NASA has awarded the California Institute of Technology a new five-year contract to manage the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It is estimated the contract will cover more than $8 billion worth of work. The contract extends for five years the JPL agreement between Caltech and NASA for management of JPL beyond its current expiration date of Sept. 30, 2003. The NASA contract includes a new provision that, based on performance reviews, may extend the contract period of performance for up to an additional five years.
November 21st, 2002
Mars Odyssey has New Project Scientist
Dr. Jeffrey Plaut has been named project scientist for NASA’s 2001 Mars Odyssey mission, succeeding Dr. R. Stephen Saunders who has retired. Plaut had been the deputy project scientist for Odyssey. Plaut came to JPL in 1991 and has served on the Magellan mission to Venus and three space shuttle radar missions. He is currently the co-principal investigator on the 2003 Mars Express radar sounder and a team member on the 2005 Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter radar team.
November 15th, 2002
More than 3 Million Names Headed to Mars
More than three million people have signed up to have their names included on a DVD that will fly to Mars with NASA
November 12th, 2002
Mars Rover Takes Baby Steps
Like any travelers worth their frequent flyer miles, the twin rovers of the Mars Exploration Rover Mission must prepare for a long journey. Unlike airline passengers, however, the rovers won’t have an attentive flight crew to tend to their needs. Instead, the twins face a daunting 460 million kilometer (286 million mile) voyage to Mars. To ensure their readiness, scientists and engineers at JPL are testing the rovers by simulating conditions they’ll experience en route to and upon arrival at the red planet.
November 8th, 2002
Revealing Chandra image shows Mars glows in X-rays
This remarkable image from the Chandra X-ray Observatory image gave scientists their first look at X-rays from Mars. In the sparse upper atmosphere of Mars, about 75 miles above its surface, the observed X-rays are produced by fluorescent radiation from oxygen atoms.
November 4th, 2002
Nasa Selects Lego Company To Run Mars Rover Naming Contest
NASA announced a contest, which will give American school kids a chance to make history, by naming two rovers being launched to explore Mars. The robotic explorers are part of NASA’s upcoming Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission. The twin rovers will land at two different locations on the mysterious red planet to explore the surface in search of answers about the history of water on Mars. The NASA “Name the Rovers” contest is a collaborative effort between NASA and the LEGO Company. The LEGO Company will manage the contest in conjunction with The Planetary Society. The contest provides students with the unique opportunity to suggest a name for each of the two Mars-bound rovers, temporarily known as MER-A and MER-B. The rovers are scheduled to launch in May and June 2003 respectively. The rovers are scheduled to land on Mars in January 2004.
November 1st, 2002
Researchers study first-ever soybean harvest from International Space Station
Like farmers bringing in their crops, researchers on Earth are studying soybeans harvested from the first-ever crop grown on the International Space Station. Space Shuttle Atlantis brought the soybeans home when it returned from a Station visit earlier this month on the STS-112 mission. The soybean experiment is managed by NASA’s Space Product Development Program at the Marshall Center. The program helps industry perform commercial research in space.
October 8th, 2002
NASA Adds to Mars Global Surveyor Photo Album
One of the highest-resolution images ever obtained from the red planet– a view of gullies in a crater in the Newton Basin– is among an astounding group of 18,812 images being added to NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor online image gallery today.
October 1st, 2002
Mars Odyssey Releases First Data Archive to Scientists
NASA has released the first set of data taken by the Mars Odyssey spacecraft to the Planetary Data System, which will now make the information available to research scientists through a new online distribution and access system. “This release is a major milestone for Mars scientists worldwide, since the first validated data from our instruments are now available to the entire scientific community,” said Dr. R. Stephen Saunders, the Odyssey project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. “There are fundamentally new kinds of information in these data sets, including day and night infrared images, maps of hydrogen in the soil, and radiation hazard data for future Mars missions.”
September 16th, 2002
Fostering the Next Generation of Mars Explorers
Watch out NASA! We’re coming! were the words of a high-school student who recently participated in the Mars Student Imaging Project, jointly sponsored by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, its Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and Arizona State University in Tempe. The Mars Student Imaging Project allows students from the fifth grade through community college to take their own pictures of Mars using a thermal infrared visible camera system onboard NASA’s Mars Odyssey spacecraft, which is currently circling the red planet.