Engineers for NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Mission are completing assembly and testing for the twin robotic geologists at JPL. This week the twin rovers are sharing floor space in JPL’s Spacecraft Assembly Facility for the last time before they are shipped to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
January 21st, 2003
Homestretch for Mars rover naming contest
NASA is reminding America’s school kids that time is running out on a chance to make history by naming two rovers being launched to explore Mars. The NASA “Name the Mars Rovers” contest closes January 31, 2003, so there is still time to submit the winning entries.
January 14th, 2003
Mars and the Final Four
The launch dates for the two Mars Exploration Rovers are getting closer and so is the need to pick a place for them to land. Adventurous travelers might spin a globe and pick a vacation based on whichever spot their finger finds. But scientists and engineers working on NASA’s newest rover mission cannot be as casual about landing site choices for the twin rovers that will launch in May and June of this year.
December 18th, 2002
NASA Testing K9 Rover in New “Marscape” for Future Missions
ASA scientists and engineers are testing new technologies using a K9 rover in a newly built
December 12th, 2002
Students Envision Life on Mars, Dance Their Vision
Local students will join Emmy Award-winning performers Bill Nye the Science Guy, and choreographer Debbie Allen in an exploration of what a futuristic community might be like on Mars. The event will take place at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and will be webcast live to allow other schools to participate. During the event, there will be three stations at JPL in which the students can participate. The first challenges students to build an imagined futuristic martian city with small painted boxes representing the fictitious business establishments that students deem important to the community; the second presents students with food choices from which they must fill an artistically labeled box with a nutritious balance of preserved food for the martian neighborhood; the third asks students to develop a billboard and public service announcement about water on Mars and how its presence and conservation is vital to their proposed locality. The highlight of the event will be a guided exploration of movement on Mars by Emmy Award-winning choreographer Debbie Allen and students from her dance academy.
December 10th, 2002
Roving the Red Planet: Current and Future Missions
As NASA prepares to launch two rovers to the red planet next spring, Dr. Firouz Naderi, director of the Solar System Exploration Program Directorate and Mars Exploration Program manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, will present a pair of free, public lectures about Mars exploration. The lectures, entitled “The Robotic Exploration of Mars,” will include discussions about the current Mars program, its goals and discoveries and its innovative ideas for future robotic Mars missions. The lectures will be presented Thursday evening, Dec. 12, at JPL, and Friday evening, Dec. 13, at Pasadena City College.
December 9th, 2002
NASA Twins Plan Martian Ramble
With just over a year to go before NASA’s twin Mars Exploration Rovers land on the red planet, members of the science team are previewing the mission’s goals and candidate landing sites at a special session of the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.
December 7th, 2002
NASA’s Revealing Odyssey
The latest observations from NASA’s Mars Odyssey spacecraft, highlighting water ice distribution and infrared images of the Red Planet’s surface, are being released this week at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.
December 6th, 2002
NASA selects four Mars Scout mission concepts for study
In the first step of a two-step process, NASA selected four proposals for detailed study as candidates for the 2007 “Scout” mission in the agency’s Mars Exploration Program.
December 6th, 2002
Candidate Mission Would Scan Mars Atmosphere for Signs of Life
possible mission to Mars in 2007 would scrutinize the martian atmosphere for any chemical traces of life, or even environments supportive of life, anywhere on the planet. An international team led by Dr. Mark Allen, an atmospheric chemist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., developed the mission proposal named Mars Volcanic Emission and Life Scout, or Marvel. Today, NASA announced that Marvel is one of four finalists in competition for the first Mars Scout Mission for the 2007 launch opportunity. Final selection by the NASA associate administrator for space science, Dr. Edward Weiler, will be made by late next summer.