The Mars Odyssey orbiter was in safe mode Monday after a computer glitch prevented the 6-year-old spacecraft from relaying data from the twin rovers rolling across the Martian surface.
Project leaders said the Mars Odyssey was not in danger. Engineers discovered the problem Friday after a software glitch caused the onboard computers to reboot. The spacecraft last went into safe mode was in December when it was hit by a cosmic ray.
Mission manager Bob Mase of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena said he expected the Mars Odyssey to return to normal by the middle of the week.
September 18th, 2007
Mars Orbiter in Safe Mode After Glitch
September 17th, 2007
Mars ‘Pregnancy Test’ Orbits Earth
A new experiment similar to a pregnancy test but designed to search for signs of life on Mars is now exposed to the vacuum of space above Earth.
The European Space Agency’s (ESA) postage-stamp-sized experiment, called the “Life Marker Chip” (LMC), was launched last week aboard a Russian rocket launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan. Strapped to the ESA’s large Foton-M3 capsule, the tiny experiment harbors more than 2,000 life-detecting samples that glow if they encounter life-critical compounds, such as proteins or DNA.
Scientists and engineers hope the life-sensing chip can remain viable in the harsh radiation, temperatures and vacuum of space during a trip to Mars.
September 9th, 2007
After Dust Storms, Mars Rover Set to Enter Giant Crater
After surviving near fatal dust storms on Mars, NASA’s Opportunity rover is gearing up for its long-awaited trek inside an expansive crater on the red planet’s surface.
Opportunity could begin descending down into Mars’ giant Victoria Crater by Sept. 11 after spending two months hunkered down to wait out sunlight-blotting storms that nearly starved the solar-powered rover and its robotic twin, Spirit. The rover spent this week rolling ever closer to entry point into Victoria Crater.
“Opportunity might be ready for that first ‘toe dip’ into the crater as early as next week,” said John Callas, project manager for the Mars rover mission at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, in a Friday statement.
September 9th, 2007
Phoenix Spacecraft Passes In-Flight Tests
Several crucial devices aboard NASA’s Mars-bound Phoenix lander have passed in-flight testing.
Mission managers remotely inspected Phoenix’s descent-monitoring radar as well as its UHF radio, which will communicate with Mars satellites after it reaches the red planet’s surface on May 25, 2008. The instruments passed all tests with flying colors as the craft zooms through space at 76,000 mph (34 kilometers per second).
“Everything is going as planned. No surprises, but this is one of those times when boring is good,” said Barry Goldstein, Phoenix project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.
August 5th, 2007
Red Planet Rising: NASA’s Phoenix Probe Launches Towards Mars
NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander lit up the predawn Florida sky Saturday, launching spaceward on a mission to determine whether the planet could have once supported primitive life.
A United Launch Alliance Delta 2 rocket launched Phoenix towards Mars at 5:26:34 a.m. EDT (0926:34 GMT) from Pad 17A at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The three-stage booster is bound for the flat northern plains of Vastitas Borealis near the martian north pole, where it is expected to dig into and sample the region’s icy soil with its eight-foot (2.4-meter) robotic arm.
“It’s a wonderful morning to go to Mars,” NASA’s Phoenix project manager Barry Goldstein, of the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), just before liftoff. As predicted, weather conditions were pristine for the early morning space shot. The launch was delayed 24 hours earlier this week due to bad weather during rocket fueling.
Just after the supersonic crackle of the launch, Phoenix officials let out gasps of excitement as the rocket careened toward Mars.
July 23rd, 2007
Mars Rovers Weather Worst of Dust Storms
The twin rovers on Mars are in good shape today despite widespread dust storms that worsened last week and threatened to cut off solar power to the robotic explorers.
Steve Squyres of Cornell University, the lead scientist for the Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) project, said that both Spirit and Opportunity are in “excellent shape” based on a radio transmission received this morning.
“Both came through the weekend beautifully,” Squyres said in a telephone interview. “They were both power positive over the weekend, meaning they were generating more power than they were consuming.”
The amount of sunlight penetrating the dust-choked martian atmosphere has increased slightly in recent days, and the batteries of both rovers are fully charged, said Michael Meyer, lead scientist for the Mars Explorations Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.
July 5th, 2007
Mars Rovers Lose Power as Massive Dust Storm Grows
A major dust storm on Mars has worsened and is causing the Mars Exploration Rovers to lose power.
Opportunity’s highly anticipated and risky entry into Victoria Crater is delayed for at least several days, NASA announced.
The regional storm, first reported by SPACE.com, is the most severe to hit the rovers since they began exploring Mars in January 2004. Already last week it was thousands of miles wide. At first, scientists did not expect it to affect rover operations.
But dust from the storm is partly blocking sunlight, which the rovers need in order to recharge their batteries via their solar panels. Opportunity’s operations were scaled back June 30 to conserve power, according to the statement.
“The storm is affecting both rovers and reducing the power levels on Opportunity,” said John Callas, Mars Exploration Rover project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “We are keeping an eye on this as we go forward, but our entry into Victoria Crater will be delayed until no sooner than July 13.”
June 28th, 2007
Huge Dust Storm Breaks Out on Mars
A major dust storm has developed on the red planet, blocking sunlight and prompting Mars mission managers to keep a close eye on it, SPACE.com has learned.
It is not known how large the storm might grow, but already it is thousands of miles across. If it balloons, as dust storms have done in the past, it could hamper operations of NASA’s Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity.
For now, officials don’t think the storm will threaten rover operations, however. In fact, the windy conditions on the planet have blown off large amounts of dust from the rovers’ solar arrays, giving them more power. The power boost may lend a helping hand to the Opportunity rover, should officials decide to send it into Victoria Crater.
June 25th, 2007
Scientist Calls Mars a Terraforming Target for the 21st Century
Mars will be transformed into a shirt-sleeve, habitable world for humanity before century’s end, made livable by thawing out the coldish climes of the red planet and altering its now carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere.
How best to carry out a fast-paced, decade by decade planetary facelift of Mars – a technique called “terraforming” – has been outlined by Lowell Wood, a noted physicist and recent retiree of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and a long-time Visiting Fellow of the Hoover Institution.
Lowell presented his eye-opening Mars manifesto at Flight School, held here June 20-22 at the Aspen Institute, laying out a scientific plan to “experiment on a planet we’re not living on.”
June 13th, 2007
Mystery Solved: Mars Had Large Oceans
Since 1991, planetary scientists have floated the idea that Mars once harbored vast oceans that covered roughly one-third of the planet. Two long shore-like lips of rock in the planet’s northern hemisphere were thought to be the best evidence, but experts argued that they were too “hilly” to describe the smooth edges of ancient oceans.
The view just changed dramatically with a surprisingly simple breakthrough.
The once-flat shorelines were disfigured by a massive toppling over of the planet, scientists announced today. The warping of the Martian rock has hidden clear evidence of the oceans, which in any case have been gone for at least 2 billion years.
“This really confirms that there was an ocean on Mars,” said Mark Richards, a planetary scientist at the University of California at Berkeley and co-author of the study, which is detailed in the June 14 issue of the journal Nature.