In a cramped office near the University of Colorado football stadium, graduate student Shannon Pelkey is helping NASA decide where to send a pair of unmanned Mars rovers worth about $400 million apiece. Gaudy splashes of red, green and blue flash across Pelkey’s computer screen as she clicks through images of candidate landing sites for the upcoming Mars Exploration Rover mission. As a member of the tightknit community of U.S. scientists and engineers evaluating the landing zones, Pelkey is among the first on the planet to view new Mars infrared images being sent back by NASA’s Denver-built Odyssey spacecraft.
May 16th, 2002
Mars Society builds habitat for space Rocky Mountain News
For the Lakewood-based Mars Society, the road to the red planet passes through the Canadian Arctic, Utah’s red rock country, Icelandic lava fields, and the “Zippy” comic strip. The Mars boosters test-assembled a shiny new Iceland-bound “habitat” in Denver on Wednesday, the same day the eccentric explorers were tweaked in a Zippy strip. Mars Society President Robert Zubrin seemed equally delighted by both developments. He clutched the Rocky Mountain News comics page and giggled while, behind him, workers hoisted 12 aluminum-skinned steel panels that will form the walls of the society’s third simulated Mars base. It’s a three-floor domed cylinder that will house a crew of six in Iceland.
June 27th, 2001
Arctic setting serving as Mars substitute Rocky Mountain News
Devon Island is a bleak, windswept wasteland in the Canadian Arctic. It’s as close as you can get to Mars without leaving Earth, and that’s the lure for a band of space-suited “colonists” who are gathering there this week. During a two-month simulated mission to the Red Planet, the Mars enthusiasts will live inside a cylindrical fiberglass “habitat,” and they’ll send dispatches to mission control in Lakewood. They will trudge across the alien landscape in helmeted canvas spacesuits with back packs, gloves and rubberized military cold-weather boots. And they will be guarded by an Inuit native with a rifle who will watch for polar bears from an ATV.
April 9th, 2001
Mission to Mars fine so far Rocky Mountain News
The 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft zipped past the moon at 7,300 mph Sunday in a trouble-free day that followed a nearly flawless launch. The Denver-built NASA spacecraft will be 350,000 miles from Earth by 9 a.m. today, coasting toward an October arrival at the red planet. “We have transitioned out of launch mode and into cruise mode, and everything looks excellent,” said James Neuman, head of the Lockheed Martin Astronautics team that is controlling the spacecraft from the company’s Waterton Canyon facility, southwest of Denver.
April 7th, 2001
Odyssey heads for Mars: Bruised Lockheed gets reassurance from `2001′ author Rocky Mountain News
The Denver-built 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft rocketed away Saturday on a 286 million-mile journey to the Red Planet and what NASA and Lockheed Martin hope will be a mission of redemption. It is the space program’s first launch to Mars since a pair of humiliating failures in 1999.