Mars, and the first time we roved around the surface of a planet, it was Mars. We go there often.” Another reason is that getting to Mars is hard.
November 29th, 2003
Viking Dust Astrobiology Magazine
The soft-landing Viking missions to Mars offered a challenging set of experiments to test for biological activity in 1976. As biology has progressed in the ensuing quarter-century, one of the principal investigators continues to mull over what that mission sought to test. In preparation for the three planned missions in the next month and half, those results are revisited.
November 23rd, 2003
Mars Encounter, Christmas Astrobiology Magazine
Around Christmas, Europe’s first Mars lander, Beagle 2, will encounter the large equatorial basin known as Isidis Planitia. Unlike the twin NASA rovers also on course for their early 2004 landings, Beagle 2 is more like a mining furnace than a wheeled car. Expected to test martian soil for any evidence of remnant biological activity, the soft-lander continues a journey first began with the 1970’s Viking explorations–how best to explore for biosignatures using a remote laboratory?
November 19th, 2003
NASA’s RATs Go Roving on Mars Astrobiology Magazine
Instruments on the Athena Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, will measure the composition of Martian rocks, searching for evidence of past water. But how will they “see” the real rock beneath all the dust? The Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT) comes to the rescue, cutting away the surface to reveal fresh rock.
October 18th, 2003
Flying Humans: Interview with David Glover Astrobiology Magazine
Prototype gliders for long-distance flying on Mars have reached their testing phase. A seasoned soaring guide and former President of the US Hang Gliding Association, David Glover, talks about the challenges of soaring on Earth and potentially elsewhere.
October 8th, 2003
Interview with Bill Nye: The Sundial Guy Astrobiology Magazine
Early next year, the first interplanetary sundials will be tested on the surface of Mars if all goes according to plan. The sundials, inspired by a flash from Bill Nye, the Science Guy, also will allow scientists to calibrate the pink color of the martian sky. Astrobiology Magazine interviewed Nye on how the sundials came to ride on the Mars science package, called Athena.
October 5th, 2003
Red River Drills for Mars Astrobiology Magazine
Drilling five-hundred feet into a Spanish red river (Rio Tinto), astrobiologists from the US and Spain are developing techniques to look for underground life forms. The highly acidic, wine-colored river is inhospitable to most microbes except the most robust that can live off the iron and sulfur minerals which give Rio Tinto its unusual tint.
September 24th, 2003
What Iron Can Tell Us about Mars Astrobiology Magazine
To the Mars Exploration Rover mission, water, past or present, is the grail. One way to look for past water is to analyze soil and rock surfaces for evidence of iron-containing minerals (or compounds), which differ depending on whether the environment in the past was wet or dry. Such mineralogical analysis is the purpose of an instrument called the M
September 22nd, 2003
Early Mars Was Frozen, But Habitable: II Astrobiology Magazine
Mars was cold – very cold, says Chris McKay, a planetary scientist at the NASA Ames Research Center. But that doesn’t mean it was incapable of supporting life. McKay has extensively studied life in some of the harshest environments in the world: the Antarctic dry valleys, the Arctic, and the Atacama desert. In part two of this series, he discusses the frozen dust and why one might want to look closer at the red planet.
September 15th, 2003
Early Mars Was Frozen, But Habitable: I Astrobiology Magazine
Early Mars was cold – very cold, says Chris McKay, a planetary scientist at the NASA Ames Research Center. But that doesn’t mean it was incapable of supporting life. McKay has extensively studied life in some of the harshest environments in the world: the Antarctic dry valleys, the Arctic, and the Atacama desert.