If the images coming back from Mars looked an awful lot like Arizona, there was little familiar about the exuberant young engineers whooping it up in the control room of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena
February 22nd, 2004
‘Mars red’ is open to interpretation The Seattle Times
Depending on how you see it, Mars is the Red Planet or the Pink Planet
February 10th, 2004
The idea just ballooned The Seattle Times
Farrell Thomas, a self-described “balloon bender,” displays his craft at the Pike Place Market. Thomas says the hat was partially inspired by the Mars lander.
January 15th, 2004
NASA tinkering to make space travel a go The Seattle Times
While NASA and White House policy-makers have been kicking around space destinations and science goals, engineers at the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville have been working on making rocket fuel from space rocks, using a planet’s atmosphere to slow a spaceship and developing better engines to cut trip times. “The technology for space is there; it’s been worked on for years,” said Charles Vick, an aerospace expert formerly with the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville and now a senior fellow at GlobalSecurity.org, a nonprofit in Washington, D.C.
January 12th, 2004
Landing on Mars piques interest in space exploration The Seattle Times
On Saturday, Seattle’s Museum of Flight hosted Mars Fest ’04, a daylong session of panels with academics and aerospace experts. The founder of the Mars Society, Dr. Robert Zubrin, talked about the prospects of putting people on Mars within the decade
October 9th, 2003
A lot riding on China’s first manned spaceflight The Seattle Times
China is expected to launch an astronaut or two into outer space within days, a “great leap skyward” that will have economic, military and perhaps even diplomatic repercussions. China confidently predicts that it soon will join the United States and Russia, the former Soviet Union, as the only nations able to send humans into the heavens.
August 27th, 2003
Could Soap Lake hold secrets to life on Mars? The Seattle Times
With Mars at its closest position to Earth in 60,000 years, most Red Planet enthusiasts have their eyes trained on the night sky. Some scientists from Central Washington University have turned their attention elsewhere
August 17th, 2003
Researchers think caves may be perfect starter homes on Mars The Seattle Times
Duckweed and inflatable houses could help turn the caves of Mars into a home for any future human visitors to the red planet. That’s one of the topics on the agenda of a conference on Mars being held in Eugene this weekend. The Martian caves would protect humans from radiation and the severe weather and may hold minerals, water and ice the colonists could use for life support.
March 27th, 2000
New questions arise about Mars; future probes are in doubt The Seattle Times
Just as the lure of Mars grows stronger, with scientists poring over tantalizing new evidence of an ancient ocean and fresh views of layered canyons, sculpted polar ice caps and swirling dust devils, missions to the Red Planet are in disarray. The back-to-back failures of the Mars Polar Lander and Mars Climate Orbiter late last year have NASA rethinking what kind of spacecraft it will send to the planet most like our own.
January 6th, 2000
Did mile-deep canyon swallow Mars Polar Lander? Nobody knows The Seattle Times
The vanished Mars Polar Lander could have tumbled down a canyon on the Red Planet, but investigators so far have uncovered no evidence supporting a single explanation for the disaster, NASA said today.