NASA’s twin Mars rovers pulled up to the rims of separate craters on Monday as they continue to explore opposite sides of the Red Planet. Both stops were intended as intermediate pauses on longer journeys undertaken by both Spirit and Opportunity, said Cornell University astronomer Steve Squyres, the mission’s main scientist.
April 12th, 2004
A day in the life of a Mars rover
More than $3 million a day: That’s how much NASA is paying to have the Spirit and Opportunity rovers on Mars, calculated simply by dividing the $835 million budget for the rovers’ mission by the projected 240 days of operation. Of course, Spirit and Opportunity don’t get a dime of those millions: Instead, the money goes to the people who put the rovers on Mars, keep them going and harvest the precious scientific return from millions of miles away.
March 23rd, 2004
Pools of water once existed on Mars
Three weeks after reporting that the Opportunity rover’s landing site on Mars was once wet, scientists went even further on Tuesday, declaring that the now-barren rocks were formed at the bottom of an ancient body of saltwater. The findings, announced at a NASA news briefing in Washington, represent an important link in a chain of evidence hinting that the Red Planet was wet enough and warm enough for a long enough time to support the development of life. Moreover, if organisms ever did arise, their fossils should still exist within Martian rock, the scientists said.
March 22nd, 2004
News flash from the Red Planet
NASA’s top officials and the Mars rover missions’ top scientists will announce “a major scientific finding” at 2 p.m. ET Tuesday, the space agency announced today. The last time a Mars news briefing was announced just a day in advance, it was to report geological hints that the Opportunity rover’s landing site was “drenched” with water many millions or even billions of years ago. Those were considered “significant findings.” So how does a major finding compare? One could argue that “major” outranks “significant,” because NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe is due to give opening remarks this time around.
March 20th, 2004
Living space for outer space
Aerospace engineer/entrepreneur Susmita Mohanty has been living a simulated dream come true this week: She’s making her home in a Mars habitat. No matter that the habitat is actually in a desert in Utah rather than on Mars. Figuring out how to make life more livable for space exploration is her passion, and her place among the crew at the Mars Desert Research Station is as close as she can come to the real thing, at least for now. “That will be a fantastic experience, to understand what it took the Mars Society to actually construct the habitat in the middle of nowhere,” she said in an interview before her two-week desert stint began.
March 16th, 2004
Panorama shows Mars crater in living color
The Spirit rover worked through its busiest Martian day yet, completing a record 43 observations, NASA said Monday. Among the pictures sent back was a breathtaking color panorama of the 650-foot-wide Bonneville crater as seen from its rim.
March 8th, 2004
Avoiding the ‘F word’ on Mars
People have imagined Mars as an abode of life for so long
March 1st, 2004
Big news from Mars
After a weekend of escalating buzz, NASA has scheduled a rush news conference at 2 p.m. ET Tuesday at its Washington headquarters to announce dramatic new findings about water on Mars. The specifics are being held back for the briefing, but clearly they have to do with evidence sent back from the Mars rovers relating to the role liquid water played
February 25th, 2004
Russia’s space clipper
Almost as soon as NASA announced its plans to develop a new spaceship that could work more like a Russian Soyuz craft than the shuttle, the Russians announced plans to deploy their own next-generation spaceship by 2010