Peering into a hole that it dug, the Mars rover Opportunity has turned up new puzzles for scientists to ponder. Since landing Jan. 25, the Opportunity has been exploring the same small crater. One intriguing feature of that crater, in the middle of the vast plain Meridiani Planum, is the small pebbles, many almost perfectly round, scattered over the surface. The rover also saw these pebbles, about the size of BB’s, embedded in an outcrop of bedrock it cruised past last week, and scientists wanted to see what lies in the dirt, too.
January 20th, 2004
New U.S. Vision for Space Travel Inspires Imaginations to Let Loose The New York Times
In the gray buyer’s-remorse dawn after the celebration of President Bush’s announced plans to return to the Moon and even send humans to Mars, the changes and sacrifices necessary to fulfill the dream are coming into focus.
January 20th, 2004
New Moon: Planning the Return to Space The New York Times
For the future of human space exploration, NASA may turn to retro spacecraft designs. The spacecraft that is to take astronauts back to the Moon, called the crew exploration vehicle, may turn out to be more than passingly reminiscent of the old Apollo spacecraft.
January 16th, 2004
NASA Creating Office for Missions to the Moon and Beyond The New York Times
A day after President Bush announced renewed efforts for human space exploration, NASA announced yesterday that it was creating an office to develop technologies for missions to the Moon and beyond. The announcement, part of a reorganization of the midlevel bureaucracy, begins what is likely to be a wrenching transition as the agency tries to fulfill its new mandate.
December 23rd, 2003
Looking for a Little Life, 3 Visitors Descend on Mars The New York Times
Mars passed closer to Earth this summer than it had in thousands of years, and now three emissaries from Earth are about to repay the neighborliness
December 9th, 2003
Mars Mission’s Invisible Enemy: Radiation The New York Times
As the United States considers new goals for NASA after the loss of the Columbia, some space enthusiasts have renewed calls for a mission to Mars. But a team of physicists and biologists here at a laboratory on Long Island is demonstrating that even if the nation wanted to commit to such a goal, it would be far more complex than the Moon mission that gripped the country in the 60’s.
November 11th, 2003
Will Humans Ever Visit Mars? The New York Times
People have been walking on the surface of Mars for more than a century, in tales of science fiction and fantasy. Now, however, the possibility is real enough that many people think the question is not whether humans will go to Mars, but when they will go, how they will get there and who will go first.
May 14th, 2002
A Head Start on Potential Hazards for Mars Explorers The New York Times
No little green men will be lurking behind boulders, ready to zap all comers with their deadly ray guns. But that hardly means the first humans to visit Mars will have nothing to fear. It is not too soon, scientists say, to start worrying about the potential Martian menace of killer dust. Scientists studying the risks facing human explorers of Mars have cautioned that windblown dust, pervasive on the arid planet, threatens to abrade, clog and corrode vital spacecraft systems. And some of the dust breathed by astronauts may contain one of the most toxic chemicals known, the cancer-causing hexavalent chromium.
March 23rd, 2002
Life Inside Tall Tin Can in Utah Is All Mars The New York Times
In the red-rock desert west of this lonely little town, six seriously smart people are living in something that looks like a sawed-off corn silo and smells of unwashed socks. They go outside in white canvas space suits trimmed in duct tape. Their helmets are made from plastic light fixtures and white bullet-shaped trash-can lids. In their habitation module (the thing that looks like a silo), they sit with their laptops late into the cold desert night, typing up reports of simulated Mars disasters. The not-so-deadly pretense of living on the Red Planet while hanging out in a tall tin can in southern Utah is the latest wrinkle in a private plan to persuade the federal government to send humans to Mars sooner and for less money than envisioned by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The Mars Society — a group of about 5,000 dues-paying Mars enthusiasts from 29 countries, many of whom are space scientists and some of whom work in senior positions at NASA — wants to send men and women to Mars within the next decade, at a cost of $10 billion, far below previous space agency estimates.
November 27th, 2001
Cause and Effect: Off to Mars, Then to the Drugstore The New York Times
Besides the obvious perils, hazards for long-distance space travelers may also lurk within their own bodies. A new study reports that space travel appears to lend vigor to viruses that lie dormant in many people. Under normal circumstances, the body can fight off these viruses