Our NewsWire database is divided into categories, many of which coorespond to Mars Missions, and also Mars Technology, the search for Life on Mars, and news about the Mars Society. The rest of the news we archive is unclassified, and is put in our General News category. See the below NewsWire for past stories in General News.

The NewsWire: General News

22-Feb-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 — or, for that matter, the Orange Planet, the Salmon Planet, or the Butterscotch Planet. No one can say for certain what color Mars is. With digital photographs now flooding from NASA's Mars rovers, scientists are trying to translate the strings of ones and zeros into images that convey the planet's true hues. Compounding the challenge is the fact that no two people see color — and no two computer monitors display color — in precisely the same way.

19-Feb-2004 - Looking at Mars in 3-D (The Cornell Daily Sun) To celebrate and explore the recent Mars landing, the office of the provost started giving away one thousand pairs of 3-D glasses last week. The glasses, which can be used to view the 3-D images being sent back by the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, are available at the information desk in the Straight.

18-Feb-2004 - Bringing Mars closer (The Durango Herald) Jumping for joy, 2-year-old Sarah and 4-year-old Emily Vierling experience a little of what Mars might be like. Weight on the Red Planet is about one-third of what it would be on Earth. Strapped in a harness, each girl takes a turn pushing off and catching big air, experiencing a simulation of Mars' gravity.

17-Feb-2004 - Giant Shrimp Debuts at Long John Silver's; America Watches for NASA News of Conclusive Evidence of Ocean Water on Mars; If Found by Feb. 29, America Gets Free Giant Shrimp on March 15 (Business Wire) It's giant news when the world's largest quick-service seafood chain introduces its biggest shrimp ever. Long John Silver's is introducing the new, nearly-half-foot-long Giant Shrimp to America this week. Long John Silver's Giant Shrimp have been in the news since mid-January, when company President Steve Davis sent a letter to NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe, offering to give America free Giant Shrimp if NASA's Mars Rover finds conclusive evidence of an ocean on Mars by Feb. 29. The giveaway would take place on March 15, between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m.

15-Feb-2004 - A bit of 'Mars' on Earth (The Advocate) Colonization of the Red Planet might one day become more than just the plot line of a pulpy science fiction novel. The United States has two explorers currently on the surface of Mars, but they are both robots.

13-Feb-2004 - Amateur Shoots Mars "Picture of the Year" (Sky & Telescope) A California amateur astrophotographer recently received a unique double honor by having two of his Mars images featured in two well-known publications. Wally Pacholka's portraits of the red planet last July 21st over Nevada's Valley of Fire State Park near Lake Mead were chosen by TIME and LIFE magazines for their respective editions of pictorial highlights of 2003. His photo of brilliant Mars shining through Arch Rock was published as one of TIME's "Pictures of the Year" last December 22nd, while his image showing the planet next to a formation called Poodle Rock is in LIFE's "The Year in Pictures."

12-Feb-2004 - The Pros and Cons of the Exploration of Mars [Audio] (Australian Broadcasting Company) Dan Crowley of the Shoalhaven Astronomical Society believes NASA's work on Mars has increased interest in Astronomy and that we could even see a renewed 'Space Race' to get a man on Mars as was seen in the 60's to get a man on the moon.

11-Feb-2004 - Real rocket scientist to head sci-fi museum (Seattle Post-Intelligencer) The veteran NASA engineer who oversaw development of the first Mars rover has been named director of Paul Allen's Experience Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame. "When they said they were looking for a director, I got very excited," Donna Shirley said yesterday. "I thought it would be a really fun thing to do." Shirley, 62, who previously served on the museum's advisory board, began working on the Mars program at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1966 and became the first woman to manage a project for NASA, the billion-dollar Mars Exploration Program.

11-Feb-2004 - A virtual tour of Mars (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) Our next-door neighbor in the solar system has become quite the Internet star. Web sites devoted to the findings of the Mars Exploration Rover mission are leaving no stone unturned -- or at least undocumented -- in meeting the public thirst for information about the Red Planet. A wide range of sites offer information, images and interactive features that take the Web surfer virtually there.

10-Feb-2004 - Op/Ed: Teen Columnist: Rovers land on Mars, have major impact here (Tucson Citizen) When Spirit landed on Mars last month, bouncing into a perfect landing to the cheers of NASA scientists, the world did something surprising: it noticed. And I decided to take senior year calculus. It wasn't the most thrilling decision of my life. But I'll need a calculus course on my college applications if I want to study astrobiology after high school. Despite my reluctance to take on senioritis and math simultaneously, you could say I was inspired. I'm not the only one.

3-Feb-2004 - Wish you were here: Imaging Mars The spectacular images of Mars being sent back by European and US spacecraft give us a thrilling insight into what it must be like to travel to the Red Planet. While the camera aboard Europe's Mars Express orbiter has captured the breathtaking scale of the planet's mesas, channels and calderas, those on the US space agency's (Nasa) rovers have caught the exhilarating strangeness of the Martian surface.

2-Feb-2004 - MarsClock for PalmOS (MarsClock) MarsClock is a clock for Mars. It is a port of Mars24, created using OnBoardC. It runs on the PalmOS operating system (v 3.0 through 5.2) and requires MathLib. The error between MarsClock and the JPL MER time sheets is less than one minute for the nominal mission duration.

30-Jan-2004 - Nasa denies 'sexing up' mars images (Ananova) US space scientists have defended themselves against allegations that they tampered with images of Mars. The claim is that Nasa experts "tweaked" pictures sent back by the two Mars rovers to make it redder. A more extreme version of the conspiracy theory says Nasa doctored the colours to hide evidence of life, such as green patches, New Scientist magazine reported.

29-Jan-2004 - Martian Water Quest Hits High Gear (Voice of America) Mars is under more intense scientific scrutiny than ever. The curiosity is about whether Earth's cold, barren neighbor was ever wet enough to support simple microbial life. Scientists speculate that liquid water once flowed there because U.S. satellites in recent years have observed channels and other land forms that appear to have been carved by water. Now, two U.S. robot rovers are on the Martian landscape to seek proof of this.

27-Jan-2004 - Twice the 'Opportunity' on Mars? Landing of Second Rover Gives America Twice the Opportunity for Free Giant Shrimp from Long John Silver's (Business Wire) With NASA's Mars Rover "Opportunity" making a successful landing in Meridiani Planum on Sunday, January 25, America now has a second opportunity to enjoy free Giant Shrimp from Long John Silver's. Long John Silver's announced on January 16 that it will give America free Giant Shrimp if NASA's Mars Exploration Rover project finds conclusive evidence of an ocean on Mars by February 29, 2004. With the successful landing of a second Rover, America can now pull for either "Spirit" or "Opportunity" to find conclusive evidence of an ocean.

26-Jan-2004 - Soviet Lunokhod designers to help build Mars rovers for ESA (Itar-Tass) The designers of Soviet Lunokhod moon crawlers will take part in the creation of a similar machine for the exploration of Mars under a programme launched by the European Space Agency. Russian technologies will be used in designing and building a Mars rover, an ESA official said. In his words, the European Aurora project calls for cooperation with two Russian organisations – the Babakin Research Centre, and the Lavochkin Research and Production Association. These organisations have rich experience of building interplanetary spacecraft and the ESA wants to use their expertise for designing the technical part of the Mars rover.

17-Jan-2004 - The Mars Scorecard (David Gore) Welcome Space Sports fans! As you are well aware, Earth is currently the underdog in the solar system division in the Expensive Hardware Lob. For every piece of hardware that returns useful information from the Lobbee's planet, the Lobber scores a point. For every piece of hardware sucessfully thwarted by the Lobbee (secret agent LGMs [two to a trenchcoat], IPBMs, "lasers", blowing sand in the lens, etc...), they score a point. Currently we are monitoring the Mars-Earth game which began in late 1960 and is still in progress. As far as we can tell, Earth has been the only Lobber, with scattered reports of a possibly thwarted Mars invasion of Earth in 1938. For those of you just tuning in, here is the play-by-play...

12-Jan-2004 - Op/Ed: America Leads Us to Mars (The Washington Dispatch) On Saturday, January 3, a journey of over 300 million miles ended, while a jaunt of less than ¾ mile on a new world would soon begin that could provide an answer to a question that has plagued humans for millennia. NASA’s Mars Exploration Rovers touched down on the red planet ending a journey of nearly six months. Shortly thereafter, the probe began to collect data that may indicate whether Mars had/has water and if life has ever existed on our interplanetary neighbor. Once again, this potentially gigantic leap in mankind’s knowledge, as is the case with nearly every major innovation and idea across disciplines, came courtesy of the United States.

11-Jan-2004 - China to Launch Next Manned Spacecraft in '05 China will launch its next manned spacecraft next year and it will carry more than one astronaut, a newspaper said Friday, nearly three months after the nation's first manned space shot was completed successfully.

3-Jan-2004 - Mars from every angle (Montreal Gazette) After a seven-month epic voyage across interplanetary space, NASA's two exploration rovers are on final approach to Mars. Spirit takes the first plunge into the Martian atmosphere tonight while its twin, Opportunity, begins its perilous decent Jan. 25. With any luck, things will go more smoothly for NASA than they have for the troubled British Mars probe, the Beagle 2. For readers inspired to make their own, armchair journeys to the Red Planet, here's a guide to essential titles, most published within the past year:

2-Jan-2004 - Hope yet for Earth probes to reach Mars (The Sydney Morning Herald) The score in the 2003-04 interplanetary cup now stands at Mars 2, Earth 1. This weekend our world gets its chance to level the game. Early last month, five spacecraft were closing in on the red planet. But then Japan declared that its Mars probe, Nozomi - Japanese for Hope - had malfunctioned and had no hope of entering Mars orbit. Then, on Christmas Day, Britain's Beagle 2 vanished while attempting to land, although optimistic officials say they have not given up hope it may be found. The only good news came when Beagle's mothership, the European-built Mars Express, slipped safely into Martian orbit. However, two more Mars landers, six-wheeled NASA rovers the size of a desk, are on their way.

30-Dec-2003 - The Night Sky … from Mars! To see the surface of Mars, we rely on robots as our virtual eyes. To see the Martian night sky, we need a computer program. With the help of astronomy simulation software such as Starry Night Pro, earthlings can take a virtual journey to Mars. Our chosen landing spot in this simulation is Gusev Crater, the expected landing site of NASA's Spirit rover, one of two probes the agency has arriving in January. From here we can gaze into the Martian sky and see distant stars and not-so-distant planets, things surprisingly familiar and things utterly strange.

27-Dec-2003 - Cursed probes that have bitten the red dust (The Guardian) Although Mars has an enduring fascination for scientists, it boasts a list of mission failures long enough to make anyone think twice about sending a multimillion-pound probe there. Missions to the red planet fail far more often than they succeed. Since 1960 there have been 35 missions, from the Soviet Union, the US and Japan. Two-thirds of them have been outright failures.

26-Dec-2003 - 2004 shaping into a very Martian new year (UPI) With the arrival of Europe's first interplanetary probe at Mars and two more U.S. spacecraft on the way, the red planet will be under intense scrutiny for months as scientists attempt to figure out why a world flecked with evidence of an Earth-like past appears dead and dry. An even more compelling question is whether indigenous life ever took root on Mars, as many suspect but cannot prove. "If you look at the surface of Mars today, it's a desolate place. It's dry. It's cold. It's barren," said Cornell University astronomer Steven Squyres, who heads the science teams for two NASA rovers scheduled to land on Mars beginning next month. "It's not an inviting environment for life, and yet we see these tantalizing clues," he said.

23-Dec-2003 - Landers Approach Mars in Quest to Find Water, Evidence of Life (Voice of America) The skies around Mars are getting crowded, and traffic on the ground will soon increase, too. The United States and Europe are sending landers to the Martian surface to provide a broader and closer view of the Red Planet. A major goal is to find water and evidence of life.

20-Dec-2003 - Tough question: Where to land? If just getting to Mars is difficult, and most would agree it is, try finding a good parking spot once you arrive. More than 100 NASA engineers and scientists from around the country spent three years searching before settling on landing sites for Martian rovers Spirit and Opportunity. Some sites were too rocky; some too dusty. Others were too steep, too windy or too cold. Engineers considered several sites too risky for landing, with lots of "bad" rocks that could damage the rovers on impact.

20-Dec-2003 - Race to Mars begins a distant search for life One will sniff, dig and bake. Two others will roam, grind and bore. Together, they could revolutionize our knowledge of the red planet and extraterrestrial life. The robotic explorers from Europe and the United States are using entirely different approaches to the cosmic quest, which begin this month with launches that take advantage of an exceptionally close Earth-Mars alignment.

20-Dec-2003 - Three probes hold promise of new insight into Red Planet The fourth planet from the sun is frigid and nearly airless, treacherous and distant, but somehow alluring. Its desertlike terrain looks as if it were scooped from the American Southwest or the African Sahara. It is a mystery waiting to be solved. When Mars swung close to the Earth this summer, as close as it has been in 60,000 years, thousands of curious stargazers searched out the planet's uniquely reddish glow and pondered what it might be like to visit.

17-Dec-2003 - Mars brightens a bit (Astronomy.com) Since August, Mars has been drifting farther away from us and getting dimmer in our sky as Earth pulls ahead of it in our course around the Sun. But a large, regional dust storm has popped up on the planet, causing Mars to brighten slightly again. The storm was first reported to the International Astronomical Union (IAU) on December 13 by planetary observer Don Parker of Florida. According to IAU Circular 8256, issued on Sunday morning, the dust storm appeared to extend over 3,000 kilometers (over 1,800 miles) of longitude (in the east-west direction) and about 1,800 km (over 1,100 miles) in latitude (in the north-south direction). It covered most of Chryse Planitia (a low-elevation plain where Viking 1 landed), extending west into Candor Chasma and south into Eos Chasma and Margaritifer Sinus. On Sunday, observations by Parker revealed that the cloud seemed to be spreading even farther south and into Argyre Planitia.

16-Dec-2003 - UA Scientist Has Role in American and European Missions to Mars (The University of Arizona) The United Kingdom and the United States are about to land separate missions on Mars, and a University of Arizona scientist has a role in both. Mars missions are fraught with risks and challenges. But with luck, both the European and NASA missions will return data, and Peter H. Smith will soon compare the results. Smith is a member of the science team for Britain’s Beagle 2 lander, which is riding aboard Europe’s Mars Express spacecraft. He's also on the team for NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover mission.

14-Dec-2003 - Astronaut launches Australian race for space (The Sun-Herald) A space industry venture backed by Australian astronaut Andy Thomas has been set up in Sydney to compete for contracts worth billions of dollars. Nine private and public stakeholders have joined the Australian Space Network and others will be recruited next year. The network founders set three initial goals:  A Fedsat 2 satellite operating by 2005;  Australian instruments on Mars by 2010; and  Australian-produced microsatellites orbiting Mars by 2015. The network's aim is to bring the country's space professionals and companies together to compete for high-technology projects sponsored by the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the European Space Agency.

13-Dec-2003 - X-ray view of the Red Planet (ESA) Another ESA mission is turning its gaze towards Mars. This recent image was taken by the X-ray observatory XMM-Newton. All bodies in our Solar System, including planets such as Earth and Mars, emit X-ray radiation. As far as we know, there are several possible sources of this radiation.

12-Dec-2003 - Spacecraft Draw Closer to Mars (National Geographic News) Spacecraft from three different space missions are drawing closer to Mars. Over the next six weeks, landers and rovers are scheduled to touch down on the red planet's surface. Together with orbiting spacecraft, the probes will poke, scratch, sniff, and image the Martian environment for clues to the existence of past or present life. Mission scientists will clear a significant hurdle to see their spacecraft simply reach Mars.

10-Dec-2003 - Out-Of-This-World Traveling Exhibit Coming To The New Detroit Science Center As NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers prepare to land on the red planet, The New Detroit Science Center will be bringing Mars to Detroit in the traveling exhibition MarsQuest, opening Saturday, Jan. 24, 2004. MarsQuest was developed by the Space Science Institute of Boulder, Colo., with major funding by the National Science Foundation and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

9-Dec-2003 - Las Vegas Releases Odds For Mars Probe Trifecta-of-Failure (NewsHax) Las Vegas odds makers have given the three Mars missions currently in route to the Red Planet 2:1 odds of all successfully failing. Probes from the U.S., Japan and the European Space Agencies are finally arriving at Mars in what is being billed as possibly the biggest "Trifecta of Failure" in recent memory.

8-Dec-2003 - Students send LEGO robots on mission to Mars (The Bulletin) Leaning over the edge of a tabletop painted to resemble the surface of Mars and fiddling with a whirring robot made of LEGOs, David Houghton appears to be at play. Then the 11-year-old Obsidian Middle School student speaks, earnestly explaining his role in a robotics tournament held at Mountain View High School on Sunday.

7-Dec-2003 - Students tackle 'Mission Mars' (The Denver Post) Amid the Top-40 music blaring from a speaker and more than 35 people cheering on the other side of the room, seven Kearney Middle School students stood up on the bleachers and yelled directions to their two teammates. It didn't help. Their teammates, in charge of guiding an autonomous robot through obstacles on a simulated Mars surface, heard too many conflicting messages. The team's second score was lower than its first.

6-Dec-2003 - Monkeying around on Mars (Albany Democrat-Herald) In 20 years, the students gathered in the cafeteria of Westland Middle School on Saturday might be watching the first humans land on Mars as they huddle around their flat screen monitors. Or better yet, one of them might be stepping out of a spacecraft onto the red planet itself. For now, it's the stuff of daydreams and science fiction novels, but the elementary and middle school students who attended the FIRST LEGO League tournament in Corvallis are already making plans to visit Mars. Teams from across the state gathered at Westland to compete in a robotics event that combines computer programming with LEGO know-how, in a Mars-themed event.

5-Dec-2003 - Reception of Mars Spacecrafts by Radio Amateurs (AMSAT) On 2003 Nov 16 and 22, radio amateurs using the 20m diameter antenna at Bochum, Germany (JO31OK) received signals from the Mars Express and Mars Odyssey spacecraft. So does this mean that such feats are beyond the ordinary amateur? Absolutely not! Here are some notes to confirm this. You too can receive Mars Express, even on a small dish.

4-Dec-2003 - NASA engineers, museum offer a mission to Mars on Saturday (Rocky Mountain News) Mars fans can learn more about NASA's upcoming rover mission during Marsapalooza, a traveling educational show that hits the Denver Museum of Nature & Science on Saturday. Six scientists and engineers who helped create NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers will explain the mission. The show, which is aimed at young people and families, features hands-on activities and educational demonstrations.

3-Dec-2003 - Invading the “Death Planet” Does that sound a little melodramatic when it comes to describing the difficulty of landing on Mars? Not according to Ed Weiler, NASA’s associate administrator for space science: He says he commonly refers to Mars as the “Death Planet,” in recognition of the fact that two-thirds of all Mars missions have fallen short of success.

27-Nov-2003 - Mars exploration challenges youngsters (Clarke Times-Courier) Teamwork, initiative and imagination were used to produce a third place finish overall for the Robo Raiders, Classical Cottage School's hone schooling Lego Robotics Club, Nov. 15 in the FIRST Lego League Charlottesville regional tournament. They came in third out of 23 teams and qualified to advance to the state meet at Virginia Tech on December 7, 2003.

27-Nov-2003 - The Maniacs are crazy about Mars (The Times-Picayune) A team of Mandeville-area scientists, mathematicians, researchers, programmers and engineers has created a robot programmed to sweep the dust off the planet Mars, catapult rocks and explore the Red Planet's rough terrain. Since it is made of Legos, the robot itself probably won't ever make it to Mars. But space travel certainly is possible for these talented team members, at least when they are old enough for the trip.

26-Nov-2003 - Wild About Mars (The Planetary Society) On January 3, 2004 (Pacific Standard Time) Spirit, the first of two NASA Mars Exploration Rovers will bounce down on Mars and begin an amazing adventure. This historic event happens just one day after Stardust flies through comet Wild 2 to collect samples to return to Earth. What a remarkable weekend of space exploration! The Planetary Society invites you to join Buzz Aldrin, Ray Bradbury, Bill Nye the Science Guy, JPL mission scientists, and fellow space enthusiasts to witness Spirit's Landing LIVE and celebrate Stardust's encounter.

25-Nov-2003 - The Science Guy speaks (The Battalion) Restless in their seats, hundreds of students from across Texas waited in eager anticipation. Some had arrived an hour early just to get the right spot to see their hero. The crowd clapped in unison, chanting "We want Bill!" Eventually, the wave broke out. And when "Bill Nye The Science Guy" stepped up to the podium in the middle of the floor, one would have thought he was at a Beatles reunion concert. Girls shrieked, boys pumped their fists and parents nodded their heads. "We're here tonight to celebrate technology," Nye said.

24-Nov-2003 - Solar Storms Rock Missions to Mars: Spirit, Opportunity, Mars Express, Beagle 2, and Nozomi Move in on Mars (The Planetary Society) The record-setting solar storms that rained through the atmosphere earlier this month appear to have rocked both the American and European spacecraft en route to Mars, causing some temporary set-backs but no lasting damage. Japan's first mission to another planet, Nozomi, on the other hand, which suffered a crippling problem from a solar flare in 2002 seemed this time around to suffer more from a storm of exaggerated reporting than a flare from the Sun.

23-Nov-2003 - Students put Lego robots to the test on imaginary Mars (The Holland Sentinel) Students filled the halls of Macatawa Bay School Saturday looking for their way to Mars. Their vehicle for the trip to the Red Planet? A Lego robot. Thirty-six teams of fourth- through eighth-graders strained their brains for West Michigan Lego Mania. The students mission was to create a device to be used on Mars. They were judged for clearing dust from a solar panel and freeing a Mars Rover from a sand dune. Mock Mars settings were set up where the students practiced and were judged.

23-Nov-2003 - Students test robot creations (Fairbanks Daily News-Miner) Seventh-grader George Ferree had an intense look on his face. His robot built of LEGOs, The Titan, was exploring an obstacle course set up on a mock face of Mars. He got off to a good start in the second round of competition when Titan connected three habitation modules for 21 points, but when the small computer-programmed robot went to drop a red ball to be catapulted off the course, Titan dropped the ball just short of the launcher. The multi-colored Titan still backed up and bumped the contraption so it fired without the small ball. While he didn't get the full amount of points for this mission, he still tallied partial points for the task.

19-Nov-2003 - Blockbuster Space Exhibit Launches World Premiere at Pacific Science Center SPACE: A Journey To Our Future opens to the public on Saturday, November 22, 2003 at Pacific Science Center. The exhibit will be on display in Seattle until May 9, 2004. Space is made possible by General Motors, the SPACE Day Foundation and Lockheed Martin. The exhibit is produced by Clear Channel Exhibitions in educational collaboration with NASA and the NSTA and presented locally by SUBWAY Restaurants, KOMO TV and The Seattle PI and Infinity Radio Group.

19-Nov-2003 - NASA club presents findings from Mars (The Saratogian) Saratoga Springs High School Science Teacher Charles Kuenzel and students involved in the school's NASA Club updated the Board of Education Tuesday with highlights of their recent trip to Arizona State University to study Mars.

13-Nov-2003 - State of the Union: Emerging Europe Resets Space Priorities Calling for a more active role in exploration and research, the European Commission has adopted a plan that will boost spending on space programs and hopefully set a definite European course into space. The space action plan, a 60-page policy paper developed by the commission -- executive arm of the European Union (EU) -- highlights Europe's needs to ensure independent access to space, promote exploration and attract younger professionals to space-related professions.

30-Oct-2003 - School challenge: Launch mission to Mars (The Cincinnati Enquirer) Sixth-graders at Meadowview Elementary School are launching a Global Surveyor to Mars this week. It's intense work and a chaotic experience, at best. As a mission manager, much responsibility falls on the shoulders of Shelbi Gould, 11.

24-Oct-2003 - New flag has Mars theme (The Exeter News-Letter) The Stratham Memorial School has announced that the schoolwide theme for the year is Mars! The idea behind a schoolwide theme is to build on the Responsive Classroom model used throughout the school. It increases the feeling of community and connection that students of all ages have with one another. Over the course of this year, most of the grades will be studying space and Mars as part of their curriculum.

23-Oct-2003 - Gemstone outcrops found on Mars (Ananova) Large outcrops of a gemstone mineral commonly used in jewellery have been found on the surface of Mars. On Earth, the mineral olivine takes the form of the brilliant green gemstone peridot. An instrument aboard a Nasa spacecraft spotted a 30,000 square kilometre area rich in olivine in the Nili Fossae region of Mars.

20-Oct-2003 - Students use Legos to develop skills (Iowa City Press-Citizen) If there's anything Patrick McCaffery has known and enjoyed in his short life, it's Legos. He has a 5-gallon bucket nearly full of the plastic blocks stashed away at home. "My dad introduced me to Legos at a very young age," said McCaffery, a 10-year-old Regina Elementary fifth-grader. "They're just really fun. When I grow up, I want to be a game designer or a toy designer." Patrick now shares his love of Legos with 11 of his classmates in the Regina Lego club. Since mid-September, the group of fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders has met twice a week for two hours to train for the 2003 US FIRST Lego League Challenge.

16-Oct-2003 - Program at college will bring Mars to Barstow (The Desert Dispatch) The Barstow Community College gymnasium will be transformed into Mars this weekend during a hands-on NASA workshop open to the public. During "Barstow Space Days," residents can see a lightweight version of the Mars Exploration Rover in action, view mission holographic images, and learn about more than 18 past and current space missions -- like Genesis, Voyager, and Galileo -- from mission personnel.

3-Oct-2003 - A Dream Come True (Tulare Advance-Register) It's quite a feeling when a dream finally comes true. After two years of talking, planning, begging for help, watching volunteers put in long hours, the ImagineU Children's Museum will open on Saturday. Children can go on to the Mars Yard, which got its finishing touches last weekend with the help of architect Dana Berry (also president of the museum board), builder Andy Anderson and volunteers Ben Owen, Daniel Reyna and Mark Koenig. They used Styrofoam, chicken wire and cement to create an authentic-looking Mars surface where children can steer remote-controlled rovers. Eventually, there will be a computer center where young astronauts can control the spacecraft.

1-Oct-2003 - SPACE.com Exclusive: Mars Agenda Needs Work, Report Concludes NASA faces thorny technological problems and money woes in furthering its Mars exploration agenda over the years to come, SPACE.com has learned. A skyrocketing price tag for a Mars lander in 2009, planetary protection issues, approaches to collect Martian rock and soil for Earth return, and the overall scope of science investigations done at the red planet have been called to question. A Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group (MEPAG) has flagged NASA regarding these and other concerns in plotting out future exploration plans of that puzzling planet.

30-Sep-2003 - NASA exhibit to touch down in Palm Springs (The Desert Sun) Laser beams and plasma screens, interactive computers and something called lenticular lenses. They’re all part of NASA @ Your Library, an exhibit at Palm Springs Library detailing the high-tech world of space exploration through the eyes of the renowned space agency. On Oct. 10, Jet Propulsion Laboratory physicist Kevin Grazier will present "All About Mars," a 6 p.m. lecture on the red planet.

28-Sep-2003 - More to Mars than meets the eye (The Toronto Star) During this past summer, amateur astronomers have been seeing Mars with more sharpness and detail than ever before. Part of this has been due to the historic close approach of the planet. But most of the gains in clarity stem from the use of inexpensive Webcams — tiny cameras originally intended for recording low-resolution movies with a computer for transmission over the Internet. When applied to recording Mars, the Webcam results have been nothing short of astounding, rivalling the finest pictures taken by the world's largest telescopes just a few years ago.

23-Sep-2003 - Mars didn't fall short (Visalia Times-Delta) As the whole world watched last month, Mars swung closer to Earth than ever in recorded history. It was quite an event. Observatories all over were awash in a sea of visitors eager for a glimpse of the Red Planet as it passed. The Purcell Observatory in Tulare was certainly no exception, as record numbers turned up for a gander through the telescopes. Mars didn't disappoint. It might even have been showing off some. I've certainly never seen it look better. Neither has anyone else. Unfortunately, those who didn't see Mars at its absolute best in August won't get another chance for 284 years. Good news, though: The 2003 show isn't over!

18-Sep-2003 - Mars remains a big event Just because the media hoopla peaked three weeks ago doesn't mean the Mars show is over. And it doesn't mean Brian Craven is through getting people excited about it. "Mars is still up there and the show is still good," said Craven, amateur astronomer and membership coordinator for the Brevard Astronomical Society.

18-Sep-2003 - Meade Instruments Reports Second-Quarter Fiscal 2004 Results (Business Wire) Steven G. Murdock, president and CEO of Meade Instruments, said: "The Mars opposition had a positive impact on second-quarter results, driving an increase in sales of mid-priced and higher-priced telescopes. These increases, however, were offset by a significant decrease in small telescope sales due, in part, to conservative purchasing patterns by certain of our domestic dealers. Sales at the Simmons subsidiary, acquired in October 2002, came in as expected at approximately $8.0 million for the quarter.

16-Sep-2003 - National Space Exhibit Blasts Off The exhibition, "SPACE: A Journey to Our Future," touches down at Seattle's Pacific Science Center on Saturday, November 22. Created in collaboration between NASA and the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), the SPACE exhibition is produced by Clear Channel Exhibitions. It was made possible by General Motors (GM) with additional support from the Space Day Foundation and Lockheed Martin. The 12,000-square-foot exhibition, one of the largest touring space exhibits ever developed, will be on display in Seattle through May 9, 2004. It will travel to other museums and science centers in several U.S. cities over the next five years. "We hope this exciting exhibit will help to inspire the next generation of explorers," Loston said. "We want to fuel the imagination and ignite the desire for discovery in the youth who will be our nation's next pioneers of air, space and Earth," she said.

11-Sep-2003 - For star-gazers, a once-in-60,000-years opportunity (The Wellesley Townsman) future astronaut, students majoring in astronomy and astronomy enthusiasts stood in line at the Wellesley Observatory to view Mars make its closest pass to Earth in 60,000 years -and no one mentioned Martians. Last Friday night, hundreds of people cheerfully waited for hours to get a glimpse of the red planet named after the Roman god of war.

11-Sep-2003 - Mars: The Show Continues (Sky & Telescope) Now that Mars's record-breaking close approach is history (it happened on the night of August 26–27) is the show over? No way! Mars remains just as big and bright, for all practical purposes, during the first half of September. It will shrink and fade only a little until well into October. Moreover, in one way the show is getting better than ever! Every day Mars rises higher in the sky earlier in the night, which makes it easier to view at a more convenient hour.

9-Sep-2003 - Mars through Amateur Eyes Ed Grafton is like a one-man Hubble Space Telescope. Okay, so that accolade is perhaps a bit lavish. But few backyard astronomers have achieved Grafton's level of expertise when it comes to photographing planets. He took this picture of the red one from his back yard in Houston, Texas on Aug. 26. He used a 14-inch Celestron telescope.

9-Sep-2003 - Students turn out for look at Mars (The Pantagraph) The moon was the brightest source of light. A bright dot -- the planet Mars -- also was visible. When Mark Cabaj positioned his telescope, he saw individual craters on the moon and ice on the Red Planet.

8-Sep-2003 - The Planet that Won't Go Away Mars' closest approach to Earth was on August 27th--but the red planet is even easier to see now.

8-Sep-2003 - A Lunar-Martian Tango Tonight If Mars is in your mental rearview mirror following its close approach in late August, you might want to glance out your front window on the way home tonight. The red planet is set for another center stage appearance, this time in a celestial tango with the Moon. The two objects will be near one another in the sky tonight and again Tuesday. They will appear closest just before dawn Tuesday.

7-Sep-2003 - Enthusiasm still high for Mars viewing (The Post-Crescent) Fox Valley skywatchers haven’t seen the last of Mars, even though the planet has moved beyond its relatively close brush with Earth. Local astronomy enthusiasts say Mars actually will be better placed in the sky as it finishes out its roughly two-year pass this fall. It will appear smaller and dimmer but higher in the sky.

7-Sep-2003 - Mars's approach unearths find (The Boston Globe) The week that Mars moved to its closest point to Earth in 60,000 years, one of the area's best-kept secrets was revealed. About 400 people thronged to Merrimack College in North Andover on Aug. 27 to view Mars through the high-powered telescope housed in the school's observatory. Ordinarily, just a handful of stargazers show up at the observatory on Wednesday evenings, when the domed room is open to the public.

7-Sep-2003 - Students, families spend night stargazing (The Modesto Bee) The heavens opened up over the playing field at Sacred Heart Catholic School, delighting astronomy buffs. Dozens of students and their parents turned out Thursday for a stargazing party put on by the Stockton Astronomical Society. They got a chance to gaze at Mars -- past its best viewing but still bright as it completes its closest approach to Earth in 60,000 years -- as well as a half-moon and a host of constellations.

7-Sep-2003 - Eye on Mars (The Times-Picayune) Neither cloudy skies nor a downpour of rain could dampen the enthusiasm of sky watchers assembled Aug. 29 at the Audubon Louisiana Nature Center. Looking through high-powered telescopes, binoculars and with the naked eye, they hoped to gain a glimpse of Mars as it made its closet pass to Earth in more than 50,000 years.

4-Sep-2003 - Space Imaging Mars Gallery (Space Imaging) These two images of Mars were taken by Space Imaging’s IKONOS satellite as the red planet and Earth reached their closest proximity in nearly 60,000 years. At that point which occurred last week, Mars was 34.6 million miles (55.6 million kilometers) away. The first image (left) was taken on Aug. 26, 2003 at 21:40 GMT (3:40 p.m. MDT) as IKONOS came out of the eclipse of the Earth and orbited over our planet’s northern pole. The second image (right) was taken a little more than a half a Martian rotation later on Aug. 27, 2003 at 12:26 GMT (6:26 a.m. MDT). The Martian south polar ice cap is visible at the bottom of both images. The resolution of these images is approximately 67 km. IKONOS takes images of Earth at 1-meter resolution.

3-Sep-2003 - Mars was coloured by meteorites Laboratory evidence is challenging theories that Mars' ruddy surface came from a past when the planet was awash with water, New Scientist says. Defenders of this hypothesis say Mars' reddish dust came from iron in rocks that over billions of years dissolved into the planet's oceans, lakes and rivers. But US scientist Albert Yen of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has assailed this idea, noting a strange discrepancy between Mars' dusty topsoil and its rocks.

29-Aug-2003 - Mars gazing phenomenon hits NZ (New Zealand Herald) Mars gazers are flocking to New Zealand's observatories for a rare glimpse of the Red Planet in its closest orbit to earth for 60,000 years. Stardome Observatory in Auckland's One Tree Hill Domain has seen visitor numbers to its night-time shows treble since launching its Mars programmes two weeks ago.

29-Aug-2003 - Hundreds pack observatory (The Daily Evergreen) As a result of the combined efforts of WSU physics professor Guy Worthey and the Palouse Astronomical Society, WSU students and Pullman residents alike were seeing stars, and a historical glimpse of Mars, Wednesday night. Held at WSU's Jewett Observatory, the Mars viewing event attracted more than 1,000 attendees and lasted well into the following morning.

29-Aug-2003 - Hong Kong star lovers fascinated by Mars (eastday.com) Busy Hong Kong people laid aside their worries about job and making money temporarily Wednesday night and went outdoor to enjoy the mysterious red planet, Mars, as it came to the closest point to Earth in 60,000 years. However, the red star and its Hong Kong fans are still 55.76 million kilometers away from each other.

29-Aug-2003 - Students work toward mission to Mars (The Auburn Plainsman) Members of the Auburn University Student Space Program (AUSSP) are developing a series of satellites that will aid them in their quest to launch the first student-built satellite to Mars by the end of the decade.

29-Aug-2003 - China aims to send probe to Mars by 2020 (Hindustan Times) China, not content with the closest views of Mars man has glimpsed since the Stone Age, is hoping to launch a space probe to the red planet by 2020, state newspapers said on Friday. The probe would orbit Mars and conduct tests on the planet's makeup and atmosphere, the Beijing Youth Daily quoted Liu Zhenxing, a fellow at the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Space Science and Applied Research Institute, as saying. China is planning to send an astronaut into space for the first time later this year and become the third country to accomplish that feat, after the former Soviet Union and the United States.

29-Aug-2003 - Close pass by Mars leaves big impression on Chinese people (Xinhua News Agency) The rare occasion of Mars' closestpass to earth at the end of this month has left the people in China contemplate their distance from the rest of the world in astronomy research. The occasion, astronomers said, was as a touchstone of the Chinese people's science awareness. Many astronomy fans in the country joined their foreign peers from Aug. 27 to 29 to celebrate the Red Planet's mere separation of 55.6 million kilometers from earth, and experts said their enthusiasm indicated that Chinese people's eyes are no longer fixed only on their daily necessities.

29-Aug-2003 - Mars watch canceled due to fire (Missoulian) Mars will wait. "Everybody's so psyched to see Mars this week," University of Montana astronomer Diane Friend said Thursday. "But it will be just as spectacular well into September." In fact, the viewing could be better in September because the red planet will be higher in the nighttime sky, giving watchers less atmosphere to peer through, said Friend, who organizes and hosts summertime open houses at UM's Blue Mountain Observatory.

29-Aug-2003 - A view to remember (Odessa American) As national astronomers gleefully look at new pictures of Mars via the Hubble telescope, Permian Basin residents will gather tonight at the Marian Blakemore Planetarium in Midland to gaze at the Red Planet. Mars, which is passing closer to earth now than it has in thousands of years, is easily visible in the southern sky for Permian Basin skygazers, said Gene Hardy, director of the planetarium at the Museum of the Southwest.

29-Aug-2003 - Stargazers relish the chance to get a close look at Mars (The Herald) Dozens of telescopes set up on the Sultan High School football field found their target Wednesday in the southeast at about 9:20 p.m. Appearing among twinkling constellations in the clear sky was a bright object that looked to the naked eye like another star, just a lot brighter than the others.

29-Aug-2003 - What they said about... Mars (The Guardian) The tangerine glow of Mars, visible from Earth as it made its nearest approach to this planet for 60,000 years on Wednesday, united the newspapers across the world in wonder and contemplation.

28-Aug-2003 - Close look at Mars? It's still not too late (The Baltimore Sun) Neanderthal man went extinct waiting for Mars to be this close again. Modern man waited 59,619 years and got ... rained out? Showers, thunderstorms and clouds canceled evening Mars parties across the Baltimore area last night, dousing plans for crowds of people to see the planet looming closer than it has been since woolly mammoths roamed the country. But experts say it's not too late. "The good news is that Mars will be almost as close to the Earth, and therefore almost as bright, for many weeks," said Kelly Beatty, executive editor of Sky & Telescope magazine. "Just go out whenever it's clear."

28-Aug-2003 - Hubble Mars photos wow astronomers The Hubble Space Telescope captured spectacular images of Mars during the planet's close pass by Earth, including astonishingly detailed pictures of a polar ice cap and a giant canyon wall. "We've never seen this kind of resolution in Hubble images, that kind of detail," Cornell University astronomer Jim Bell said Wednesday, pointing to a wall of the Valles Marineris, a canyon that runs 4,500 kilometers (2,800 miles) across the Red Planet.

28-Aug-2003 - Mars Attracts! Earthlings Love the Red Planet This week, the Red Planet is closer than at any time since Neanderthals roamed the forests of Europe, nearly 60 millennia ago. Anyone who takes the trouble to step out of the house in the late evening will see Mars hanging in the southeast like a pinkish, Christmas-tree light. It will be bright enough to throw shadows, although this particular trick will go unnoticed unless you’re someplace very dark. There are five planets we can see with our naked eyes, but no one doubts that the most appealing is -- and long has been -- Mars. Mars attracts. Why is this? What’s so special about this planetary neighbor?

28-Aug-2003 - Distant neighbor Mars edges closer, captures attention and imaginations On Wednesday, at precisely 9:51 and 14 seconds GMT, the Earth and Mars narrowed the distance between them to its smallest in 59,618 years: a mere 34.647 million miles (55.758 million kilometers). Star-gazers around the world -- better equipped optically but probably no less dazzled than the Neanderthals of the time of the last close-encounter -- looked skyward as the red planet's orbit swung into stride with the Earth's.

28-Aug-2003 - Mars viewing makes quiet observatory a star (The Tennessean) Mars madness gripped stargazers in Nashville as Tuesday night passed into Wednesday morning and the planet Mars passed closer to the Earth than it had in 60,000 years. Rick Chappell, director of Vanderbilt University's Dyer Observatory, estimated that between 800 and 1,000 people turned up for the chance to look at the red planet through the observatory's 24-inch window onto the universe. Octogenarians, toddlers and those in between waited up to four hours in order to say they had been present at the cosmic event.

27-Aug-2003 - Quaking astrologers spell disaster as Mars bears down on Earth Death and destruction will stalk the Earth as Mars, bringer of war, terrorism and disaster, rumbles Wednesday to its closest point to our planet for 60,000 years, awestruck astrologers warn. While stargazers excitedly grab their telescopes for an unprecedented glimpse of the Red Planet, soothsayers insist the focus should instead be on survival, as Earth's violent celestial neighbour rampages ominously close

27-Aug-2003 - Distance Between Earth, Mars To Reach Absolute Minimum Today (Novosti) Today on August 27th, the distance between the Earth and the Mars will reach its absolute minimum, which happens in the universe once in five thousand years. The moments when the planets come closer to each other are called "opposition" in the scientific world, academic secretary of the Astronomy Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences Dmitry Ptitsyn recalled in an interview with a RIA Novosti correspondent.

27-Aug-2003 - Closest Martian encounter for 60,000 years (The Guardian) No one in Britain will see the closest encounter in human history, because it will happen in daylight. But at 10.51 BST today, the planet Mars will be nearer Earth than at any time since 56,617BC. At that moment, the two will be 34,646,418 miles apart.

27-Aug-2003 - California's cutting-edge telescopes prepare for Mars-gazing California's observatories and planetariums on Wednesday were preparing telescopes for hundreds of astronomy buffs seeking to zoom in on Mars as it makes its closest approach to Earth in 60,000 years.

27-Aug-2003 - Astronomers flock to observatories as Mars closes in, hope for clear skies Tens of thousands of astronomers in Asia got a close-up look at Mars as the Red Planet passed closer to Earth than at any time in the last 60,000 years Wednesday, although cloudy weather prevented many from witnessing the spectacle.

27-Aug-2003 - US stages "Mars Parties" for close encounter Americans held "Mars Parties" and flocked to observatories that were specially opened to mark Earth's close encounter with the Red Planet on Wednesday. Shops reported a run on telescopes as the public sought out Mars, which was an estimated 55.76 million kilometres (34.65 million miles) from Earth.

27-Aug-2003 - Earthlings revel in Mars close-up The last time the red planet was this close to Earth 60,000 years ago, man lived in caves. No wonder when Mars and Earth synchronized their orbits a few minutes before 6 a.m. EDT Wednesday -- bringing them closer to each other than at any time in recorded history -- thousands of people around the globe went outside to take a peek.

27-Aug-2003 - Hubble Makes Best Mars Globe Photos Ever The first of two highly anticipated Mars portraits from the Hubble Space Telescope was released this morning as the observatory's operators took advantage of a proximity to the red planet not equaled in 59,619 years. The color photograph includes Mars' Hellas Basin, a huge impact crater, and the southern polar ice cap is unmistakable. It is the most detailed full-globe shot of Mars ever obtained from Earth's vicinity.

27-Aug-2003 - Mad for Mars: Stargazers Flock for a View (The Washington Post) You may already know that 41 minutes before sunrise this morning, Mars drifted closer to Earth than it ever has in human history. A mere 34,646,418 miles separated the planets. The last flyby of this proximity occurred nearly 60,000 years ago, when perhaps a dreamy Neanderthal paused in the thankless grind of natural selection to behold the heavens.

27-Aug-2003 - Rendezvous with Mars: world gazes at planet "that still makes men dream" Astronomers, professional and amateur, started gazing at Mars Wednesday hoping for a good look at the Red Planet as it moves closer to Earth than at any time since Stone Age Neanderthals roamed the world.

27-Aug-2003 - Jakartans jostle for free tickets to see Mars Hundreds of people jostled at the only observatory in the Indonesian capital Jakarta Wednesday for a free ticket to catch a glimpse of Mars as the Red Planet passes closer to Earth than at any time in the last 60,000 years. School children in uniform struggled with adults to get a ticket which will allow each of them to look at Mars for two minutes at the Jakarta Planetarium.

27-Aug-2003 - Mars closer to the Earth tonight (The Australian) MARS will be closer tonight than at any time in the past 60,000 years, but cloud cover could dim the planet's spectacular red glow in many parts of Australia. At 7.51pm AEST, Mars will be 55.76 million kilometres from Earth - about four times closer than usual.

27-Aug-2003 - Mars approach will make men randy, Portuguese astrologer warns The proximity of the planet Mars, which will be its closest to Earth for almost 60,000 years on Wednesday, will make men more predisposed to having sex, a Portuguese astologer has warned. "Men will be sexually more active," Rui Lorga told daily newspaper A Capital. "But it will not be just them, obviously women will also feel the influence of Mars, however in a more subtle way," he added.

27-Aug-2003 - Mars Close Approach (Astrobiology Magazine) Never previously in modern human history has Mars been as bright or as close to Earth as tonight. Look for it in the night sky, as it will be easily recognized by its red tinge. As with all planets, its light will also stand out from the background of stars, because it will not appear to flicker, but instead looks like a steady, bright object. An amateur's four-inch telescope may reveal the polar cap and some surface features.

27-Aug-2003 - Mars encounter will be "hostile" for India say astrologers The proximity of the planet Mars, which will be its closest to Earth in almost 60,000 years on Wednesday, is likely to be "hostile" for India, astrologers warned. Lachhman Das Madan, chief of the Astrology Study and Research Institute in the capital New Delhi, said the Mars encounter was "a dark planetary configuration" and would unleash "negative energy."

27-Aug-2003 - Mars to Earth: Tahiti looks good (Toronto Star) Mars, and any little green men and women who might be living on it, had a terrific view of Tahiti this morning as the red planet reached its closest point to the Earth since 57,617 B.C. At 5:51 a.m. Toronto time, the planet was a mere 55,758,000 kilometres from the South Pacific islands — about 3,200 kilometres closer than it came to the GTA — before zooming away from us again. In the time it takes you to read this sentence, Mars will be about 50 kilometres farther off, although viewing will continue to be awe-inspiring through the week.

27-Aug-2003 - For that perfect Mars pic, French stargazers marry optics and the Internet As Mars span towards its closest rendezvous with the Earth since the Stone Age on Wednesday, a group of French enthusiasts counted on off-the-shelf Internet technology to get that perfect snap to show their grandchildren. Although the team at the Ludiver observatory at La Hague, near Cherbourg on the Normandy coast, were mounting a continuous Mars-watch, they also hooked up a simple off-the-shelf webcam to their 60-centimeter optical telescope.

27-Aug-2003 - Mars movements spark huge rise in German "UFO sightings" As the planet Mars has moved to its closest point to Earth in around 60,000 years, the number of "UFO sightings" in Germany has soared, a researcher said Wednesday. "I'm hearing some of the most outrageous claims at the moment," said Werner Walter, who heads Germany's CENAP centre tasked with investigating reports about unidentified flying objects.

27-Aug-2003 - Hubble Space Telescope's Viewing Plans For Earth's 'Close Encounter' With Mars NASA's Hubble Space Telescope made observations of the planet Mars on August 26 and 27, when Earth and Mars were closer together than they have been in the last 60,000 years. As Hubble's high-resolution images of the Red Planet are received at the Space Telescope Science Institute and are digitally processed by the Mars observing team, they will be released to the public and news media via the Internet. The Hubble images are the sharpest views of Mars ever taken from Earth. They reveal surface details as small as 17 miles (24 km) across. Though NASA's Mars-orbiting spacecraft can photograph the Red Planet in much finer detail, Hubble routinely serves as a "weather satellite" for tracking atmospheric changes on Mars and for probing its geology on a global scale.

26-Aug-2003 - Mars extraordinarily close to Earth tonight (San Francisco Chronicle) Astronomers -- both amateur and professional -- are likely to be out in force if Bay Area skies remain clear tonight and Wednesday night, when the planet Mars makes its closest approach to Earth in 60,000 years. At 2:51 a.m. PDT Wednesday the orbit of Mars will carry it within 34,646, 437 miles of Earth. Mars is already brighter than any other object in the night sky save the Moon.

26-Aug-2003 - Best view of Mars in 60,000 years (CBC News) A once-in-a-lifetime planetary event is drawing Canadians out of their homes late at night to look up this week. Mars and Earth will reach their closest encounter in 60,000 years. The beauty of the show is the red planet shines so brightly that city dwellers can't miss it despite the street lights, so long as they know where to look.

26-Aug-2003 - Earth to Mars: Come Closer Jupiter may be king of the mythological gods. But, among the planets, it's Mars' time to shine. When it draws closer to Earth than it has in some 60,000 years Wednesday, it will be brighter than any planet except Venus. And, since Venus makes only a fleeting appearance at sundown, it won't steal the Red Planet's show. At 5.52 a.m. eastern daylight time Aug. 27, Mars will be a "mere" 34,848,754 miles away. That's 1,188 miles closer to Earth than Mars came in 1924.

26-Aug-2003 - New Mars Photo Called Sharpest from Earth A new ground-based image of Mars is being touted as one of the sharpest ever taken from Earth. Astronomers took advantage of Mars' historic close approach, the nearest in about 60,000 years, to photograph the red planet with the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) in Hawaii. The result is "perhaps the sharpest image of Mars ever made from the ground," said Jeremy Bailey of the Anglo-Australian Observatory and the Australian Center for Astrobiology at Macquarie University in Sydney.

26-Aug-2003 - Mars Makes History: Closest to Earth Aug. 27 As if executing a cosmic air kiss, Earth and Mars will come as close as they desire in the wee hours of Wednesday during an historical event that has captivated the attention of skywatchers around the globe. The two planets will be separated by 34,646,418 million miles (55,758,006 million kilometers) at 5:51 a.m. ET (1051 GMT) on Aug. 27.

25-Aug-2003 - Close Encounters with Mars At 09:51 universal time (UT) on August 27th, Earth makes its closest approach to Mars in nearly 60,000 years. The two worlds, center-to-center, will be just 56 million kilometers apart--a short distance on the scale of the solar system. The last people to come so close to Mars were Neanderthals. Magazine articles, newspapers, and TV shows have touted the encounter for months. But they all omitted one detail: Which part of Earth?

25-Aug-2003 - 4 boys die in a car crash after viewing Mars (Mainichi Interactive) Four boys died in a car crash in the predawn hours of Monday after apparently viewing Mars, police said. Investigators suspect that the car was speeding at the time of the accident, and are trying to determine the exact cause of the crash.

25-Aug-2003 - Mars Animated Jefferson Teng wanted to make a longer movie of Mars. "Unfortunately I had to wait for Mars to show up above my house roof," he said. "My laptop storage capacity is another problem." So all we get is this remarkable series of images, spanning two hours and 39 minutes on Aug. 12. Teng used 5.1" refractor telescope and a digital camera to capture an image every five minutes.

25-Aug-2003 - Interview with Elon Musk (HobbySpace) HS: As I understand it, you were initially interested in funding a Mars mission but the high cost of launching such a mission led you to develop your own launcher. Are you actively planning a Mars mission for the Falcon or its heavier follow-on derivatives? Don't know if the payload weight matches the launcher, but it would be cool if you launched the AMSAT-DL led P5-A Mars mission. A private launcher sending an AMSAT spacecraft to Mars would definitely signal a new era in space exploration! Musk: No, right now I'm just focused on building a high quality launch vehicle and a top notch space technology company in SpaceX. At some point, I might do the Mars Oasis mission, but that would be a separate, philanthropic venture. My original motivation for MO was based on the notion of "where there is a will, there is a way". However, I now think it is the other way around. As evidenced by the attention given the Shuttle tragedy, the dream of space is an integral part of the American identity. So if people think that there is a way to get to space, they will take that path. We need to show that it exists.

25-Aug-2003 - Mars: The Solved and Unsolved Mysteries More eyes are glued to Mars this week than has probably been the case since Orson Welles and his Mercury Players scared folks with his radio rendition of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds. This is a good week to take a look: Mars will be closer on Wednesday, Aug. 27 than ever in recorded history. The buzz has been elevated to mania as all manner of media -- from the New York Times to Entertainment Weekly -- have latched onto a story first reported last November by SPACE.com.

25-Aug-2003 - Close encounter, by celestial standards (San Francisco Chronicle) Sixty thousand years ago, the Neanderthal people and early modern humans must surely have watched a faint but familiar point of light in the southeastern sky grow brighter and brighter until its brilliant topaz-yellow light outshone everything in the nighttime heavens save the moon. We will never know what those people may have thought or feared, because they left no record among their rare artifacts. But today we do know what they were seeing: It was the distant planet Mars, flying on its elliptical track around the sun and closing its gap on Earth's orbit while it appeared to blaze in brightness as the two planets neared.

25-Aug-2003 - Science fiction author's birthday celebrated with Mars viewing (Sarasota Herald-Tribune) It was an opportunity too perfect to let pass: the 83rd birthday of science fiction writer Ray Bradbury came as Mars made its closest approach in nearly 60,000 years. Members of the Planetary Society marked the occasions with a party Saturday at their Pasadena headquarters. Then 150 guests went to the Mt. Wilson Observatory, where they peered through a five-foot telescope at the Red Planet celebrated in Bradbury's stories.

25-Aug-2003 - Training an Eye on Mars (Washington Post) At 2 o'clock on a recent morning, Bob Bunge ambled into the inky darkness of his Bowie back yard and prepared to meet an old friend. He swung the end of a massive home-built telescope skyward, gazed over the branches of a silver maple tree, then zeroed in on Earth's nearest neighbor. "Mars is as bright as I've seen it in my 23 years of amateur astronomy," he said, marveling at the detail he could spot on the Red Planet: the shimmering southern polar ice cap, and the alternating bands of darkness and lightness that gave Mars the mottled look of an overripe orange.

25-Aug-2003 - Hubble to Photograph Mars at Close Approach The Hubble Space Telescope will be pointed at Mars this week to make two color photographs of the red planet during its historic close approach to Earth. The pictures are being billed, in advance, as the best pictures of Mars ever taken from Earth or its vicinity. "The Hubble pictures will provided the sharpest views of Mars ever seen by a telescope located at Earth," said Ray Villard, news director at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which operates Hubble. "Though the Mars orbiters routinely yield stunning close-up views, we'll be treated to a gorgeous pole-to-pole global snapshot of the planet."

24-Aug-2003 - Our best look at Mars, ever The wandering of the planets will bring Mars closer to Earth this month than at any time in nearly 60,000 years. It will be a last-chance proposition for all alive today: Mars won't be as close again until August 28, 2287.

22-Aug-2003 - Mars and Earth: The Top 10 Close Passes Since 3000 B.C. We are in the home stretch of the historic 2003 close encounter with the planet Mars, which occurs officially at 5:51 a.m. ET on Wednesday, Aug. 27. Earth has been approaching Mars ever since Aug. 10 of last year. At that time Mars was situated on the opposite side of the Sun at a distance of 248 million miles (400 million kilometers) from the Earth. When it finally emerged into the morning sky some weeks later, Mars was shining no brighter than a mundane second magnitude star. But we have been slowly creeping up on Mars ever since, catching it on the inside of a celestial racetrack around the Sun.

22-Aug-2003 - Telescope sales boom in Japan as Mars closes in As Mars drifts its closest to Earth for 60,000 years, Japanese amateur astronomers are snapping up telescopes, globes of the Red Planet and some are even heading to Arizona to watch the spectacle. On August 27, Mars -- the fourth planet from the Sun -- will shine red and orange and as bright as Jupiter, the giant of our solar system.

22-Aug-2003 - Mars Fever at Full Pitch, Telescopes in Short Supply The looming proximity of Mars has fueled a frenzy of public and media interest as people around the globe make plans to see the neighboring world closer than ever in recorded history. Telescopes are flying off store shelves faster than you can say "little green men" and are in short supply globally. Meanwhile, hundreds of Mars parties and other events are slated for this weekend and through next week. At 5:51 a.m. ET (1051 GMT) on Aug. 27, Mars will be nearer to Earth than it has been in 59,619 years. A similar opportunity won't occur again until the year 2287.

21-Aug-2003 - Mars' approach spurs CfA 'Fever' (Harvard Gazette) The Center for Astrophysics (CfA) is offering a viewing of Mars at its Oak Ridge Observatory in Harvard, Mass., this Sunday (Aug. 24). For one night only, a drawing will give 40 lucky sky-watchers - weather permitting - a chance to view Mars through the 61-inch-diameter Wyeth reflector (the largest optical telescope east of the Mississippi). A 16-inch reflector and other telescopes will be available to all other guests. CfA will offer tours of the observatory from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m., followed by public viewing from 8:30 to 10 p.m. The rain date is Aug. 25. The Oak Ridge Observatory is at 40 Pinnacle Road.

21-Aug-2003 - No place like dome It was 1969 and Neil Armstrong had just become the first man to set foot on the moon. A space enthusiast placed a small advertisement in a local newspaper asking for people who were interested in astronomy. A handful of men answered, resulting in the formation of the Mansfield and Sutton Astronomical Society.

21-Aug-2003 - McMahon takes a little trip -- to Mars (CTV) It's not every day I take a vacation on Mars. The moons of Jupiter, the spiral arms of a distant galaxy, the hypnotizing rings of Saturn -- all are more reliable destinations when it comes to the ever-important wow-factor. So who could blame an amateur astronomer for looking elsewhere when it's time to get away from it all? But tonight, I’m starting a two-week stretch of gazing at this normally unimpressive orange dot, and nothing else. The draw is a celestial performance with an opening act that included a slew of rocket launches and a headliner that promises the best view of the Red Planet in 60,000 years.

21-Aug-2003 - NASA seeks Mars requests (Federal Computer Week) As Earth comes closer to Mars this month than it has in nearly 60,000 years, NASA will give the public an unprecedented opportunity to suggest places on the Red Planet that an orbiting spacecraft should photograph. Operators for the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft are taking suggestions online for new images from the Mars Orbiter Camera. Information about how to submit requests can be found on the new Mars Orbiter Camera Target Request Site, at http://www.msss.com/plan/intro.

20-Aug-2003 - Hubble To Snap Mars In Best Bi Annual Photo Op In 60,000 Years NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (HST) will make observations of the planet Mars on Aug. 26-27, when Earth and Mars will be closer together than they have been in the last 60,000 years. As soon as Hubble's high-resolution images of the Red Planet are received at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) and are digitally processed by the Mars observing team, they will be released to the public and news media via the Internet.

19-Aug-2003 - A brighter Mars sparks marketing The biggest Mars encounter in more than 50,000 years is under way, and that has sparked an upsurge in products related to the Red Planet, ranging from books to telescopes. MARS MANIA is on the rise along with the Red Planet, which is heading toward an unusually close pass with Earth on Aug. 27. The two planets will be about 34.65 million miles (55.75 million kilometers) away from each other — as close as they’ve been since around the year 57,617 B.C. (the precise date is still under debate). Astronomers say the next time they’ll come that close again will be on Aug. 28, 2287.

18-Aug-2003 - Approach of Mars has Earth looking up (NorthJersey.com) Paul Contursi has his heart set on people going to Mars. For now, he will have to settle for the next best thing. On Aug. 27, Mars will swing nearer to Earth than it has been in almost 60,000 years, affording a rare, close-up peek at our colorful next-door neighbor. "Everybody with a telescope will be out that night, if the weather's good," said Contursi, president of the Mars Society of New York, half of whose 150 members are New Jerseyans.

17-Aug-2003 - Mars Watch: Where is the Red Planet Now? On Aug. 27, 2003, Mars will be less than 34.65 million miles (55.76 million kilometers) away -- closer to our planet than it’s been in nearly 60,000 years. The view will be stupendous. Track Mars’ growing brightness with SPACE.com's exclusive Mars viewing maps and charts.

17-Aug-2003 - Mars Will Not Kill You On Aug. 27, Mars will be closer to Earth than in nearly 60,000 years. This "close approach," as it's being billed, has some folks worried about potential dangers here on our planet. One SPACE.com reader asks: "Will it be dangerous when Mars gets that close to Earth? It has me a little worried." Others have e-mailed to say they heard there would be earthquakes or other disasters. One of the many rumors going around says the two planets will collide. The true gravity of the situation is benign. There is absolutely nothing to worry about.

15-Aug-2003 - Close Encounter (Tech Central Station) This year Mars and the earth will be extraordinarily close -- on August 27 the earth will sweep closer than 35 million miles to Mars. It's enough to give earthlings Mars Fever. Not since the deep ice of the last glaciation swept across much of cold northern Europe and North America, not since the wooly rhinoceros ran through southern France, not since modern man's close relative Neandertalensis dominated the caves of western Europe, not for more than 59,000 years has Mars been so near the earth.

12-Aug-2003 - Astronomers Ready for Close Encounter of a Mars Kind (National Geographic News) On August 27, the orbits of Earth and Mars will bring the two planets the closest they have been in nearly 60,000 years. For the weeks surrounding this celestial event, the red planet will be the brightest star in the night sky. Precisely 34,646,418 miles (55,758,006 kilometers) will separate Earth and Mars during the event. Mars won't approach the Earth as closely again for another 284 years, at which time it will approach even closer, according to astronomers.

11-Aug-2003 - Help Ray Bradbury Celebrate a Martian Birthday (The Planetary Society) Ray Bradbury, the celebrated science fiction author, has taken millions of people on imaginative journeys to Mars through his work for over half a century. Now Mars is coming to Bradbury, so to speak, when the planet draws closer to Earth than it has been in over 50,000 years. To celebrate the opposition of Mars on August 27 and Bradbury's 83rd birthday on August 22, The Planetary Society is gathering birthday greetings from well-wishers around the world to present to Bradbury in a giant birthday card. Anyone can join in sending these greetings by visiting The Planetary Societyís web page at http://planetary.org/bradbury. The deadline for birthday greetings is August 20.

8-Aug-2003 - See Mars a Mere 186 Light-Seconds Away Communicating with spacecraft at Mars always involves a wait. Depending on how far apart the planets are, it can take up to 21 minutes to get a signal from Earth to the red planet, resulting in a round-trip time of more than 40 minutes. The lag can be agonizing for an engineer trying to steer a surface probe or debug a software problem. On Aug. 27, when Mars is closer to Earth than ever in human history, the one-way travel time of light and radio signals will be just 3 minutes and 6 seconds. Astronomers love to measure cosmic distances in light-years. In this case, you can think of the distance between the two planets as being 186 light-seconds.

6-Aug-2003 - Close-up: Best view of Mars in 60,000 years Mars is getting ready for its close-up, with the red planet coming as near to Earth this month as it has in almost 60,000 years. Its closest pass will come on August 27 at 5:51 a.m. EDT (0951 GMT), when Mars will be less than 34.65 million miles (55.76 million km) away.

1-Aug-2003 - Mars, Closer Than Ever in History (The Washington Post) Turn off the television, step outside and look eastward: Mars is back and it's better -- and closer -- than ever. Closer, in fact, than at any time in recorded history. Officially, the red planet's closest approach -- about 34.6 million miles from Earth -- will take place Aug. 27 between 5:53 a.m. and 5:54 a.m. EDT, when the planet will be low on the southwestern horizon, just before sunrise here, says Geoff Chester of the U.S. Naval Observatory.

1-Aug-2003 - It’s prime time for the Red Planet Just ahead of a historically close approach to Earth later this month, Mars has become the “star” of the night. For months visible only during morning hours, the Red Planet begins August rising around 9:45 or 10 p.m. local daylight time and peeks above the horizon about four minutes earlier each night. Mars is now the third-brightest object in the nighttime sky, after the moon and Venus. To the unaided eye, Mars is by far the brightest “star” in the late-evening sky. Venus is currently too near the sun to be visible.

29-Jul-2003 - Marshalling Martian Water Tables (Astrobiology Magazine) Using orbital spectral data, Los Alamos scientists are able to view the apparent water content of martian soil. Their findings suggest that in some regions of the Red Planet, a pound of soil could release a half-pound of water if the ice-rich dust and rocks were placed in an oven.

25-Jul-2003 - New Map of Water Ice on Mars A new global map of Mars shows likely locations of water ice based on observations of hydrogen made by NASA's Odyssey spacecraft. The presence of hydrogen is a strong indicator that water -- most of it almost surely frozen -- exists near the surface of Mars, embedded in the soil. Liquid water might exist on the red planet, but no data so far has provided firm indications. The new map is based on more than a year's worth of Odyssey data, much of which has already been announced. The purpose is to show the extent of frozen water on Mars in a visual format. Bill Feldman, a Los Alamos National Laboratory researcher who led the observations, called the map "breathtaking."

25-Jul-2003 - Reverse Course! Mars Motion Soon to be Backward As Mars has grown closer and brighter daily for several months, it has gradually moved easterly in relation to background stars in the pre-dawn sky. That's about to change as the red planet begins to backpedal in our sky, moving steadily westward. Astronomers call this backward motion "retrograde." The shift comes as Mars is gradually becoming visible in the late evening, too, just in time for the historic close approach to Earth that will occur in late August.

24-Jul-2003 - On the Flightpath to Mars (Report #2) (The Planetary Society) Mars Express Returns First Data; Nozomi Cruises On; Opportunity Corrects Trajectory

23-Jul-2003 - Capturing Phobos Mars' moon Phobos is unlike Earth's Moon in most ways. For starters, it zips around Mars three times a day. Phobos practically hugs its host -- orbiting just 3,728 miles (6,000 kilometers) away. Our Moon averages 238,900 miles (384,402 kilometers) of distance. From Mars, Phobos would appear about one-third as big as Earth's Moon. If you stood on Phobos, Mars would fill almost the entire sky, astronomers say.

23-Jul-2003 - Radon leaks could reveal water on Mars (New Scientist) Sniffing for puffs of radioactive radon gas could be the easiest way to find water lurking metres beneath the Martian soil. We already know there should be plenty of water on Mars. Probes have found water vapour in the Martian atmosphere and ice on the surface at the poles. And NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft recently detected traces of hydrogen, almost certainly bound up in ice near the surface.

22-Jul-2003 - Mars Mysteries: Scientists Await New Surprises The message from Mars is clear. After decades of collective scrutiny by robotic orbiters and landers, the red planet is a bewildering world still holding tight details as to its warmer and wetter past and conditions active today. A new wave of robotic spacecraft is en route to the red planet. Scientists are hopeful that this armada of hardware may be a turning point in unlocking the secrets of Mars, particularly the role of water in the planet’s past -- and even today -- to nourish life.

17-Jul-2003 - Photos of Rare Mars-Moon Encounter Skywatchers across North America saw a rare nighttime encounter between the Moon and Mars during the early morning hours today. Under clear skies here, the two objects were so close as to almost appear to touch. Mars hung just off the right shoulder of the Moon at 4:30 a.m. local time, high in the southern sky. The planet was vividly red in contrast to the powerful white face of the Moon.

16-Jul-2003 - Sixth International Mars Conference Set To Meet Next year, if all goes well, NASA's two Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, along with the British rover Beagle 2, will begin streaming back reams of data about the Red Planet, much to the delight of Mars researchers everywhere. That data won't be available in time for scientists attending the Sixth International Conference on Mars at the California Institute of Technology, July 20-25, but small matter. Data from two earlier orbiter missions, the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS), launched in 1996, and the Odyssey, launched in 2001, will give those attending the conference an opportunity to review and debate some of the key questions and controversies that have matured as a result of this flood of information.

15-Jul-2003 - Earth Cruising Toward Mars Flirtation (Discovery News) Earth is speeding toward a rare astral rendezvous with Mars, placing the two as close to each other as possible and giving amateur astronomers an unparalleled view of the Red Planet. The two planets are racing toward each other at a rate of about 30 kilometers every five seconds, until they are as close as they ever can be on August 27.

14-Jul-2003 - Where is Mars Now? On Aug. 27, 2003, Mars will be less than 34.65 million miles (55.76 million kilometers) away -- closer to our planet than it’s been in nearly 60,000 years. The view will be stupendous. Track Mars’ growing brightness with SPACE.com's exclusive Mars viewing maps and charts, updated monthly.

13-Jul-2003 - Moon Occults Mars (Sky & Telescope) During the predawn hours of Thursday, July 17th, the waning gibbous Moon will cover Mars for skywatchers in southeastern Florida, the Caribbean, and parts of Central and South America. Because the planet’s disk will be 19.6" across, its disappearance on the Moon’s dark limb will take almost a minute (or even longer where the Moon’s limb approaches at a slant). The planet’s reappearance will also be gradual.

11-Jul-2003 - Moon Near Mars in Sky July 16-17, Eclipse for Some Every once in a while, something will appear in the sky to attract the attention of even those who normally don’t bother looking up. It’s likely to be that way in the after-midnight hours of Wednesday night into early Thursday morning, July 16-17 when the Moon will appear very close to the now-brilliant planet Mars. For a lucky few, the Moon will actually pass in front of the red planet.

9-Jul-2003 - The World Goes to Mars (Astrobiology Magazine) The quartet of science missions headed to the Red Planet is now complete, with the successful Monday launch of the last Mars Exploration Rover, called Opportunity. Not since 1976, have multiple landers explored Mars simultaneously. Their confluence in December and January promises a look at whether the emerging picture of a 'warmer and wetter' Mars can be probed up-close.

3-Jul-2003 - China Accelerates Mars Program (Slashdot) China has announced it intends to accelerate its Mars program, using experience and expertise from its fledgling lunar program. Following China's proposed Moon missions, the first phase would send a Mars orbiter to examine and survey the Red Planet; the second phase will involve wheeled robotic probes like China's Mars Explorer roving vehicle prototype, used to collect and analyze rock samples; and the third phase will involve returning spacecraft from the planet and establishing a permanent automated base on Mars. This puts the China-India space race and the China-USA space race in a very different light.

27-Jun-2003 - Permafrost Odyssey (Astrobiology Magazine) Analysis of the changing seasons on Mars has revealed northern latitudes with significant water ice. In some places, inferences from detection of hydrogen suggest up to ninety percent water content.

27-Jun-2003 - Race to Mars: Track the Robots En Route Three spacecraft are well on their way to Mars. Closest to Earth is Nozomi, a troubled Japanese orbiter. Spirit is the first of two NASA rovers. Express is a European orbiter/lander combo.

26-Jun-2003 - Planetary Society declares August 27, 2003 - Mars Day (Planetary Society) On August 27, the planet Mars will be closer to Earth than it has been in more than 50,000 years. To celebrate this once-in-a-lifetime event, The Planetary Society is declaring to the world that August 27, 2003 be Mars Day. The Society will mark this occasion with special events around the world, including an 83rd birthday party for a man whose name is now synonymous with the Red Planet - Ray Bradbury, author of the famous The Martian Chronicles. Bradbury's birthday comes the same week as this historic Mars opposition.

25-Jun-2003 - Mars invades E.V. telescope sales (East Valley Tribune) For people interested in seeing Mars up close, Aug. 26 and 27 present an opportunity rarer than once in a lifetime. On those dates, the Red Planet will be the closest it has been to Earth in 50,000 to 70,000 years, depending on the computer model. The enthusiasm, stoked by Saturday's scheduled launch of a second land rover to Mars, has sparked telescope sales at shops such as Photon Instruments in Mesa. Elsewhere in the Valley and the state, stores and observatories are gearing up for what is called the Mars opposition.

24-Jun-2003 - NASA Orbiter Eyes Phobos Over Mars Horizon Images from the Mars Orbiter Camera aboard NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor capture a faint yet distinct glimpse of the elusive Phobos, the larger and innermost of Mars’ two moons. The moon, which usually rises in the west and moves rapidly across the sky to set in the east twice a day, is shown setting over Mars’ afternoon horizon.

24-Jun-2003 - As Mars Gets Closer, Amateurs Take Pictures Amateur astronomers around the world are taking advantage of Mars' proximity to photograph the red planet as it moves closer to Earth each day. On August 27, Mars will be closer to Earth than ever in recorded human history.

19-Jun-2003 - China to accelerate Mars program, but aims for Moon first China plans to accelerate preparations for a mission to Mars, using its lunar program to gain the experience and expertise needed to join the world's elite space nations, state press said Thursday. While senior space scientists said a Mars probe was still years away, they plan to step up preparations.

13-Jun-2003 - The Summer of Mars: What You'll See, How to Observe This summer Mars will come closer to Earth than at any time in tens of thousands of years. The planet will arrive at opposition to the Sun on Aug. 28, when it will rise at sunset and set at sunrise, as seen from Earth. This opposition occurs less than two days before Mars passes through the perihelion point of its orbit, when it is closest to the Sun. The minimum distance of Mars from Earth will be less than 34.65 million miles (55.76 million kilometers) at 5:51 a.m. EDT on Aug. 27, when the planet’s apparent disk diameter will be as great as 25.1 arc seconds, the absolute maximum possible. All that means the red planet will be bigger and brighter than you've ever seen. But what will you actually see?

7-Jun-2003 - Destination: Mars (NPR) Every two years or so, Mars and the Earth are in just the right positions to make it possible to send a spacecraft from here to there. As NPR's Joe Palca reports, now is that golden time.

6-Jun-2003 - Geologist at ASU gains fame with Mars (The Arizona Republic) Scientists rarely get research published on the cover of the world's premier science journals. For Phil Christensen, though, it's becoming commonplace. The Arizona State University geologist and internationally known Mars researcher had his second major science cover story published Thursday, four days before NASA sends a new rover to explore the Red Planet. "It's one thing to get in the journal (Science or Nature), but to get on the cover is another thing," Christensen said.

30-May-2003 - Trio of Red Planet Robots Set for June Sendoff Europe's Mars Express, toting the British-built Beagle 2 lander, remains set for launch June 2 and is to be the opening volley in a salvo of Mars robotic spacecraft heading outward to that compelling world during the coming weeks. Meanwhile, as Mars Express awaits departure, NASA's dual Mars Exploration Rovers are being prepped for sendoff. Now simply labeled MER-A and MER-B, the first craft is slated for dispatch from Florida's Space Coast no earlier than June 8. The second rover is to roar skyward on June 25.

29-May-2003 - NASA has Mars missions planned through decade (SpaceFlight Now) The Mars Exploration Rovers represent the next step in an ambitious, on-going program to explore the Red Planet, to map out its structure, composition and meteorology and to determine whether it ever harbored life. "We think we have a hell of a program," Garvin said. "It's going to be exciting. I think we're going to find some remarkable stuff."

27-May-2003 - Scientists Eager To Get On Board ExoMars For centuries, mankind has wondered whether alien life exists on another planet in our solar system. One of the most promising places to discover signs of life beyond Earth is the planet Mars, and scientists around the globe are clamouring for an opportunity to participate in ExoMars, an exobiology mission which is being planned as part of ESA's pioneering Aurora Programme. Earlier this year, ESA issued a call for ideas for the Pasteur instrument payload that will be carried on the ExoMars rover. The response has been remarkable, with some 580 investigators from 30 countries expressing the desire to participate in this exciting mission.

22-May-2003 - Digging Mars (The Christian Science Monitor) Mars beckons, and planet Earth is set to respond. On June 2, the European Space Agency is set to launch Mars Express/Beagle 2 to the red planet, followed by a NASA mission that involves sending two rovers on June 5 and 25. These robotic geologists are designed to scrutinize soil and rocks for clues to the history of the planet's climate. Together, the missions represent a vital step in the quest to answer the question: Did Mars ever offer an environment capable of nurturing life?

20-May-2003 - A Deep Space Exploration Extravaganza Set To Unfold Mission controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. are ramping up for an era of unprecedented space exploration. The Lab is poised to launch and direct a fleet of space probes that will, among many other things, crash into the heart of a distant comet, snatch particles of the solar wind, rove across Mars to search for evidence of liquid water, and descend through the atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan to explore what reminds many scientists of an early Earth.

14-May-2003 - Eyes on Mars (Ithaca Times) This summer, an alien world will approach Earth closer than it has since Neanderthals roamed our planet, over 60,000 years ago. This celestial body, half the size of Earth, has a surface area equivalent to all the dry land of our world. It is a place where the air pressure is as thin as it is 20 miles above Earth's surface and the average ground temperature makes Antarctica seem comparatively balmy. Deadly ultraviolet radiation from the Sun constantly bathes the planet unchecked by any natural protection as on Earth.

12-May-2003 - Fickle Planet When two rovers are launched to Mars this June, one thing NASA engineers hope they'll never have to confront is silence. It was a painful silence that set in at Mission Control last December as the Columbia made its fateful descent to Earth. Silence also reigned as NASA controllers — and much of the world — breathlessly awaited the touchdown of the Mars Polar Lander in December 1999. But thanks to intensive preparation and the reliance on old, dependable models, NASA scientists say they have reason to be confident they'll be hearing the beeps and churns of communication from two land rovers once they touch down on Mars.

12-May-2003 - Mars in 2003: Which Side Is Visible? (Sky & Telescope) It is not enough to describe the 2003 apparition of Mars as unique. In late August, as if beckoning us to touch its enchanting, exotic shores, the red planet will reach magnitude –2.9 and will dominate the southern sky with its fiery coloration. Finally, on the night of August 26-27, Mars will be closer to Earth — if by only a little — than at any time in some 60,000 years. The centers of the two planets will then be only 55.758 million kilometers (34.646 million miles) apart.

12-May-2003 - Space Exploration Extravaganza Begins in 2003 and 2004 (My Wise County) Unmanned space probes are being launched to the moon, a comet, an asteroid, the planets Mars, and Mercury and probes will orbit and land on Saturn -- all within the next 18-months as an solar system exploration extravaganza unfolds. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Japanese space agency have a fleet of space probes either set to be launched or now in route to explore the frontier of solar system space. The fleet may prove to be the most exciting time in space exploration since the "Grand Tour of the Planets" by the Voyager space probes flew past Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune in the late 20th Century.

6-May-2003 - NASA Brings 'Mars at the Mall' to Florida May 9 and 10 (AScribe Newswire) Part of Merritt Square Mall in Merritt Island, Fla., will take on an unearthly tone during two "Mars at the Mall" days presented by NASA on May 9 and 10 to celebrate Florida's role as America's gateway to Mars. The event, complete with a 3-D martian mural, models of NASA Mars rovers and a gallery of Mars pictures, will share excitement about two new rover missions to Mars scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral in June. Preparations for launch are under way at NASA's Kennedy Space Center.

5-May-2003 - Russia, US agree to explore Mars together Russia and the United States have agreed to launch a joint programme of Mars exploration, officials said here Monday after talks between the heads of the US and Russian space agencies. The two countries "have agreed to begin joint exploration of Mars and carry out joint unmanned interplanetary station flight programmes," Sergei Gorbunov, spokesman for Russia's Rosaviakosmos space agency, told the Interfax news agency. "In addition, it was decided that Russia can take part in US space tenders," Gorbunov added.

5-May-2003 - Mars mission agreed The Russian and US space agencies have agreed to co-operate on a joint unmanned mission to Mars and expand the development of other joint interplanetary probes. The announcement came after talks in Moscow between the heads of the two agencies, Nasa administrator Sean O'Keefe and his Russian counterpart Yuri Koptev, about the International Space Station (ISS).

22-Apr-2003 - Amazing Mars: Wind Plays Starring Role in 11,664 New Mars Images The barren and windswept landscape of Mars comes into clearer focus with NASA's release of thousands of new photos from the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft. The pictures show tornado-like "dust devils" marching across the Red Planet, storms brewing and changing with the seasons, and strangely shaped dunes that result from sand blowing monotonously in the wind.

21-Apr-2003 - Mars in the Morning: The Moon Makes Finding Red Planet Easy This Week This summer, spotting Mars will be a breeze as the planet inches closer to Earth than ever in human history. Meanwhile, finding the Red Planet right now is still a bit challenging. But this week the Moon will serve as a great natural guidepost. The Moon will be near Mars the next three mornings (Tuesday through Thursday) in the southeastern sky. It's a great opportunity for casual skywatchers to find Mars beyond any doubt. Those looking for a challenge can use the pairing to then look for the planet Uranus or even Neptune.

25-Mar-2003 - European Space Agency Plans Mars Mission The European Space Agency will send an unmanned mission to Mars in 2009 to put a roving vehicle on the planet to search for evidence of life, the agency said Tuesday. The ESA hopes the mission, known as ExoMars, also will provide new insight into the planet's surface and atmosphere. The trip is part of ESA's preparation for eventual manned missions to Mars.

25-Mar-2003 - MDA Awarded $2.3 Million Study Contract for Mission to Mars (Canada NewsWire) MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. (TSX: MDA) announced today that the company's subsidiary, MD Robotics, has been awarded a $2.3 million (CDN) contract by the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) to fulfill a CSA commitment to NASA to jointly develop concepts for the NASA- led Mars Science Laboratory mission.

20-Mar-2003 - Red Planet Out Of Scope For Red China Spacecraft For Now China would not set sight to explore Mars before 2015, Wen Wei Po in Hong Kong reported on Mar. 9. Instead the country would focus on unmanned exploration of the Moon during this period. Luan Enjie, Administrator of the Chinese space agency China National Space Administration (CNSA), said that planetary exploration would be part of the deep space exploration that China would carry out in the next ten years.

19-Mar-2003 - NASA Upbeat on Space Exploration (Voice of America) A NASA official says the coming year should bring some breakthroughs in space exploration as the agency moves beyond the tragedy that claimed the lives of seven astronauts. The unmanned, and possibly manned, flights are planned for this year. Charles Elachi, director of Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA's leading center for planetary research says, while investigators are seeking the cause of Columbia's failure, NASA continues its quest at space centers like JPL in Pasadena, California.

15-Mar-2003 - NASA's Odyssey marks one year in orbit around Mars NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft has transformed the way scientists are looking at the red planet. "In just one year, Mars Odyssey has fundamentally changed our understanding of the nature of the materials on and below the surface of Mars," said Dr. Jeffrey Plaut, Odyssey's project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

9-Mar-2003 - Spying the 'red planet' up close (United Press International) Earth's orbit is carrying it to a rendezvous with a planetary neighbor in August that is virtually unprecedented in all of human history. On Aug. 27, Earth and Mars will share what in celestial terms could be considered a face-off when the planets pass within 34.7 million miles of each other in a phenomenon astronomers call opposition -- when Earth reaches a point on a direct line between the sun and one of the other planets. Although opposition is a routine event -- it occurs between Mars and Earth about every two years and 50 days -- this particular one carries a special distinction. Astronomers have calculated it will be the closest proximity of Earth and the red planet in 73,000 years.

4-Mar-2003 - Where is Mars Now? On Aug. 27, 2003, Mars will be less than 34.65 million miles (55.76 million kilometers) away -- closer to our planet than it’s been in about 73,000 years. The view will be stupendous. Track Mars’ growing brightness with SPACE.com's exclusive Mars viewing maps and charts, updated monthly.

21-Feb-2003 - On Mars, Curveballs become Screwballs If a baseball team traveled to Mars for an interplanetary away game, shortstops and second basemen would become instant sluggers, benefiting from the reduced gravity and thinner air. And according to a new study, pitchers might find their curveballs behaving like screwballs. The reverse behavior would owe to Mars' practically nonexistent atmosphere and the complex "fluid dynamics" that make a spinning ball curve. Finally, to the delight of the hitters, tricky pitches on Mars would not be nearly as lively as here on Earth.

21-Feb-2003 - Red Planet Growing Brighter in Morning Sky Now is a good time to check out progress of the planet Mars as it continues toward a historically close approach to the Earth later this summer. Mars rises between 2:30 and 2:45 a.m. local time for the next several mornings, and it is well up in the south-southeast by dawn. Mars is growing brighter each morning. It currently shines at magnitude 1.0, as bright as the star Spica, in the constellation Virgo, and just a trifle fainter than its so-called "rival," the ruddy star Antares in the constellation of Scorpius, the Scorpion. Mars passed 5 degrees north of Antares on Feb. 1, but has since left it far behind to the west.

19-Feb-2003 - Women Working on Mars: Engineering on the Red Planet Imagine being able to respond to the eternal question of "what do you want to do when you grow up?" with a firm answer that you want to design or build a rover or spacecraft to send to another planet. NASA hopes to spread that kind of enthusiasm to young men and women through an interactive webcast in support of National Engineer's Week. On Wednesday, February 19, at 6 p.m. Pacific Time (9 p.m. Eastern Time), the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., in conjunction with NASA's Mars Exploration Program and NASA's Robotics Education Project, will present "Women Working on Mars: Engineering on the Red Planet."

18-Feb-2003 - New Mars Exploration Strategy Blueprinted A specially convened group of scientists has advised NASA on how the agency might proceed in exploring Mars into the next decade. Raymond Arvidson, Chair of the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, chaired the "Pathways" science working group. Details of the Mars task force were released February 15 at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting held in Denver, Colorado. Arvidson said the Pathways group plotted out a new "discovery-driven" agenda with the assumption that both the twin Mars Exploration Rovers next year and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2005 will return loads of data.

16-Feb-2003 - 20-step 'simple' task wins Rube Goldberg (The Indianapolis Star) The Theta Tau/Phi Sigma Rho team captured first place among Purdue University entrants in the annual Rube Goldberg machine contest that challenges engineering students to make unusual contraptions to do even stranger chores. The winning machine grabbed a 12-ounce can, crushed it and pitched it into an aluminum recycling bin in more than 20 steps.

15-Feb-2003 - Passion for flight spans balloon, shuttle era (Los Angeles Daily News) They make strange bookends, Flyer and Columbia. The Wright brothers' plane, on its most famous voyage, traveled 120 feet; the space shuttle Columbia was 122 feet long. And yet, the two flying machines frame, almost perfectly, an extraordinary century.

15-Feb-2003 - Timeline of Mars events for 2003 and Early 2004 (Astronomy.com) On August 27, 2003, Mars will be closer to Earth than it has been for many millennia. But observers will be able to enjoy the extroadinary event much longer than just that one day. Here is a guide describing what to look for when, which will help you to take advantage of Mars's latest opposition throughout the year.

7-Feb-2003 - Announcing Workfest 2003! (ISECCo) From the May 23 to June 1, 2003 the International Space Exploration and Colonization Company (ISECCo) will be hosting Workfest 2003 in Fairbanks, Alaska. Although the primary mission of the Workfest will be to work on Mars Base Zero, a closed ecological life support system research facility, there will be time for tours in interior Alaska (including a visit to Denali National Park), visiting Poker Flats Rocket Range and otherwise enjoying the Alaskan spring. Early registration is highly recommended, for our space is very limited (10 non-local attendees), and is open until March 31.

28-Jan-2003 - Will Bush Deliver Atomic Rocket for a Mars Program Tuesday Night? (My Wise County) While most Americans will be listening to President George W. Bush's State of the Union address to a joint session of the United States Congress Tuesday at 9 PM for hints of war or peace with the likes of Iraq and North Korea, others will be listening for a major new space policy initiative that may set the course for a human on Mars within the decade.

26-Jan-2003 - Mars Meets Its Rival (Astronomy.com) The chilly mornings of late January may not seem inviting, but they do have one redeeming feature: Head outside before the break of dawn and you’ll see an impressive grouping of stars and planets in the southeastern sky. The best time to view is about an hour before the Sun rises (roughly 6 a.m. local time), when twilight has started to paint the sky with its palette of pinks and purples. If clear skies beckon on January 27, 28, or 29, the first object you’ll see is the slim crescent Moon. On the 27th, it lies just to the right of the bright planet Mars.

25-Jan-2003 - Mars Data Project Announces Volume Two Mars Data Project CD-ROMs are now available, providing raw data from Mars missions, software tools, and "HOWTO" articles. Volume One of the Mars Data Project is now shipping. Volume Two has also been announced. Order Volume One now or Preorder Volume Two, each for the low cost of $9.99! The Mars Data Project is a new effort led by MarsNews.com to analyze raw data from Mars missions and advance the public's understanding of the planet Mars.

22-Jan-2003 - Stargazers To See Red (Astrobiology Magazine) 2003 offers a unique terrestrial vantage point for observing some of our nearest skyward neighbors, particularly to those looking for brighter reddish spots in the night sky. Mars, the Red Planet, will be making its closest approach to Earth in at least 50,000 years this summer. Even without a big telescope, Mars will stand out for stargazers with a reddish light-- as bright as giant Jupiter-- and reveal elusive surface details to amateur and professional astronomers alike.

21-Jan-2003 - Orbital Oddities: Why Mars will be So Close to Earth in August Anyone who had a Spirograph drawing toy as a kid has a head start in grasping why Earth and Mars will be closer to each other this August than ever in recorded history. The drawing wheels with the little toothy gears were very simple, yet they produced amazingly complex patterns that seemed to change, ever so slightly, for as long as you kept them moving. The relationship in space between Earth and Mars is never exactly repeated either. Each planet orbits the Sun on its own elliptical path, and those paths actually rotate through space over thousands of years.

13-Jan-2003 - Red Planet will show its face in a long, cosmic close-up (The Knoxville News Sentinel) Mars, the Red Planet, will be making its closest approach to Earth in at least 50,000 years this summer. It will dazzle naked-eye stargazers with a reddish light as bright as giant Jupiter and reveal elusive surface details to observers with access to even modest telescopes.

6-Jan-2003 - Mars at its most visible in Earth's summer sky (The Baltimore Sun) Mars will make its closest approach to Earth in at least 50,000 years this summer, dazzling stargazers with a reddish light as bright as giant Jupiter and revealing elusive surface details to observers with access to even modest telescopes.

4-Jan-2003 - Taking part in Mars exploration (St. Petersberg Times) Next summer, NASA, the people who put American astronauts on the moon and brought them safely home to planet Earth, will launch two search vehicles to the red planet, Mars. The craft, called the Mars Exploration Rovers, will bounce to a landing, zoom across the rocks and explore what no human has seen before. Perhaps neatest of all, a lucky grade-school student will give the craft their names.

3-Jan-2003 - IPS to select students for Mars Project (The Hindu) The Mumbai-based Indian Planetary Society (IPS) has been selected as the national coordinator by its counterpart in the US for the Red Rover Goes to Mars (RRGTM) project. The project is a joint initiative of the Lego Co, US Planetary Society and NASA. Under the programme children will be allowed to play an integral, hands-on role in NASA's upcoming Mars exploration Rover 2003 mission, which is set to explore the neighbouring planet in early 2004.

30-Dec-2002 - Moon-Themed Casino: Place Your Bets A Moon-themed hotel and casino is like a roll of the dice to Michael Henderson. And if his vision comes to be, it's a sure bet there'll be no need to go the lunar distance for entertainment. What's billed as the biggest and most expensive hotel ever built on Earth is attempting to make a controlled landing in the gambling capital of the United States.

18-Dec-2002 - Mars is the Destination (Aviation Week and Space Technology Magazine) Space buffs and Mars-direct boosters have been understandably dismayed at the latest exploration scheme to emanate from the ninth floor of NASA headquarters--understandably but unnecessarily.

15-Dec-2002 - Mars Data Project to Release First CD-ROM The Mars Data Project is finishing up its first release in a series of low-priced CD-ROMs with RAW data from the Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Odyssey, and Mars Pathfinder missions. The CD-ROM will be fully ISO9660-compliant and will work on PCs, Macintoshes, and Unix/Linux computers. Volume One includes special content providing the know-how for making great-looking images, background on the missions, and free, shareware, and trial software for image processing.

12-Dec-2002 - Scientists Answer Kids' Mars Questions Living on Mars is a far-off dream, for now. But what would it take to do it? And what might life be like there for humans? The Associated Press asked fifth-graders from Stacie Kaeuper's class at Wyatt Elementary School in Plano, Texas, to pose questions about traveling to the so-called red planet and the possibility of people living there. The answers were provided by Deborah Bass and Bob Mase, both scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, Calif. Bass is an engineer and deputy science team chief who helps ensure that rovers sent to the surface of Mars send back as much scientific data as possible. Mase is manager of the 2001 Mars Odyssey mission.

11-Dec-2002 - Billionaire Elon Musk Sending a Rocket to Mars (ZDNet) For a man who has just made a cool $1.5bn from the sale of his PayPal Internet business to eBay, Elon Musk seems quite relaxed about it all. The youthful Mr Musk has had some practice in these matters. A previous venture (Zip2 -- maker of software for the media industry) was sold to Compaq for $300m in 1999. Now flush with eBay's cash, Musk has set up his third company, SpaceX, an organisation with the not unambitious goal of creating a permanent manned settlement on Mars -- though all he offered about this on Monday was that "we're building a rocket in LA."

10-Dec-2002 - See the light with low-tech Mars-gazing (Atlanta Journal-Constitution) Mars will soon be closer to the Earth than it has been since the days of Neanderthal man. You'll be reading a lot about that as the excitement builds. Today I'll tell you how to use your computer to learn more about Mars and also give you advice that may help you and your family take advantage of this once-in-a-thousand-lifetimes opportunity. By August 2003, Mars will be six times brighter in the night sky than you've ever seen it. Along with this column is a list of Web sites that offer some special resources that deal with viewing Mars.

10-Dec-2002 - Roving the Red Planet: Current and Future Missions As NASA prepares to launch two rovers to the red planet next spring, Dr. Firouz Naderi, director of the Solar System Exploration Program Directorate and Mars Exploration Program manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, will present a pair of free, public lectures about Mars exploration. The lectures, entitled "The Robotic Exploration of Mars," will include discussions about the current Mars program, its goals and discoveries and its innovative ideas for future robotic Mars missions. The lectures will be presented Thursday evening, Dec. 12, at JPL, and Friday evening, Dec. 13, at Pasadena City College.

9-Dec-2002 - Dark Streaks on Martian Slopes May Signal Active Water (University of Arizona) Salty water driven by hot magma from Mars' deep interior may be forming some of the mysterious dark slope streaks visible near the Red Planet's equator, according to University of Arizona scientists. They have determined the dark slope streaks generally occur in areas of long-lived hydrothermal activity, magma-ground-ice interactions, and volcanic activity. Some of the dark slope streaks are brand new—they have formed after the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft began detailed mapping of the planet in April 1999. Others have been observed to fade away on decadal time scales. Their findings support the hypothesis that Mars remains hydrologically active and that water could be shaping the planet’s landscape today.

3-Dec-2002 - Mars Data Project to Release First CD-ROM The Mars Data Project is a new effort led by MarsNews.com to analyze raw data from Mars missions and advance the public's understanding of the Red Planet. The Mars Data Project will release the first in a series of low-priced CD-ROMs with RAW data from the Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey missions. It will also include the necessary software and articles providing the know-how for making great-looking images. We are working with NASA/JPL and independent experts to include the best software and processing techniques.

3-Dec-2002 - The 10 Best Mars Images Ever Few pictures in the collective human eye have undergone such frequent and dramatic alteration as our view of Mars. From a map of canals built by an intelligent civilization to the high-tech 3-D and infrared images of today, Mars has been utterly transformed right in front of our eyes in just a few generations. The summer of 2003 will present a unique opportunity to view and photograph Mars. It will be closer to Earth than since many millennia before photography was invented. Amateurs will turn moderate-sized telescopes toward the ruddy point of light in hopes of discerning features -- the north polar cap, storm clouds, or perhaps even dark surface markings.

25-Nov-2002 - Rebuilding Tomorrowland (Wired News) For a minute, it seems like Bob Zalk has been locked out of his own construction site. We're standing on the wrong side of a painted plywood wall at the Epcot theme park in Orlando, Florida, out of place in our plastic hard hats amid the mouse-eared tourists. Zalk, a 21-year veteran of Walt Disney Imagineering, the creative unit that oversees all new theme park and resort projects for Disney, is standing in front of a doorway in the plywood wall. He jiggles the knob a few more times, but it won't budge. Then, just before we give up, he puts a little shoulder into it. The door bursts open, and suddenly we're facing a building that looks like an airport terminal designed by Salvador Dalí. Luminescent orbs hover in front of the entrance, and the roofline swerves and curls sleekly. This is Planetary Plaza, the entryway to Mission: Space, a $150 million attraction scheduled to open next summer. Inside, the pieces are still coming together. Blueprints, work lights, and hydraulic lifts are scattered around; a crew is setting up the railing that winds through the queue area. A massive "gravity wheel" — it looks like a prop from 2001: A Space Odyssey — is affixed to one wall. It's the year 2036, Zalk explains, and we're standing in the International Space Training Center. "Mission: Space assumes that, by this point, space isn't just for scientists and astronauts," he says. "It's for kids, families — everybody."

24-Nov-2002 - The Planets (The Advocate) A spectacular performance of Gustav Holst's masterpiece The Planets will be presented by the LSU Symphony Orchestra at 8 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 26, at the Centroplex Theater for Performing Arts. The production is a cooperative venture between the LSU orchestra and the new Irene W. Pennington planetarium, to be opened early next year at the Louisiana Art & Science Museum. The project is sponsored by the Stanford Group.

22-Nov-2002 - Radio Free Mars Second Broadcast Now Available The second broadcast is now available of Radio Free Mars, a new Internet radio program presented by MarsNews.com. Burk continues his reporting on the controversies surrounding the Mars Odyssey's THEMIS instrument and an overview of the 1989 Russian Phobos 2 mission. Also includes another excerpt from Burk's radio interview series with Mexican journalist Jamie Maussan. It was recorded on November 12th and will be broadcast on DisInfoRadio.com and any other stations which would like to carry the freely licensed program.

22-Nov-2002 - Burk To Appear on "Martian Revelation" Radio Program MarsNews.com's Editor-in-chief James Burk will be a guest tomorrow night on The Martian Revelation, an hour-long radio program aired on WMEL (920 AM), a Central Florida radio station. The program will begin at 10:00PM Pacific (1:00AM Eastern). Hosted by Mars enthusiast Gary Leggaire, the program covers all aspects of the Red Planet and will be archived on his website following the broadcast. Burk will discuss the latest evidence surrounding the THEMIS/Cydonia Image Controversy and NASA's future exploration of Mars.

18-Nov-2002 - MSNBC's Alan Boyle Mentions MarsNews.com Jim Burk, editor-in-chief of MarsNews.com, sends along a response to a Mars-related item on Friday that referred to claims of a NASA cover-up — and to MarsNews.com:

18-Nov-2002 - Burk Appeared on Jamie Maussan Program MarsNews.com's Editor-in-chief James Burk was a guest Sunday night for the sixth time on the popular radio program hosted by Jaime Maussan. It aired live across Mexico and Guatemala on 15 different radio affiliates and was also heard live on the Internet via EXA FM.

12-Nov-2002 - The sky's no limit (The Christian Science Monitor) You don't have to be a rocket scientist to put an experiment into space. Students across the country have a chance every year to enter a contest sponsored by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Some winners help put their projects on a space shuttle or rocket. Others receive scholarships to Space Camp in Huntsville, Ala. Every winner gets a special award presented by a NASA representative – sometimes by an astronaut. Through the NASA Student Involvement Program (NSIP), six competitions are offered each year. Students can compete as individuals, teams, or entire classes. Contests are open to students in kindergarten through high school. Contests range from studying the land, air, and water in a small site on Earth, to planning a mission to Mars.

8-Nov-2002 - Mars to Get Closer than Ever in Recorded History in 2003 Mars recently emerged into the morning sky and has begun an orbital dance with Earth that will, over the next several months, lead to the best viewing opportunity since Neanderthals looked skyward. We’re not kidding. The Red Planet is getting progressively closer to Earth with each passing night, and consequently it will slowly appear to grow larger and brighter. By late August 2003, when it will be about 191 million miles closer, the reddish point of light in our night sky will appear more than six times larger and shine some 85 times brighter than it appears now.

8-Nov-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.

30-Oct-2002 - Radio Free Mars: New Radio Program by MarsNews.com The first broadcast of Radio Free Mars, a new Internet radio program presented by MarsNews.com, will be heard on DisInfoRadio.com everyday at 3pm Pacific and again at 3am Pacific. It is also available for download from this website.

29-Oct-2002 - Sixth International Conference on Mars (Mars Today) The Sixth International Conference on Mars will be held at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), July 20–25, 2003. At that time a flotilla of new missions either will be sending new data back from Mars or will be on their way to Mars. The first such conference was held in 1973 as data were being returned from Mariner 9. Conferences were convened in 1979 and 1981 as data were returned from the Viking missions. The fourth conference, in 1989, reviewed ten years of analysis of the Viking data and resulted in the publication of the classic 1498-page volume entitled Mars. The fifth conference was held in 1999 as Pathfinder and Mars Global Surveyor data became widely available. This conference will provide an opportunity to review and debate some of the key questions and controversies that have matured during the flood of MGS and Odyssey data.

28-Oct-2002 - Student reaching for Mars with work (Iowa City Press-Citizen) Teachers, guidance counselors and parents have always said, "the sky's the limit" when trying to ingrain academic excellence in the minds of students. But one junior at West Liberty High School is looking to break the confines of the wild blue yonder and is working on a project that could reach the unexplored landscape of the red planet.

28-Oct-2002 - Return of the Red Planet (Astronomy.com) Few planets disappear for longer stretches than Mars. We last saw the Red Planet during spring, when it lay low in the evening sky after sunset. It then spent all summer and early autumn hidden in the sun's glare, nearly matching our star's speed across the sky. Now as October turns to November, Mars once again returns to view, this time in the morning sky.

25-Oct-2002 - Hidden Face of Mars Uncovered by Father & Daughter (The Geological Society of America) Ghosts of the most ancient craters in the solar system are materializing on Mars. Using altimeter data from the Mars Global Surveyor and special graphics software, a father and daughter have found the circular outlines of the Red Planet's earliest impact craters and basins - pounded into what remains of the planet's first crust. Planetary geologist Herb Frey of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and his daughter Erin Frey, a junior at South River High School, in Edgewater, Md., will be explaining their discoveries in two consecutive presentations at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America on Sunday, October 27, in Denver, CO. In both studies Mar Orbiting Laser Altimeter data was loaded into a graphics program that allowed colors to be assigned to different elevations. By manually shifting and stretching the colors to study various ranges of elevation change, they were able to detect very subtle quasi-circular depressions, or "QCDs" for short. The Freys contend that these are craters from early times before the Noachian (pronounced "no-ACK-ee-en") -- the name for the oldest identified geological time period on Mars.

16-Oct-2002 - Solving the Mysteries of Mars Reveals More Water is a key to the future exploration of Mars and new evidence shows that as the liquid altered the planet's surface in the past, colossal reservoirs of water ice may still exist below the surface and profoundly impact the red planet today. Steve Saunders, Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) project scientist for the 2001 Mars Odyssey mission, believes spacecraft now orbiting the planet are painting a very intriguing, albeit complex, picture of past and present Mars. Saunders presented the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) interdisciplinary lecture this morning, here at the World Space Congress.

15-Oct-2002 - The Mars Institute: A New Resource for a New Century of Mars Exploration (The Mars Institute) Members of the founding Board of Directors of the Mars Institute formally unveiled the new organization today at the World Space Congress. The Mars Institute is a California-based nonprofit corporation whose stated purpose is to further the scientific study, exploration, and public understanding of Mars. A new century of scientific knowledge and exploration of Mars has begun, with the current planning and prospect of many new missions to be launched to the Red Planet. The Mars Institute was created to respond to this opportunity and, out of a need strongly felt by its initiators, to establish an independent nonprofit organization whose sole purpose is to focus on advancing the scientific study and exploration of Mars, with a central commitment to conducting high quality peer-reviewed research, and on sharing knowledge and experiences of Mars exploration with students and the general public worldwide. The Mars Institute will strive to provide leadership as the premier international non-governmental organization for the peaceful advancement of these goals.

2-Oct-2002 - Picture Canada's maple leaf on Red Planet, Garneau says (CBS News) Canadian expertise in atmospheric science, geology and robotics could help land a probe on Mars by 2011, said Marc Garneau, head of the Canadian Space Agency. The former astronaut said the CSA recently received an invitation from NASA offering Canada the opportunity to become a $200-million partner on a 2009 mission for the Mars Science Laboratory.

29-Sep-2002 - MarsNews.com Editor James Burk to Appear on Radio Show James Burk, Editor-in-Chief of MarsNews.com, will appear tonight at 5:30 PM PST on the spanish-language radio program "ETs: An Intelligent Phenomenon." The popular syndicated program is heard on 15 affiliates throughout Mexico and Guatemala, and can be heard live on the Internet via EXA FM, (click on "Audio en Linea", then one of the affiliate streams) The program is hosted by Jaime Maussan, sometimes called the "Mexican Mike Wallace" for his longtime stint on the Mexican version of "60 Minutes".

25-Sep-2002 - Wobbly Mars shapes its climate Mars undergoes periodic wobbles in its spin and variations in its orbit that, like the Earth, may cause it to endure prolonged Ice Ages or other climate shifts, scientists say. The evidence comes from the latest pictures of the Red Planet's northern polar ice cap, a thick dome of what is apparently water ice mixed with dust, and which is up to 2.5 kilometers (1.5 miles) thick.

25-Sep-2002 - Erskine students take on the world (Seguin Gazette-Enterprise) Lately, a group of students at Erskine Sixth Grade Center has been rather spaced out. Not even Gretchen Ulbricht, the group’s teacher, is very down to earth these days. There’s no cause for alarm, however. Students in the school’s Gifted and Talented Program are hard at work on the Mars Millennium Project, a year-long curriculum focusing on the cultivation of traits such as creativity, discovery and imagination.

21-Sep-2002 - Mars Program Facing Collapse At last week's meeting of the NASA Advisory Council -- held at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory -- there was a great deal of news about new developments in Mars exploration besides the revelations (already reported in "SpaceDaily") that the two U.S. rovers intended for launch in 2003 are still running into problems that may possibly delay arrival of one or both of them at Mars by as much as four years. The remainder of the decade's program has run into additional problems -- not linked to the U.S., but to difficulties and likely program cancellations in the Mars projects of three different European nations, two of them partnered with the U.S.. And a whole series of additional factors -- including the massive cost of a Mars sample return mission -- are forcing the U.S. to radically revise its post-2009 Mars program, including the form of the first sample-return mission.

21-Sep-2002 - Obituary: Dr. Robert L. Forward (SpaceRef.com) It is my sad duty to inform you that Dr. Robert L. Forward has left this mortal Earth. Bob passed away early in the morning on September 21, 2002. A memorial service is scheduled for Saturday, September 28th, at 1 p.m. at the Westwood Hills Congregational Church in Westwood, CA (Los Angeles area). Bob Forward leaves behind a truly astounding legacy. In addition to his pioneering work on solar sails, space tethers, antimatter propulsion, and other advanced space propulsion technologies, Bob also performed seminal work in several other areas, including smart structures and gravitational astronomy.

20-Sep-2002 - Whither Phobos 2? MarsNews.com has undertaken a major study of the 1988 Phobos 2 mission, prompted by our desire to confirm the recently highlighted IR data of the Hydraote Chaos region -- allegedly showing city-like terrain. We have confirmed that image, and have apparently opened a "Pandora's Box" in the process.

16-Sep-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.

13-Sep-2002 - Canadian Space Agency President Marc Garneau Pushes Mars Agenda (SpaceRef.com) If former astronaut Marc Garneau has his way, Canada will soon become an important partner in several upcoming Mars missions. Garneau would also like to see Canada become a leader in several new space technology fields as well.

11-Sep-2002 - Museum, planetarium opening set for Oct. 15 (The Daily Advertiser) Soon, a trip to Mars will be as close as downtown Lafayette. October 15 is the scheduled opening date for the new Lafayette Natural History Museum and Planetarium on Jefferson Street, Museum Administrator Mary Henderson said Thursday. Mars Quest is expected to be the first large temporary exhibit at the museum. Visitors will be able to drive a Mars Rover over a simulated Martian surface and learn about space travel through the exhibit.

10-Sep-2002 - MIT Marsweek 2002 "Mars Week 2002", a three-day conference about the exploration of Mars, will be held at the MIT campus in Cambridge on October 4-6. Mars Week is an annual conference dedicated to the education of students about all things Mars. There will be presentations discussing the engineering, scientific, political and social aspects of Mars exploration. Although it is dedicated to University students all ages are welcome (youth to professionals). Marsweek will be a beneficial experience for all. Mars Week attracts scientists, engineers, astronauts, students, political activists and business leaders from throughout the United States. Topics will include present and future missions, prospects for the human exploration and settlement of the Red Planet, the scientific research of Mars, and much more.

29-Aug-2002 - The Spirit of Mars For nearly a century Mars has been the blue screen onto which we project, in scientific speculation as well as literature, two powerful concepts: the West and the Other.

20-Aug-2002 - Planning Your Mars Vacation (Wired.com) Where would you stake your claim on the great desert planet? Oliver Morton, author of the new book Mapping Mars, asks the experts. Choosing a place to land on Mars should be easy. The planet's surface area is as great as that of all Earth's continents combined, and thanks to 30 years of space missions, it has been mapped in bewitching detail. Unfortunately, spacecraft are delicate constructions, and finding a safe spot to land them on rocky ground is a colossal headache. NASA researchers have been nursing that headache for years as they analyze hundreds of sites, trying to decide where a pair of rovers should arrive for a Mars mission in early 2004. Just as they were to make their final choices this spring, new wind modeling data sent the scientists back to their databases. But what if you weren't constrained by engineering and treacherous terrain? What if you didn't have to worry about rocks that would gut your lander's belly, or slopes it would roll down, or those pesky winds? What if you could simply choose any one of the 1,470 places on Mars that now have a name — or the countless more that don't? And what if the lander was not a robot, but you?

19-Aug-2002 - Mars crater is named after Bend (Bend Bulletin) Bend, apparently, has universal appeal. A local author researching a book on the exploration of Mars found that folks with NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) named a crater on the red planet after Bend. The crater was named in 1976 and is located at 22.6 degrees south and 27.8 degrees west on the planet. But don't break out the telescope looking for it. The crater is only 3.6 kilometers in diameter and can be seen only in pictures taken by spacecraft with high-powered cameras. Comparatively, the Bend crater is about one-third the size of Crater Lake.

5-Aug-2002 - China in Space (The Globe and Mail) China's lofty plans to send a man into space are causing a stir in the United States that could, eventually, launch another international space race. 'Within 50 years, China will be No. 1,' an academic told GEOFFREY YORK. All it has to do is keep the money coming and figure out the technology. Zhang Yibao, a 20-year-old university sophomore in baggy shorts and oversize basketball shoes, clicks a few commands on his computer. A pirated copy of a U.S. space robot grinds into motion, crawling across an imitation of the surface of Mars. "The battery is running out, so we're only doing simple things," he apologizes. Never underestimate Chinese ingenuity. When an aerospace university in Beijing decided to build a knock-off of the U.S. robot that had explored Mars, it knew that it could not hope for access to the space secrets of its American rivals. So its students simply went onto the Internet and borrowed the design from an old photograph.

30-Jul-2002 - Orlando Figueroa: NASA's Mars Czar Gives a Status Report on Red Planet Plans NASA is shaping plans for the next decade to dot Mars with highly capable robotic craft, including a probe that rockets back to Earth samples of Martian terrain. Recent exploratory talks between NASA and Russian scientists may also lead to joint experiments using Mars penetrators and other devices to expand exploration of the red planet. Space agency Mars planners, however, currently face a cloudy financial picture beyond 2009. But building on the output of data gleaned by spacecraft already at Mars will demand fresh funds. Images NASA's "Mars Czar", Orlando Figueroa, Director of the Mars Exploration Office at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. CREDIT: Bill Ingalls More Stories Russia Proposes Sending Team to Mars Water Ice Discovery on Mars May Be 'Tip of an Iceberg' Mars Airplane Soars on Earth. Flapping Robotic Insects Could Extend Range of Rover Missions Gearing Up to Harvest Mars' Water Resource In an exclusive SPACE.com interview, NASA's "Mars Czar", Orlando Figueroa, Director of the Mars Exploration Office at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., discussed the challenges ahead.

12-Jul-2002 - Book Review: Mapping Mars: Science, imagination and the birth of a world (New Scientist) This is a splendid book and a major achievement in the study of Mars. It's also much more than a book about mapping, as the subtitle suggests. Although Oliver Morton pays due homage to generations of patient sky watchers, the real story of mapping Mars began in July 1965, when the Mariner 4 fly-by gave us a score of grainy black- and-white images. The missions that followed, with orbiters, landers and more fly-bys, provided more coverage at ever higher resolution. As scientists gradually stitched the images together to generate a pole-to-pole mosaic, the complex cratered surface of this world emerged.

12-Jun-2002 - SwRI® kicks off Mars initiative in support of expanding NASA program (Southwest Research Institute) In late 2001, Southwest Research Institute™ (SwRI) launched a major, two-year initiative to broaden its base of expertise in support of the NASA Mars program. The SwRI Initiative for Mars (SwIM) will invest more than $2.4 million in Institute internal research funds on a variety of Mars-related efforts. SwIM activities will include sponsoring Mars research and development projects, seminars, and workshops, as well as recruiting senior Mars researchers and technologists. SwIM Principal Investigator Dr. S. Alan Stern and Executive Vice President for Operations Walter D. Downing announced the selection of the first six projects. Representing an investment of $566,000 in Mars-related R&D, these projects and their research teams were chosen from a field of 24 concept proposals.

30-May-2002 - Breaking the Surface: How Scientists Could Use Mars' Water-Ice On Mars, water ice may be both biological buried treasure and a rich resource for future Mars explorers. NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft has found enormous quantities of subsurface water ice. Scientists using the spacecraft's gamma ray spectrometer instrument have detected hydrogen in the upper three feet (one-meter) of soil. That hydrogen is believed likely to be in the form of water ice. The spacecraft spotted enough Mars water ice to fill Lake Michigan twice over in what may be a "splash" of data, with the deluge yet to come.

29-May-2002 - Ice on Mars opens sea of inquiry (Chicago Tribune) A NASA orbiter found evidence of a vast frozen sea lying just below the powdery surface of Mars' southern hemisphere, an icy expanse that could extend from a few inches below the planet's surface to hundreds of meters deep. The discovery hints at the potential for life in the planet's past--or even present--and raises the stakes for future Mars missions by offering the promise of cheap water for cooking, hydroponic agriculture and make-it-yourself rocket fuel, all key variables in proposed manned expeditions to Mars. It also appears to answer a mystery that has been posed with every Martian photograph showing dry rampart craters, river outwashes and ancient canyons: What happened to the water? Apparently, a good deal of it is still there.

29-May-2002 - Water everywhere on Mars huge sea of ice lies just under the surface of Mars, ready to be tapped by future explorers as a source of fuel and maybe even drinking water, scientists report. It might also harbour life, and certainly explains where some of the water went when Mars went from being a warm and wet place to the cold, dry desert it is now, the researchers report in this week's issue of the journal Science. "It turns out it is really quite a bit more ice than I think most people ever really expected," William Boynton of the University of Arizona, who led one of the studies being published this week, said. Spacecraft sent to Mars in the 1970s probably missed the ice by just a few inches (cm), Boyton said. "The interesting thing is, it looks like the Viking 2 lander actually landed in a region that we think probably had the same ice beneath it," he said. "If they could have dug down a meter (three feet) deep instead of 10 to 20 cm (four to eight inches) they could have found this ice. Isn't that interesting? They were probably right on top of it all the time and never had the slightest idea it was there."

27-May-2002 - Museum sets its sights on Mars (Chicago Tribune) Students played with fog, examined photos of the solar system's largest volcano and felt simulated Martian soil as they explored the newest exhibit recently at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum. Marsquest, an interactive exhibit at the museum until September 9, features the Red Planet's canyons, volcanoes, gravity and climate.

18-May-2002 - Close encounter with Mars (The Herald) These kids know more about geology and space travel than most people, knowledge they showed during a visit Friday from a NASA scientist. The fourth- and fifth-graders at Cedar Wood Elementary School in Mill Creek had lots of questions for Joy Crisp, a scientist working on the Mars Exploration Rover Project set for launch in 2003, who discussed her life's work with rocks. "How far does the RAT grind into the rock?" asked Andrew Liechty, a fifth-grader. His classmates didn't need to be told that RAT is an acronym for rock abrasion tool, a diamond-studded device on the yet-to-be-named land rovers that will allow scientists to drill and study the insides of rocks on Mars.

8-May-2002 - Keeping It Real (Technology Review) Ever since seeing the satellite imagery from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, John Hollerbach wants people to walk on Mars. If his virtual reality project reaches fruition, as he claims it will, the Martian sand dunes may open to the public in just a few years. Hollerbach is one of the lead researchers working on the University of Utah's Treadport, a virtual reality system that uses a technology called "locomotion interface"—where users experience the pull of gravity and the resistance of inclines while navigating within a virtual world—to make the simulation far more lifelike. Hollerbach and his team, in conjunction with researchers at the University of Minnesota, Vanderbilt University, and Mount Holyoke College, are in the first year of a five-year, four-million-dollar grant from the National Science Foundation to develop the Treadport. Aside from two laboratories in Japan, they are the only group exploring the potential of locomotion interface. And while the technology—in particular the graphics—is still at a fairly early stage, Hollerbach believes that within five years they should have a commercially viable product that can be used for military simulations, education and even recreation.

3-May-2002 - Planet Alignment Peaks Sunday and Monday The long-awaited gathering of the five naked-eye planets reaches its peak May 5-6 in the western evening sky. In a single glance you'll be able to see all five planets, a feat not possible again for decades. Further, three of the five planets will crowd into a small spot in the sky, making for a very distinctive formation -- officially dubbed a "planetary trio" -- that is sure to thrill skywatchers. According to astronomer Robert C. Victor at Michigan State University's Abrams Planetarium, after the spectacular planetary array of 2002 passes into history, future generations will witness similar compact gatherings of the five naked-eye planets in September 2040, July 2060 and November 2100.

2-May-2002 - Interplanetary paper wins award (The Seattle Times) A mission to Mars? Well, it's about time. Today, for "Space Day 2002 Adventure to Mars," thousands of students and teachers from 21 countries will be focusing their attention on how to expand scientific frontiers to Earth's closest neighbor. Locally, at Federal Way's Spring Valley Montessori, a school with a down-home feel and pastoral setting, a pair of middle-school students, Erikka Fisk and Megan Sweeney, are among the day's big winners. As part of Space Day, more than 3,000 students from 600-plus schools participated in challenges that included building an invention to make living or working on Mars easier for astronauts. Another challenge was designing an electronic newspaper to tell earthlings about life on Mars. Fisk and Sweeney's periodical, The Martian Monthly, was chosen for best design. The award was one of 18 given, and they were the only winners in Washington.

23-Apr-2002 - China Develops First Mars Probe (People's Daily) "Mars Explorer"-- the first Mars probe developed by China on its own, is now going through adjustment, which will make its debut with the public at the China Sci-Tech Week to be held in May, as learned from Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics. "Mars Explorer" is made after "Mars Ranger" developed by the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration, said Dr Ding Shuiting, dean of vehicle engineering department of the said university who is in charge of the project. With an investment of only RMB 200,000 yuan, the probe is no more than a model with many mechanical details simplified, said Ding. But it is technologically qualified, as capable as US-made probe and independently developed by China.

12-Apr-2002 - Viewer's Guide to the Great Planet Alignment The finest gathering of all five bright planets in almost two decades is finally coming together in the western evening sky. The gap between the planets will noticeably contract with each passing night. Beginning April 14, the Moon will pay a visit to four of the five planets. It will appear to pass by three planets on three consecutive evenings (April 14: Venus; April 15: Mars; and April 16: Saturn). It will then pass Jupiter’s vicinity on April 18. Meanwhile, Mercury, often called the "elusive planet," will emerge into surprisingly easy view by the third week of April. Here are the night-by-night details:

6-Apr-2002 - Planets put on a show An eye-catching group of three planets will shine in the western sky at dusk on Thursday and for the first half of April. Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn will appear close together. The brightest of the three is Jupiter. Look low in the west about an hour after sunset and you cannot miss it. To Jupiter's upper left is the slightly less bright Saturn. Mars is quite a bit fainter, but it has an unmistakable orange tint.

4-Apr-2002 - Hope Yet The Beagle Will Land Over the past week, there have been two important developments connected with plans by NASA and the European Space Agency to land as many as three spacecraft on Mars during the 2003-04 Mars launch window. Firstly, the Beagle 2 probe - whose status was rather perilous just a few months ago - has now received the official go-ahead from the ESA to be carried on its Mars Express orbiter. Second, the potential landing sites for NASA's two Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) have now been narrowed down further - but, at the same time, the final decision on their two landing sites has been delayed fully a year.

2-Apr-2002 - Rare Planet Alignment in April and May Several planets are assembling toward a rare alignment later this month, when five of them will crowd into a patch of sky small enough that all will be visible in a single glance. The setup will provide a planet-watching opportunity that won't be repeated for a century. Even now, Jupiter, Mars and Saturn form a nearly straight line in the west each night. By late April, Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Saturn will all bunch up in the western sky just after sunset, with bright Jupiter also nearby. Three of the planets -- Venus, Saturn and Mars -- will crowd into an even smaller patch of sky in early May.

29-Mar-2002 - Worlds Apart, but Not for Long: Five Planets Start to Converge (The Washington Post) Nature's magnificence unfolds in a rare sky show during April and May. The visible five planets that now are spread out in the western evening sky -- Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn -- are getting ready to converge in May. Early this month, look for Venus about 18 degrees above the western horizon as the sun sets. It can be seen between the constellations Pisces and Aries, and it appears to be about 20 degrees away from the dim red planet Mars. While Venus is lower in the sky than Mars, this will soon change. As April progresses, the exceptionally bright Venus and Mars move closer together. They are but 13 degrees apart in the western night sky by the middle of the month.

27-Mar-2002 - Scientists outlining priorities for NASA Right now, scientists are pounding out a plan for what could be the path to explore the solar system for the next 10 years. For the past year, scientists from across the country have been meeting, gathering data and creating a priority list for missions to other planets. They will present their findings of the Solar System Exploration Survey to NASA in May. In the past, NASA has decided its own priorities for planetary missions. However, in January 2001, NASA's associate administrator for space science Ed Weiler requested the National Academies undertake a survey. All of the major meetings have ended. "The academy is famous for not leaking things," Weiler said.

21-Mar-2002 - Builder renovates Mars lab (Arizona Business Gazette) A building firmly planted in the past and future of Arizona State University has been updated by a local contractor. Scottsdale-based Linthicum Contractors spent $1.7 million and 8 ½ months renovating the B.B. Moeur Building. Built of adobe in 1939, the structure is home to the Mars Imaging Center, one of ASU's most ambitious research efforts. "ASU needed more space because so many groups are using the center," said company president Gary Linthicum. About 35 researchers, engineers and graduate students work at the center, which evolved from the work of ASU professor Philip Christiansen.

16-Mar-2002 - Boys & Girls Club wins award (The Mountain Press) The Pigeon Forge Boys & Girls Club was recently distinguished as having the best program in the world for clubs with a budget under $200,000. "That's a pretty high honor," said Elizabeth Robinson, director of the club during the time it won, from October 2000 through October 2001. Robinson is now director at the Sevierville branch. "We have 31,000 Boys & Girls Clubs across the world," she said. Whether shooting hoops or planning a mission to Mars, the club strived for program excellence in every activity, Robinson said. The Mission to Mars program was run in cooperation with NASA's National Education Endowment. The idea was for kids to decide which 100 members of the community would be selected to go to Mars if the Earth became inhabitable. The kids asked, "what type of people would be important to bring," Robinson said.

15-Mar-2002 - Sally Ride Aims to Launch American Girls on to High-Tech Careers The first American woman to fly in space is aiming to launch a new generation of American girls on to careers in math, science, engineering and high technology. And judging from those who attended a recent Sally Ride Space Camp in Huntsville, Ala., young girls across the nation are anxious to target futures in fields traditionally dominated by American men. Chatting with Ride after a space shuttle mission simulation, girls from six states wanted to know what it was like to launch into space, float weightless in zero gravity and look back on the blue orb Earth. And Katie Satre, an 11-year-old from Randolph, Vt., made Ride an offer the former NASA astronaut and president of SPACE.com could not refuse. "My dream is to be the first person on Mars, so when you come with me on my spaceship to Mars, I get to be the first one out. Okay?"

11-Mar-2002 - Students Get the Best from JPL Ray Garcia had to stay after school, but not to clean blackboards. Garcia is an engineer at JPL who returned to his grade school, Albion Elementary in Los Angeles, 44 years after he left, to involve students in a balloon rocketry experiment. The December 2001 visit was part of a collaboration between JPL and the Los Angeles Unified School District’s after school enrichment program, LA’s Better Educated Students for Tomorrow, or Best. Created in 1988, LA’s Best is a nationally recognized model that now serves over 17,500 students in 101 elementary schools.

10-Mar-2002 - Space-Themed Virtual-Reality Ride Suggested for KSC Visitor Complex Imagine whizzing through the darkness at Disney World's Space Mountain, or plunging off a virtual skyscraper at Universal Studios' The Amazing Adventures of Spiderman. Now combine those sensations with the rumble of blast-off, the pressure of rising G-forces as you soar into space, the excitement of crashing through a terrifying meteor shower, or launching a satellite, and the thrill of roaring safely back to Earth. That's the kind of virtual-reality experience many people want from the next big attraction at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, according to a recent informal readers poll by FLORIDA TODAY, the local daily newspaper for Florida's Space Coast.

8-Mar-2002 - Mission to Mars (UANews.org) University of Arizona scientists are sending instruments to Mars. A group of local students, however, is going there next weekend. Well, at least in spirit, anyway. The students, from the eight middle schools (grades 6-8) in Tucson's Sunnyside School District, will mesh astronomy with science fiction writing at an overnight workshop at the Tucson Challenger Learning Center.

6-Mar-2002 - National Rube Goldberg Machine Contest to Be Held in April at Purdue University (AScribe Newswire) The countdown is on for the Purdue "Mission to Mars" team as it prepares for its new mission: defending the university's national title on Saturday, April 6, in the 14th annual Theta Tau Fraternity's Rube Goldberg Machine Contest. Shawn S. Jordan, a senior majoring in computer engineering from Fort Wayne, Indiana, said he and his Purdue Society of Professional Engineers' teammates drew inspiration from trips to science museums and watching the Learning Channel to come up with their theme. Their "Mission to Mars" machine hoisted the U.S. flag over a simulated mini-Martian landscape to the strains of "Thus Spake Zarathustra" and Lenny Kravitz's rocker "Fly Away" to win the local competition at Purdue on Saturday, February 9.

5-Mar-2002 - Students Advance To Finals In The 2002 “NASA Means Business” Student Competition (University of Illinois) University of Illinois students are embarking on a NASA Mars mission, the 2002 “NASA Means Business” Student Competition. While the students may not actually travel to the planet Mars, the students’ participation in the competition will help NASA develop plans for future Mars missions. NASA officials chose the University of Illinois team, along with three other top, national university teams, to compete at the Johnson Space Center in Texas from May 7-9th. NASA has challenged the teams to focus on developing a customer-focused plan for NASA’s mission planning to Mars.

22-Feb-2002 - Canada sets sights on Mars (Toronto Sun) Canada's scientists and engineers have the right stuff to go it alone to the red planet, a conference heard yesterday. Last May, former astronaut and Canadian Space Agency president Dr. Marc Garneau vowed to have a Canuck-led mission to Mars off the ground by decade's end. At Ontario's Centre for Research in Earth and Space Technology, conference delegates heard that areas where Canada excels -- robotics, geology and drilling -- make the ingredients for an all-Canuck mission to Mars.

20-Feb-2002 - Mars 'Recent' Water Gushers Found Huge amounts of water -- enough to cause catastrophic floods -- gushed out of fissures onto the surface of Mars relatively recently, scientists who analyzed photographs of the red planet said on Wednesday. The deluge washed the equivalent of one and a quarter times the water found in Lake Erie onto the surface of the planet near its equator, carving out a series of tear-shaped mesas, the team at the University of Arizona reported. And it was an unusual torrent, spurting from underground much like lava, the scientists report in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

12-Feb-2002 - Strange cloud puzzles Mars scientists (Ananova) Astronomers have found a large spiral cloud above a giant Martian volcano. A passing probe took a picture but scientists aren't sure how long it has been there. They say the cloud is probably made up of fine dust grains and it is spiraling because of wind patterns in the volcano crater. Similar clouds were seen for several days in the same area but research teams say they don't know if it was a single cloud that persisted or one that grew each afternoon.

9-Feb-2002 - Mars machine lands professional engineers team on top (Purdue News Service) The sky was the limit for the Purdue Society of Professional Engineers' "Mission to Mars" today as they captured first place in the 20th annual Theta Tau Fraternity's Rube Goldberg Machine Contest at Purdue University. Drawing inspiration collected from trips to science museums and watching the Learning Channel, the 10-member team hoisted the U.S. flag over a simulated mini-Martian landscape to the strains of "Thus Spake Zarathustra" and Lenny Kravitz's "Fly Away."

8-Feb-2002 - Devon Island — a bridge to Mars? (Nunatsiaq News) For the past few years in July, the U.S. space agency NASA has set up camp by the edge of the Haughton Crater on Devon Island. There, on terrain that looks a lot like Mars, researchers have been testing the technology they’ll need for Mars exploration, carrying out experiments and getting a taste of life on the Red Planet. This weekend, a one-hour documentary called A Bridge to Mars will air on the Discovery network. The film focuses on three scientists on Devon Island whose research on lake sediments, rocks and communications technology is driven by their dreams of one day participating in Mars exploration.

6-Feb-2002 - From Mir to Mars: Cosmonaut and space scientist to speak (Washington NASA Space Grant Consortium) On Feb. 19, Cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov and Dr. Alexander Martynov, former director of ballistics for the Russian Mission Control Centre, will speak on their experiences "From Mir to Mars." The lecture will take place at 7 p.m. in the University of Washington Electrical Engineering Building, Room 105. Admission is free and open to the public. The lecture is sponsored by Washington NASA Space Grant Consortium. Both men will be available to sign autographs after the lecture.

17-Jan-2002 - The Planetary Society Asks the Public to Speak Up About NASA Missions (The Planetary Society) Think NASA's on the right track or do you think the agency needs a change of direction? The Planetary Society seeks public input for the Planetary Decadal Survey being conducted by the National Research Council. At NASA's request, the National Research Council is conducting a planetary science community assessment of the priorities for U.S. planetary research programs for the next 10 years. The Planetary Society has been asked to assist this "decadal survey" by seeking input from the general public about planetary exploration. Respondents can access the survey questionnaire online. But hurry, the deadline for completing the form is January 31, 2002.

16-Jan-2002 - Europe Shapes Future Moon, Mars Exploration Plan European advanced planners are sketching out a master plan for stepping out into space, beyond the International Space Station. The European Space Agency (ESA) has given the go-ahead to start a new European long-term initiative for robotic and human exploration of the solar system. Tagged the Aurora program, the call-to-action agenda includes dispatching robotic and human space missions to bodies elsewhere in the solar system. In particular, the effort puts at high premium those celestial objects that hold promise for traces of life. The first year in a three-year "preparatory period" for Aurora is now underway, a time period dedicated to hammering out relevant technologies and types of future missions.

3-Jan-2002 - Canadians aim for spot on NASA's mission to Mars (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) The Canadian Space Agency is vying to contribute robotic expertise for NASA's upcoming mission to Mars. Scientists want to satisfy their curiosity by looking for signs of life on the Red Planet. Since Viking first landed on the planet 25 years ago, American, Russian, Japanese and European missions have all tried to learn from Mars. "Mars is really the next big frontier to get to and the international community will go to Mars with or without Canada," says Alain Berinstain of the Canadian Space Agency. "So it's up to us to decide where this fits into our priorities."

23-Dec-2001 - Red Planet missions far from science fiction (Denver Post) With the 2001 Mars Odyssey settling into orbit, scientists and engineers feel free to dream of the next missions to the Red Planet. As NASA scientist Stephen Saunders exclaimed after Odyssey was captured in orbit on Oct. 23: "Well, Mars, we're back." If a slate of sci-fi-sounding scenarios is an indication, Mars science is back in a big way and Coloradans are involved up to their phasers. They see gliders flying into the Valles Marineris - the so-called "Grand Canyon of Mars." They envision a "mother ship" seeding Mars with robotic weather stations. They want to "CAT scan" the Martian atmosphere and use hot-water jets to drill into the planet's layered polar ice cap. Solar-heated balloons that inflate by themselves, an airplane that works in Mars' carbon dioxide atmosphere and a small, hopping robot - called "frogbot" - are being tested by NASA.

7-Dec-2001 - Sky's the Limit (The Cleburne Times-Review) After years of summers spent at archaeological digs in search of past civilizations, Cleburne High School (CHS) senior Susan Smith has helped plan for a future on Mars as a member of the 2001 Texas Aerospace Scholars program. Susan's plans for summer vacation changed last spring when she was selected to represent State Congressional District 22 in the second annual Texas Aerospace Scholars Program which brings the top high school science students in the state together to work on space-related projects. The honorees are divided into teams and sent to Houston for a week of study and learning at the Johnson Space Center.

11-Oct-2001 - Mars Week 2001 "Mars Week 2001", a three-day conference about the exploration of Mars, will be held at the MIT campus in Cambridge on October 26-28. Mars Week is an annual conference discussing the engineering, scientific, political and social aspects of Mars exploration. Topics will include present and future missions, including the prospects for the human exploration and settlement of the Red Planet. The event will kick off with the arrival of NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft at Mars on Tuesday, October 23. The MIT chapter of the Mars Society will monitor the spacecraft's entry into Mars orbit from the MIT campus. This will provide an informal start to the Mars Week 2001 program.

11-Oct-2001 - Hubble Tracks Perfect Martian Storm A pair of eagle-eyed NASA spacecraft -- the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) and Hubble Space Telescope -- are giving amazed astronomers scientists a ringside seat to the biggest global dust storm seen on Mars in several decades. The Martian dust storm, larger by far than any seen on Earth, has raised a cloud of dust that has engulfed the entire planet for the past three months. As the Sun warms the airborne dust the upper atmospheric temperature has been raised by about 80 degrees Fahrenheit. This abrupt onset of global warming in Mars' thin atmosphere is happening at the same time as the planet's surface has chilled precipitously under the constant dust shroud.

9-Oct-2001 - JPL Names Chief Engineer for Mars Exploration Program Charles Whetsel has been named chief engineer of the Mars Program, a position he has held in an acting capacity since February. As chief engineer, Whetsel will lead the technical development of all current and future Mars missions. Along with other members of the Mars Program staff, he will identify promising mission architectures and technologies, while resolving technical issues affecting multiple projects within the existing Mars Program. He will also lead the Mars Program Systems Engineering Team, comprised of senior engineers from across NASA and other key international space agencies participating in the cooperative exploration of Mars.

6-Oct-2001 - Mars Apple (Earth and Sky) In the cold and dry Antarctic tundra, exposed seal carcasses can remain intact for a thousand years. Learn an apple's chance to be preserved on the surface of the cold, dry planet Mars -- on today's Earth and Sky.

30-Sep-2001 - LEGO's Mars exhibit ends tour today at KSC Visitor Complex The parking lot of Kennedy Space Center's Visitor's Complex has been turned into the red planet this weekend to celebrate the final stop of LEGO's Life on Mars Encounter. The walk-through trailer houses an interactive, hands-on exhibit built with more than a 250,000 LEGOs. Green aliens, Mars rovers and LEGO planets are accompanied by educational signs that give little tidbits about Mars. The exhibit was designed to encourage kids to learn more about space, and to build their interest in Mars exploration, said Stephen Meixner, tour manager. Michelle Salyer, spokeswoman for Kennedy Space Center Visitor's Complex said the Life on Mars exhibit also includes a baby and preschool area for small children.

25-Sep-2001 - Exploring Mars: Mars Mission Risks Imagine planning for a long sailing voyage. Your survival depends upon the sturdiness of your craft, planning and skill. Stowed onboard must be all the provisions, tools and hardware you'll need. Your knowledge and judgment about how to navigate through wind, weather and waves will be crucial to staying afloat. You've learned from the successes and misfortunes of previous voyages. You won't make the same mistakes, but you know you may encounter some new challenges. When something breaks, you will need to be able to work around it. Beneath the surface may lurk something unexpected. Within the bowels of your sailing craft, there may be a weakness or a flaw that won't make itself known until later. And it may get you in the end. Vigilant, wary, you're ready for the best and prepared for the worst, for the things you don't know will happen. In a way, space engineers say, that's a little of what it's like to work on a mission to Mars.

25-Aug-2001 - Check out Mars before summer’s end (The Press of Atlantic City) There are several planets of interest to look for in the hours before dawn this week, but my main topic today is the only bright planet in the evening sky — Mars. Although Mars still is much brighter than the brightest stars visible on August evenings, the best views of it this year already are behind us. Earth passed its closest to Mars in 13 years in June and now is leaving the slower planet farther and farther behind. Thus Mars looks less bright in the sky and less big in telescopes with each passing week. Even so, Mars still is an impressive sight, especially with its orange-gold hue. It shines much more steadily than a star. It appears in the south at each nightfall. If you need some extra help to identify it, look tonight or Monday night to use the moon as a guide. Tonight, the big bright moon will appear well to the upper right of Mars as darkness falls. Monday the moon shines to the upper left of the planet.

2-Aug-2001 - Newly Found Channels on Mars Billed as Largest Ever A system of gigantic ancient valleys -- some as much as 125 miles (200 kilometers) wide -- has been spotted partly buried under eons of volcanic lava, ash and wind-blown dust on Mars. Observations made using a laser altimeter on the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft reveal what may be large flood channels near a volcano called Arsia Mons. The features are in Mars' western hemisphere, south of Amazonis Planitia, an area thought to have once been a vast ocean. The study adds to plenty of evidence collected in recent years, most of it by the Mars Global Surveyor, that the Red Planet was once warm and wet.

27-Jul-2001 - Space-Buff Volunteers Wanted as Solar System Ambassadors Want to guide others on an armchair adventure to the moons of Jupiter and the surface of Mars? NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., is inviting applications from space enthusiasts nationwide for the Solar System Ambassador program. The program brings together motivated volunteers from across the nation with top space scientists and engineers to help tell the public about exciting solar system discoveries and future explorations. Applications for year 2002 ambassadors will be accepted during the month of September 2001. Final selections will be announced in December.

26-Jul-2001 - Girl Scouts shoot for the stars (Telegraph Herald) Five, four, three, two, one ... "Blast off!" The rockets launched through the humid summer on a mission to Mars. Of course, the rockets were made of paper and headed toward an inflatable model of the red planet, but it didn't really matter to the Girl Scouts attending day camp at Camp Little Cloud Tuesday. "We've got rocket engineers and scientists!" said Jackie Allen, a NASA scientist from the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Allen is visiting Camp Little Cloud this week, teaching campers about space science.

26-Jul-2001 - Bright light in night is Mars (The Charlotte Observer) That red glare in the east? It's no rocket. It's Mars, the red planet, which hasn't been this close to Earth since 1988. Mars will be the brightest star in the sky most of the rest of the summer. The reason: As both planets orbit the sun, Earth is passing Mars like a stock-car racer on the inside track, something it does once every two years. In addition, says David Wingert, an astronomer at Georgia State University, Mars is near perihelion, the closest it will get to the sun.

19-Jul-2001 - Planet of Little Green Men Still Fascinates For millennia mankind has been obsessed with the "Star of Death." Today some people dream of colonizing the planet and even the U.S. space agency, NASA, has not given up hope of finding evidence of life on Mars. That obsession hit a high in 1938 with the "War of the Worlds," a radio broadcast during which Orson Welles fooled Americans into believing that a hoard of little green men were invading New Jersey -- causing many Americans to flee their homes in panic as a result of the hoax.

18-Jul-2001 - Tales of the RAT Man: A History and Future of Mars Rovers A shiny six-wheeled robot lumbers through reddish sand, cautiously studying the rocky, dusty landscape with stereo eyes. Boulders are everywhere, each a potential storehouse of information or an obstacle to be avoided. A hidden ravine could spell a quick end.

18-Jul-2001 - INSIDE JPL: Technologists, Their Toys and Troubled Times Too many rules, staff cuts and radically altered goals put NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory on a course destined for failure, while a brain drain has robbed the lab of decades of wisdom. Employee pride and morale is wounded. But there are signs of hope. Over the next four Wednesdays, SPACE.com takes you inside JPL to see what's right, what's wrong and what's changing.

17-Jul-2001 - NASA Celebrates 25th Anniversary of Mars Landing Twenty-five years ago, on July 20, 1976, NASA's Viking 1 lander soft-landed on the surface of Mars, becoming the first successful mission to land on the red planet, as well as the first successful American landing on another planet. With a second lander later joining the first on the surface and with two orbiters circling the planet, the Viking project changed our understanding of that alien world. Its treasure trove of images and data covering the entire Martian globe remains a valuable scientific resource for the study of Mars.

16-Jul-2001 - Now showing: The Red Planet (News & Record) It could be called the planet formally known as red. In the night sky, Mars appears as more of a creamy, butterscotch hue than the blood-spattered, Roman god of war whose name it bears. Nevertheless, Mars, the fourth planet from the sun, is beautiful. People everywhere can catch a stunning glimpse of the neighboring planet with the naked eye this summer.

8-Jul-2001 - Mission to Mars starts with view from UA (Tuscaloosa News) In a society fascinated with the new, it may have been refreshing to see a crowd flocking to see a billion-year-old ball of red dust, as curious viewers sought a good look at Mars Friday night. The long line snaked beneath the stairs leading to the University of Alabama's rooftop telescope in Gallalee Hall. Organizers estimated the number of visitors at 300. The line formed to take a good look - the best for several years - at the Red Planet, lying low in the southern sky.

5-Jul-2001 - Hubble Views Mars at its Closest to Earth The powerful Hubble Space Telescope has snapped the best images of Mars ever taken from Earth. Sharp-eyed optics on the orbiting facility resolved features on the red planet as small as 10 miles (15 kilometers) across. A little help from Mars itself made taking the up-close pictures possible. Last month, Mars and Earth were at the closest points in their respective orbits. Distance between the two worlds was 43 million miles (68 million kilometers). That’s the closest Mars has been to Earth since 1988, and the best viewing for Hubble since it was lofted in 1990.

3-Jul-2001 - Brown Center guests get $100 peek at Mars (Inland Empire Online) About 175 contributors looked at the Brown Center for Innovation through rose-colored glasses Saturday night. Actually, they were red and blue and they were provided as 3-D glasses to view panels depicting a Martian landscape. But the view was rosy not just on Mars, but at $100 a head, for the center as well. Guests viewed a sampling of the center's exhibits, including a remote-control Mars rover, some high school physics projects and one of the most popular devices: a space suit.

3-Jul-2001 - A desert planet in the night sky (The Boston Globe) Look rather low in the southern sky after dark, and there you'll see a brilliant point of light - an untwinkling orange star staring back at you like a fire-colored eye. This is the planet Mars. It is brighter and nearer to Earth this June and July than it has been in a dozen years. Near, however, is a relative term; Mars is 43 million miles away this week. Look at it through a good amateur telescope and you'll see a tiny, desert-colored ball with a few dark markings. On one edge, you may glimpse the whitish fringe of the north polar cloud hood. And that's about all.

2-Jul-2001 - Mars advances to the front in this month's night skies If a Martian wants to wave hello, this is the time. The red planet is closer to Earth during July than it has been since 1988, hanging like a ripe cherry in the southeastern sky at dusk. Look for Mars early and often, however, for the planet already has slipped behind Earth in the race around the sun and we are pulling farther ahead day by day. By the end of July, Mars will appear noticeably smaller.

22-Jun-2001 - Surfing Into Saturday: Sites for sighting Mars With Mars in its best position to view in years, budding astronomers will want to take note of these sites to help explore the red planet and the infinite universe beyond.

22-Jun-2001 - Touching the Universe What does a star feel like? Since nearly all astronomical knowledge is based on light — something that is seen, not touched — that can seem an impossible question. But for the more than 10 million visually impaired people in the United States, seeing stars and planets and other objects in the night sky isn't possible. In recent years, however, a few devices — tactile maps, books and one small-scale planetarium — have emerged to help the blind gain a sense of their cosmic surroundings.

21-Jun-2001 - A Close Encounter with Mars Today Earth and Mars will be closer together than at any time during the last 12 years. Stargazers won't want to miss the Red Planet blazing bright in the midnight sky. Check most any astronomer's 2001 calendar and you'll find June 21st circled. It's a big day for astronomy! For starters, June 21st marks the beginning of northern summer and the longest day of the year north of the equator. The Sun will climb to its highest point in the sky at 7:38 UT (3:38 EDT), a moment known as the summer solstice.

21-Jun-2001 - A Grand Return of Mars (Sky & Telescope) Not often do we Earthbound observers get a good look at Mars. It's a small planet to begin with, and it spends most of its time far away. Usually it's just a tiny, fuzzy orange blob in the eyepiece. The only time we get a good look at its surface markings, clouds, dust storms, and changing polar caps is during the months around its oppositions, which come a little more than two years apart. And not all Mars oppositions are created equal. The best ones come in bunches of two or three that repeat in a cycle 16 years long.

21-Jun-2001 - Mars set for bright climb up island summer skies (Honolulu Star-Bulletin) Islanders will have a spectacular view of the Red Planet this summer in the night sky in the east, says Mike Shanahan, Bishop Museum Planetarium manager. "It's not as bright as Venus, but it is still way bright for Mars," he said. Mars -- called "Hoku'ulua" in Hawaiian for "red star" -- is coming closer to Earth. It is the brightest the planet has been since 1988 and, further into the summer, it will move higher in the western sky at sunset, Shanahan said.

20-Jun-2001 - South Florida looks forward -- and up -- to Mars sighting (The Miami Herald) It is that oh-so-special time in South Florida -- breath-sapping heat and menacing tropical storms and refuge denied even at Joe's Stone Crab, closed until coolness. So, we find distraction where we can, and on Thursday, nature offers two noteworthy diversions: The longest day of the year, and a spectacular celestial show at night when Mars glides to its closest approach to Earth in 13 years and reveals its fullness in our southern sky.

19-Jun-2001 - Mars to Appear Larger, Brighter If you look up at the sky on Thursday night, the first day of summer, you will see a golden-colored Mars looming larger and brighter than it has in over a decade. The Red Planet is at its closest point to Earth since 1988 and will be visible to the naked eye anywhere in the world for the next two weeks, with Thursday being its brightest night.

17-Jun-2001 - A Martian mission for desi Earthlings (The Times of India) Attention Martians, the Earthlings have landed! Well, almost. But that's not all, here's some news which will make the other kids on the Indian block turn green with envy. Billed as `Red Rover Goes To Mars', the project forms part of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Mars Surveyor 2002 mission and offers an opportunity to students from across the globe to participate in this exploratory mission.

16-Jun-2001 - Astronomically auspicious day (South African Press Association) The Martians are coming. Closer. On June 21, Mars will make its closest approach to Earth since 1988, with the distance between the two planets narrowing to a mere 67-million kilometres, the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO) announced on Thursday. The Red Planet, as Mars is often called, which currently appears as a bright orange "star" in the eastern sky soon after sunset, will remain brighter than any of the actual stars in the night sky until mid-October, the SAAO says in a statement.

13-Jun-2001 - Brighter, Redder Mars to Illuminate Summer Nights Hold on to your hats and keep a pair of binoculars handy: After a 26-month sprint around the track of the solar system, we are about to lap Mars again. Today, the red planet is in "opposition," an event that puts Earth between Mars and the Sun. On June 21, Mars will be at its closest distance from Earth since 1988, a mere 67.3 million kilometers (approximately 42 million miles). All summer long, Mars will be brighter than usual, particularly for sky-watchers in the southern United States and those in the Southern Hemisphere.

13-Jun-2001 - Mars Pays a 'Close' Visit to Earth British stargazers can enjoy a close encounter of the Martian kind Wednesday night when the red planet makes its closest approach to Earth in a dozen years. Mars will be close enough to view in detail with a small telescope and it will be brilliantly lit by the Sun.

13-Jun-2001 - Red letter day for stargazers (The Scotsman) IT WAS like something straight out of a science-fiction film - a close encounter of the Martian kind in the form of a bright red disc hovering over the tops of trees and houses. However, while the spectacular sight was expected to trigger a flood of UFO reports last night, the Earth was not about to be invaded by the little green men. The strange red phenomenon was the planet Mars making its closest approach to Earth in more than a dozen years. The planet was a mere 42 million miles away - close enough for the polar ice caps to be seen through a small telescope.

12-Jun-2001 - Red Planet Viewer's Guide: Earth and Mars Converge By the time you finish reading this sentence, you'll be over 30 miles (50 kilometers) closer to the Red Planet. Earth and Mars are converging at 22,000 miles per hour (10 kilometers per second) as the pair head for a close encounter this month. On June 21st Mars will lie just 42.3 million miles (68 million kilometers) from Earth -- the nearest it's been in a dozen years.

11-Jun-2001 - Mars putting on dazzling show for stargazers Mars is ready for its close-up. On June 21, Earth and Mars will be about 42 million miles (67.3 million kilometers) apart, the closest the two planets have been since 1988 when they came within 37 million miles (59 million kilometers) of each other. As Earth races toward the red planet at 22,000 mph, Mars appears as a brilliant orange disk, brighter than any other object in its region of the sky -- except on nights when the moon is nearby.

10-Jun-2001 - Mars offers a rare good view (The Columbus Dispatch) Mars is the most frustrating of the planets. The fourth planet from the sun orbits tantalizingly close to the third planet, Earth. Mars isn't that much farther from the sun than we are, and its climate shows remarkable similarities to Earth's. For hundreds of years, telescopic observations suggested the possibility of life, perhaps even the intelligent variety. The proximity of the red planet is deceptive, however. Mars is only about 4,100 miles wide, about half the diameter of our planet. Mars is so small it that shows surface features only when Earth is between Mars and the sun, a condition that astronomers call a Mars opposition. As Earth laps Mars in their cosmic race, for a few weeks every 2 1/2 years or so, Mars is only 35 million to 50 million miles from us, and its polar caps and mysterious green markings become visible.

10-Jun-2001 - Garneau says Canada will gear up for Mars (The Toronto Star) Marc Garneau, Canada's first astronaut and now vice-president of the Canadian Space Agency, told participants at a recent space exploration conference in Montreal that Mars will be a major goal for Canadian space exploration efforts in the next decade. Noting that countries such as Italy and France are providing experiments to fly aboard U.S. robotic probes to be launched toward Mars later this decade, Garneau said Canada should do the same. He said the initiative will be funded by $500 million of new'' Canadian Space Agency money over an unspecified period, not at the expense of cutting existing space programs.

5-Jun-2001 - Historic globes go missing Three valuable, historic globes of the Moon and Mars have been stolen from London's Science Museum. On 10 May they were locked away, while being photographed for a new exhibition. Five days later, they were discovered missing. Museum officials say that police have started an enquiry. Specialists in old scientific instruments and maps have been told to look out for the globes.

30-May-2001 - Mars To Spark UFO Sightings According to a recent report by BBC News, the next few weeks should bring an unusually large number of UFO sightings as Mars passes close to the Earth. Mars will appear as a bright red light hovering over the tops of houses and trees. According to astronomers, many skywatchers are expected to mistake the red planet for some other unearthly body.

21-May-2001 - Earth and Mars Converge By the time you finish reading this sentence, you'll be 30 miles (50 kilometers) closer to the Red Planet. Earth and Mars are converging at 22,000 miles per hour (10 kilometers per second) as the pair head for a close encounter next month. On June 21st Mars will lie just 42.3 million miles (68 million kilometers) from Earth -- the nearest it's been in a dozen years.

15-May-2001 - The Great Mars Rush By the time you finish reading this sentence, you'll be 50 kilometers closer to the Red Planet. Earth and Mars are converging at 10 km/s (22,000 mph) as the pair head for a close encounter next month. On June 21st Mars will lie just 68 million km from Earth -- the nearest it's been in a dozen years.

9-May-2001 - Ridgeview student wins science fair (The Florida Times-Union) Lee Yaracs, a Ridgeview High School junior, wants to go to college and become an astronomer to study the stars that have long intrigued him. "I have always been really interested in astronomy," he said. "I've always been interested in stars." Yaracs, 17, won the grand prize for the latest version of his project studying seed growth and development in low-gravity environments such as that of the moon and Mars. He beat out more than 900 other students from across the state to win the top award, which comes with cash and other prizes.

1-May-2001 - LPSC 2001: A Martian Odyssey The 32nd Annual Lunar and Planetary Sciences Conference -- held in Houston from March 12 through 16 -- like all the LPSCs before it, was a major scientific powwow at which scientists from the world over presented hundreds of papers and posters on the geology, meteorology and chemistry of the other worlds and objects in our Solar System, from giant planets down to meteorites. As to be expected a major theme of this year's LPSC was the ongoing debate as to just how much liquid water Mars had on or near its surface during its earliest days, and how much it has now.

30-Apr-2001 - Mars and Mercury dominate May skies Mercury and Mars dominate the evening sky this month, with Mercury putting on its best display of the year while Mars warms up for its best appearance in a decade. Earth is overtaking Mars in the race around the sun. Mars will appear to move to the east, or retrograde, against the stars, reaching the constellation of Sagittarius on May 11. Mars then resumes its normal, westerly course, ending the month in Scorpius. As the two planets draw closer together, Mars appears bigger and brighter. Mars also is slowly nearing the sun which increases the planet's brightness.

22-Apr-2001 - Book review: Seeing red (Savannah Morning News) Mars: The Lure of the Red Planet. "In their wide-ranging book, William Sheehan and Stephen James O'Meara survey humanity's enduring fascination with the red planet."

19-Apr-2001 - New Acting Director Appointed for NASA's Mars Exploration Program NASA announced today that Mars Program Director, G. Scott Hubbard, has decided to leave that position following a successful year leading the agency's robotic exploration program. Orlando Figueroa, currently the Deputy Chief Engineer for Systems Engineering at NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC, was appointed to replace Hubbard as Acting Director, starting May 6. "Scott Hubbard was given 'mission impossible' and turned it into 'mission accomplished,'" said Dr. Ed Weiler, Associate Administrator for Space Science at NASA Headquarters. "When we were hit with the back-to-back loss of two Mars missions, I knew we had to get the best person on the job. Scott did a top-to-bottom reorganization of the program, and earlier this month we had the first launch in the new program, the 2001 Mars Odyssey."

12-Apr-2001 - Runners-up in the space race (The Economist) The global space club grows by the day. How do the aims and achievements of the world’s lesser space-faring nations compare? The exploration and exploitation of space is more than just a two-horse race between Russia and America. Europe, Japan, India and China all have space programmes, and several other countries are bringing up the rear. Their accomplishments and motives vary widely. The Indian and Chinese space programmes, like those of Russia and America four decades ago, are by-products of missile development that are meant to show off their technological prowess. Europe’s space programme is driven by commercial rather than military ambitions. Japan’s is somewhere in between.

5-Apr-2001 - Sounds of an alien planet (iafrica) In 2007 the French space agency will be launching their Netlander mission, which will take four small spacecraft to Mars, as well as a super-sensitive microphone. For the first time, we will be able to hear the sounds of an alien planet.

5-Apr-2001 - Martian chronicles (The Economist) The more scientists know about the place, the less they understand it. Will this weekend’s launch of a new mission to Mars help? ON APRIL 7th, if all goes well, America’s space agency NASA will renew its assault on Mars. The craft it is launching—dubbed the 2001 Mars Odyssey—should go into orbit around the planet in October. It will then spend one Martian year (ie, about two terrestrial ones) examining the surface, using three instruments. One is a thermal-emission imaging system, designed to study minerals by examining the infra-red light that they emit. The second is a gamma-ray spectrometer, which will probe the soil in a search for, among other things, hydrogen (and, by association, water). The third is a radiation experiment designed to work out how dangerous the Martian environment might be for human exploration.

2-Apr-2001 - Mars Microphone Has New Ticket To Ride on NetLander Mission (Planetary Society) The Planetary Society's Mars Microphone will hitch a new ride to the Red Planet on board the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) NetLander mission in 2007. CNES is the national space agency of France. NetLander will deploy four landers on the surface of Mars and network them together to study the deep interior, geology and atmosphere of Mars. "We have seen other worlds and even touched them via robotic senses," said Louis Friedman, Executive Director of The Planetary Society, "but the Mars Microphone will offer humanity the first opportunity to listen to the sounds on the surface of an alien world."

2-Apr-2001 - Group To Send Microphone to Mars An international group of space enthusiasts announced Monday a microphone will be sent to Mars in 2007 aboard a French spacecraft, easing the disappointment of a previous U.S. attempt that ended in failure. The Planetary Society said the microphone will be included in the French space agency's NetLander mission, which will land four small spacecraft on Mars. The nonprofit group had funded a similar attempt once before, but it ended in failure when the microphone and the NASA spacecraft carrying it were lost.

13-Mar-2001 - Forgotten Moons: Phobos and Deimos Eat Mars' Celebrity Dust With the recent surprise landing of a robotic probe on Asteroid 433 Eros and missions scheduled regularly to focus on Mars, some say it's time to dust off plans to send a spacecraft to the Red Planet's two mysterious moons. Phobos and Deimos, shadowed by the Red Planet's celebrity status, have a spotty history of exploration.

10-Mar-2001 - Mayan Mars (Science News) The curiously looping movements of the planets relative to the stars have presented all sorts of puzzles to keen, patient observers of the night sky. In 1601, Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) undertook the challenge of deciphering the orbit of Mars and developing a mathematical theory of its motion to fit observations of the planet's changing position in the sky. In assuming that Earth itself traveled around the sun, Kepler's immediate hurdle was to find a way to disentangle Mars' motion from that of Earth. He then faced the daunting task of choosing an appropriate geometry for the two planetary orbits so that a line joining Mars and Earth and projected to the stars would correctly mark the position of Mars relative to the stars as seen from Earth. Remarkably, several centuries earlier in Central America, Mayan astronomers had developed their own model to describe the motion of Mars with uncanny accuracy. Anthropologists Harvey M. Bricker and Victoria R. Bricker of Tulane University in New Orleans and astronomer Anthony F. Aveni of Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., describe the evidence supporting the Mayan model in the Feb. 13 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

6-Mar-2001 - Go To Mars At Stennishere's Astro Camp Saturday The next space mission at StenniSphere's Astro Camp Saturday will be "Mission to Mars" on March 17. A few spaces still remain for children ages 9-12. In this session of the popular space camp, children can build their own model rockets for a make believe trip to Mars. Seven slots are still available for this one-day mission at NASA Stennis Space Center's visitor center. The cost is $50 and includes lunch in the RocKeTeria and all supplies.

3-Mar-2001 - Indian kids on trip to Mars (The Hindustan Times) ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD Harikrishna Ramani is ecstatic. He is among the five Indian students out of nine selected from around the world for the Mars exploratory mission. But he has only one regret. He could make it only as part of the backup team of student navigators. The United States-based Planetary Society selected 11-year-old Avinash Chandrashekhar, 13-year-old Bhushan Prakash Mahadik and 16-year-old Shaleen Rajendra Harlalka from a total of 51 students around the world.

26-Feb-2001 - Case For Life On Mars Withstands Criticism, Gains Scientific Support Researchers who stunned the world in 1996 with the announcement that a Martian meteorite contained evidence of ancient life on the red planet have released new evidence that strengthens their original hypothesis and allays many of the criticisms leveled at the first paper. In this latest paper, published in the scientific journal Precambrian Research Feb. 17, two additional Martian meteorites were examined - Nakhla and Shergotty, 1.3 billion and 165 to 175 million years old, respectively. Both younger meteorites showed the same evidence of microfossils and other remnants of early life as the original meteorite, the 4.5-billion-year-old ALH84001. "If the features observed in the two younger Martian meteorites are confirmed to have a biogenic origin, life may have existed on Mars from 3.9 billion years ago to as recently as 165 to 175 million years ago," said Everett K. Gibson, a geochemist at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston and the senior author on the paper.

20-Feb-2001 - School Kids Find Mars Mystery (Planetary Society) Last week, the Planetary Society's Red Rover Goes to Mars Student Scientists made planetary exploration history. They were the first members of the public to direct a camera aboard a spacecraft orbiting another world, the NASA Mars Global Surveyor (MGS). One of the pictures they targeted shows something new about the planet's surface -- a surprising cluster of dark-colored boulders smack dab in the middle of light-colored terrain. How the boulders got there and what geological history they represent on Mars are questions scientists still need to answer.

19-Feb-2001 - Software Tries 'Concept Mapping' Ever since Johann Gutenberg invented the printing press nearly six centuries ago, people have been organizing information page by page. Even in the computer age, they still are doing it on Web pages. That perplexed researchers at the University of West Florida's Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, which works to make computers more useful and user-friendly. Why should we organize it as pages? There's no reason,'' said associate director Alberto Canas. It's just that we're used to it.'' Canas heads a team that took a learning tool called concept mapping, developed with paper and pencil in the 1970s, and turned it into a pageless method of browsing Web sites. Geoffrey Briggs, director of the Center for Mars Exploration at NASA (news - web sites)'s Ames Research Center in California, is among the first users. He created a Mars concept map on the Net. A link to this map is at the end of the article.

15-Feb-2001 - Mars exhibit awes (Florida Today) Learn about Mars and you learn about Earth. So says Dr. Steven Lee, expert on the Red Planet and scientific advisor for MarsQuest, an interactive exhibition on view through May 6 at the Orlando Science Center. "We want to present 'Mars, the National Park,' " Lee said. "We want to take people to a few places on the surface that are a lot like Earth - volcanoes, polar caps, clouds, dry riverbeds. People can relate to that." The sleek exhibition - with a concept strong on scientific fact, working in concert with solid visual design - provides visitors with astute insights into our solar system's fourth and third planets. It features 16 interactive displays, five computer stations, two videos, seven scale models and a theater with high-definition video images of Mars.

12-Feb-2001 - NASA Wants You ... To Identify Martian Craters If you ever dreamed of doing a little science -- maybe classifying some Martian craters -- but didn't think you had the necessary skills, NASA has a program for you. And it just might save you and other U.S. taxpayers a buck or two. An interactive online project called Clickworkers lets volunteers study decades-old pictures of Mars from the Viking spacecraft and pick out some of the thousands of craters that need classifying. It's the kind of tedium that most scientists might like to rise above. NASA bills the project as an experiment "to see if public volunteers, each working for a few minutes here and there, can do some routine science analysis."

9-Feb-2001 - Volpe appointed manager of Mars subsurface technology Richard Volpe, former manager of robotic autonomy architecture at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., has been named manager of JPL's Mars Regional Mobility and Subsurface Access Technology office. In this new role, Volpe will oversee and coordinate the technology and development for next-generation Mars surface and subsurface exploration. This will include overseeing demonstrations of future mission concepts.

8-Feb-2001 - Donna Shirley to Speak ay YWCA Benefit (Bellevue, WA) (YWCA) “Her phone number spells MARS, her car is a Saturn, and her home is the closest you can get to a cabin in the sky. Donna Shirley isn’t your ordinary Earthbound mortal. In fact, for 30 years she has spent 8 to 18 hours a day planning how to get out of this world and onto other planets.” —Los Angeles Times.

6-Feb-2001 - Secrets of the Martian Noachian Highlands (SpaceFlight Now) Among the most exciting places that the Mars Global Surveyor's Mars Orbiter Camera has photographed during its three and a half years in orbit has been this crater in central Noachis Terra.

5-Feb-2001 - Franklin students link up with Mars (The Times Online) It was difficult to tell who was more excited about Monday's simulated excursion to Mars: the sixth grade students at Franklin Elementary School or U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill. The congressman stopped by the Dolton school to watch students participate in a computerized Mars exploration program and found himself a part of the exercise. Jackson sat side-by-side with students in front of computers in the school's media center as they followed detailed and complicated instructions that would lead to the make-believe launching of their Athena II rockets into outer space. Jackson offered the youngsters some assistance along the way, telling them what steps they were supposed to be completing to make the mission work.

4-Feb-2001 - History, pop culture and science look to Mars (Orlando Sentinel) Jupiter has its enormous size, Saturn has its rings and Pluto has its distance from the sun. But when it comes to planetary popularity, perhaps no other planet than Mars has inspired human imagination for so long. As far as historians know, Babylonians were the first to mention the planet, identifying it with the god of conflict and battle. The Egyptians also made references to the planet, as did the Greeks and the Romans. Even in more-scientifically enlightened times, Mars retained a strong allure, thanks in part to humankind's incessant desire to discover extraterrestrial life in the void of space.

4-Feb-2001 - February offers great viewing of five planets, including Mars February is a planet-watcher's special. Four of the five planets visible to the naked eye are on display, and even Mercury may be spotted if the sky is clear this week. Mars rises after midnight. The red planet appears to be moving eastward from the stars of Libra toward those of Scorpius, which it joins at the end of February. The Earth actually is overtaking Mars in their race around the sun. By summer the distance between the two will shrink from the present 112 million miles to 42 million. Little detail on Mars is visible now, but that will change as the planet nears opposition.

4-Feb-2001 - Sand dunes appear as sharks' teeth in Mars crater (SpaceFlight Now) Sometimes, pictures received from Mars Global Surveyor's Mars Orbiter Camera are "just plain pretty." This image, taken in early September 2000, shows a group of sand dunes at the edge of a much larger field of dark-toned dunes in Proctor Crater.

3-Feb-2001 - Mars expert speaks in Orlando; exhibit opens at Science Center Learn about water on Mars and other aspects of our celestial neighbor's hostile environment when Dr. Steven Lee speaks today at the Orlando Science Center. Lee is an expert on the planet. He monitors Mars with the Hubble Space Telescope and helped develop the camera system aboard the Mars Climate Orbiter, a spacecraft that was lost before it reached Mars in 1999. He is science adviser for the traveling exhibition, "Mars-Quest," which opens today at the science center and runs through May 6.

3-Feb-2001 - Take a peek at the Red Planet's fretted terrain (SpaceFlight Now) Martian "fretted terrain" occurs in regions of buttes and mesas that stand at the erosional margin where northern low-lying plains meet the higher-standing cratered uplands. Found mostly in the mid-northern latitudes, some of the best examples of fretted terrain occur in Deuteronilus Mensae.

2-Feb-2001 - Loophole lets firm sell real estate on Mars (Independent News) A British company that sells plots on the Moon began selling land on Mars and Venus yesterday. MoonEstates Ltd, based in St Austell, Cornwall, has sold more than 75,000 acres of the Moon since September. Sue Williams of MoonEstates Ltd said: "The Moon has been so successful and we had a lot of people say, 'We have got a bit of Moon and it would be nice to own a bit of somewhere else'."

1-Feb-2001 - A Mars Never Dreamed of (National Geographic) As the Mars Global Surveyor beams home unprecedented images, our assumptions about the red planet explode.

26-Jan-2001 - Greening of the Red Planet Although Mars may once have been warm and wet, the Red Planet today is a frozen wasteland. Most scientists agree, it's highly unlikely that any living creature --even a microbe-- could survive for long on the surface of Mars. When the first humans travel there to explore the Red Planet up close, they will have to grow their food in airtight, heated greenhouses. The Martian atmosphere is far too cold and dry for edible plants to grow in the open air. But if humans ever hope to establish long-term colonies on their planetary neighbor, they will no doubt want to find a way to farm outdoors. Imre Friedmann has an idea of how they might take the first step.

24-Jan-2001 - High School Students To Plan Community On Mars While living at Johnson Space Center the weekend of Feb. 2-4, Houston area high school students will use their imagination and knowledge to design complete details of a human settlement on Mars in the year 2045. About 140 students from Houston and Southeast Texas will participate in the Third Annual JSC Mars Settlement Design Competition, a program designed to introduce students to the technical, communication and teamwork skills they will need when they join industry. The Mars Settlement Design Competition is one of the key events of NASA’s month-long outreach effort in support of National Engineers Week.

9-Jan-2001 - Nasa seeks crater raters Nasa is looking for space enthusiasts to help it find and classify craters on Mars. Scientists at the American space agency's Ames Research Center want to recruit "clickworkers" who are happy to spend time looking through a series of images of the Martian surface and rating the craters they find. Nasa is turning to people to do the job because they tend to be more discriminating than computer software designed for the same task. If the pilot project proves successful, the clickworkers could be asked to help the agency process the huge amounts of data from Nasa's present and future Martian probes.

5-Jan-2001 - Choosing Martian Landing Sites (The Planetary Society) In late 2003 and early 2004, the surface of Mars will be invaded by not just one but three mechanical ambassadors from Earth. The Beagle 2 lander, the United Kingdom's contribution to the European Mars Express mission, is set to land on Mars in December, 2003. NASA's two spacecraft will follow close behind. Mars Exploration Rover One (MER 1) is scheduled to arrive at the red planet on January 4, 2004. Its twin, MER 2, is scheduled for landing on February 8, 2004. Deciding exactly where these spacecraft will land has provided some interesting challenges.

2-Jan-2001 - The Planetary Society Announces for 2001, a Space Art Odyssey (The Planetary Society) Mars has beckoned for centuries, inspiring mythology, science fiction and now an International Space Art Contest. The Planetary Society invites participants of all ages worldwide to draw what Mars would look like if one were standing on the planet's surface. The contest is held in conjunction with The Planetary Society's Red Rover Goes to Mars Training Mission where Student Scientists are to select a suitable landing site on Mars to which Earth might one day send a Mars sample return mission. Art contest entrants must depict what such a landing site on Mars for a robotic spacecraft might look like at ground level -- both now and a century hence. "The art contest reminds us that planetary exploration isn't just for 'rocket scientists.' People of all ages who are imaginative and artistically inclined can participate," said Linda Kelly, Education Manager of the Red Rover Goes to Mars project.

11-Dec-2000 - Mission Surge Goal: Decode Mars' Mysteries (Aviation Week & Space Technology) With all options back on the table, international teams are exploring new technology, advanced radioisotope power sources and Russian participation.

11-Dec-2000 - Interview of President Clinton by the Discovery Channel (U.S. Newswire) The following transcript was released today by the White House: "Let us talk about Mars..."

10-Dec-2000 - Latest reports about Mars fuel hunger for more data (FLORIDA TODAY editorial) Since someone long ago first noticed its reddish gleam in the sky, people have wondered about Mars - and dreamed of going there. Now there's more reason to wonder and dream about the Red Planet. For the second time this year, a team of scientists has publicly announced discoveries that indicate water once existed on Mars. Michael Malin and Ken Edgett said Monday that images from the orbiting Mars Global Surveyor show rock formations consistent with ancient lake beds.

8-Dec-2000 - How high the moon? Windsor man says he can give you a good deal on some lunar property (Detroit Free Press) Tom Doran sells real estate. On the moon. Through Moon Land Registry in Windsor, he sells nice one-acre plots near the Alphonsus Crater for $11 U.S. For the same price, you can buy a little piece of Mars, Venus or Io, a moon of Jupiter.

1-Dec-2000 - Major Mars Discovery to be Announced at Dec 7 Briefing Imaging scientists Dr. Michael Malin and Dr. Ken Edgett from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft will present what they describe as their most significant discovery yet at a Space Science Update at 2:00 p.m. EST on Thursday, Dec. 7. Their findings are being published in the December 8 issue of Science Magazine.

20-Nov-2000 - New Mars research facility to involve scientists, kids Arizona State University and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, are creating a new NASA facility that will be used by scientists and students studying Mars. ASU and JPL will jointly fund the facility, with JPL providing $1.45 million in initial funding. The ASU Planetary Imaging Facility and Advanced Training Institute (PIF-ATI) is an expansion of a facility originally planned to support the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS), a thermal infrared camera system that will fly on the 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft and is directed by ASU Geological Sciences Professor Philip Christensen. According to NASA and ASU scientists, the facility is "a new model" for planetary research projects that will allow greater instrument and data access to scientists outside the project, as well as to university students and even to 5th through 12th grade educators and their students. Also in the planning stages is a graduate and undergraduate program where entry-level personnel can be trained in spacecraft operations and maintenance.

14-Nov-2000 - Students man their own mission to Mars (thetimesonline.com) Willowcreek Middle School seventh-graders manned a space mission Tuesday to the planet Mars. Actually, it was a simulated mission to launch a probe on Mars that took place at Purdue University Calumet's Challenger Learning Center. Half the day was spent with students in mission control, guiding the ship, and the other half was in the actual simulated shuttle. The finale of the six-week science unit was held at the center to allow the students to use the specialized skills they had been honing as members of seven teams.

8-Nov-2000 - NASA Outlines Mars Exploration Program For Next Two Decades (ScienceDaily Magazine) By means of orbiters, landers, rovers and sample return missions, NASA's revamped campaign to explore Mars, announced today, is poised to unravel the secrets of the red planet's past environments, the history of its rocks, the many roles of water and, possibly, evidence of past or present life. Six major missions are planned in this decade as part of a scientific tapestry that will weave a tale of new understanding of Earth's sometimes enigmatic and surprising neighbor.

6-Nov-2000 - Mars In The Early 21st Century NASA's Solar System exploration program is currently undergoing a period of crisis and drastic redesign, due both to the failures of last year's Mars probes and to very severe problems of project cost overruns and funding limitations. Its radically redesigned Mars program was unveiled on Oct. 26, and a similarly radical redesign in its Outer Planets exploration program will follow within the next two months.

6-Nov-2000 - NASA's Upcoming Mars Missions: French Landers, An Italian Orbiter and More The rungs of NASA’s ladder to Mars include mainly orbiters and landers, along with a number of other robotic vehicles like rovers, airplanes and balloons thrown in for good measure. NASA hopes to send at least one lander and one orbiter every 26 months to Mars, with the activity intensifying in 2007, when the American space agency will begin teaming up with its French and Italian counterparts on a slew of missions. NASA estimates that it will have as much as $450 million a year to lavish on Mars, although any single mission to collect and return samples of Martian soil and rocks could far exceed that amount.

26-Oct-2000 - NASA unveils new Mars exploration plan After last year's loss of two red planet explorers, NASA on Thursday unveiled an ambitious plan to send eight or more probes to Mars over the next two decades to search for evidence of water or life. The fleet of orbiters, landers and rovers would employ new technologies that expand their scientific capabilities, save fuel and improve their chances of surviving on the red planet, NASA's chief Mars mission managers said Thursday.

26-Oct-2000 - Nasa Outlines Mars Exploration Program For Next Two Decades By means of orbiters, landers, rovers and sample return missions, NASA's revamped campaign to explore Mars, announced today, is poised to unravel the secrets of the Red Planet 's past environments, the history of its rocks, the many roles of water and, possibly, evidence of past or present life. Six major missions are planned in this decade as part of a scientific tapestry that will weave a tale of new understanding of Earth's sometimes enigmatic and surprising neighbor.

25-Oct-2000 - NASA to announce 2005 mission to Mars Still smarting over the loss of two spacecraft last year, NASA scientists are ready to unveil a much more cautious campaign to deploy robots on the surface of Mars over the next 15 years, CNN has learned. The space agency's Mars brain trust on Thursday will announce a 2005 mission in which an orbiter will map the Martian surface with an eagle-eyed camera. In 2007, a "major lander and rover" mission will follow.

24-Oct-2000 - France to Join U.S. In Mars Exploration Mission France's Research Ministry said on Tuesday it had signed a "statement of intent" with the U.S. space agency NASA for joint cooperation in its Mars exploration program. A ministry statement said details of the agreement with NASA would be made public Thursday. Industry officials told Reuters the agreement would probably name the European Ariane 5 rocket as the launch vehicle for a Mars mission in late 2003 or early 2004 to dig up Martian soil to test for organic or other life-related chemical compounds.

11-Oct-2000 - Making a Home on Mars (Discovery.com) Some people dream huge. And planet-sized dreams were at the heart of a conference Tuesday on how to "terraform" Mars into a habitable planet . The first order of business — assuming humans ever get around to implementing such ambitious plans — will be warming up the chilly Red Planet and thickening its thinner-than-Mount-Everest air.

11-Oct-2000 - NASA Warms to Living on Mars (Wired News) It took billions of years before Earth could support life, but scientists think they can create the right conditions on Mars in less than a century by pumping the atmosphere full of greenhouse gases. About 150 physicists and biologists gathered at the NASA Ames Research Center on Tuesday to discuss how the Red Planet might become a livable place.

3-Oct-2000 - Mars Stamps Released By Australia Post (Australia Post) Australia Post’s Stamp Collecting month for October, 2000 shoots for the stars and planets with a fantastic theme ‘revolving’ around the planet Mars and outer space. Artist Otto Schmidinger has set the futuristic Mars Colony and spaceport inside ‘Olympus Mons’, a fifteen mile-high volcano, which dominates the Martian landscape. For more information on the Post's Space Stamps, visit their website

3-Oct-2000 - Varied Protesters Come For Debate Thousands of protesters gathered before the presidential debate Tuesday, championing issues from campaign finance reform to the right of third-party candidates to be included in the matchup between Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush. Demonstrators from all points on the political spectrum were represented. Anti-death penalty advocates mingled with people protesting China's treatment of the Falun Gong spiritual movement. People calling for manned missions to Mars were near a group of Palestinians decrying Israeli military action.

3-Oct-2000 - Student Scientists from Around the World Win Spots on Red Rover Goes to Mars Team (Planetary Society) Nine Student Scientists have been selected from over ten thousand entrants worldwide to serve on the Planetary Society's Red Rover Goes to Mars Training Mission. Ranging in age from 10 to 15, the winners -- four girls, five boys -- will select a possible landing site on Mars for some future sample return mission. The nine winners hail from across the globe -- Brazil, Hungary, India, Poland, Taiwan, and the United States. The winners are Zsofia Bodo, 15, Hungary; Kimberly DeRose, 13, USA; Bernadett Gaal, 14, Hungary; Shaleen Harlalka, 15, India; Iuri Jasper, 12, Brazil; Hsin-Liu Kao, 11, Taiwan; Tanmay Khirwadkar, 13, India; Wojciech Lukasik, 10, Poland; and Vikas Sarangadhara, 10, India.

2-Oct-2000 - Roving the red planet Two rovers from the United States and a lander from Europe will descend on Mars within a month of each other to probe for signs of life and seek liquid water. The independent missions, which are slated for different locations on the red planet, are scheduled for late 2003 and early 2004. The European Space Agency will send Beagle 2, a stationary lander, to examine rocks, dig into the soil, evaluate the air and look for organic matter and other signs of past and present life. Beagle 2 will hitch a ride to the planet with the Mars Express orbiter. Unlike ESA's lander, NASA's rovers will be mobile. NASA will launch the two golf cart-sized rovers separately in 2003. Each will carry five instruments to analyze rock and soil samples on the surface, traveling up to 110 yards (100 meters) a day, as it looks for evidence of liquid water.

20-Sep-2000 - NASA's Mars Roadmap Looms On the Horizon NASA is just weeks away from unveiling its revamped 20-year vision for exploring Mars, a document that promises to teach new dogs old tricks.

19-Sep-2000 - Deciding Where To Land As outlined in the first two parts of this series, there is now a general consensus among Mars researchers that the U.S. Mars program must be redesigned to emphasize careful scientific reconnaissance of the planet in order to find the best possible sites on (or under) its surface to look for evidence of either fossil or "extant" (present-day) life.

12-Sep-2000 - Concepts and Approaches in Mars Exploration NASA has now essentially decided -- in accord with the recommendations of most of the participants at last July's Houston conference on "Concepts and Approaches in Mars Exploration" -- that the form of the Mars program needs to be drastically changed, in the direction of extensive reconaisssance of the planet before landing sites are picked out for unmanned sample-return missions, But what should the details of the new program be?

5-Sep-2000 - SPACE.com Launches SPACE Illustrated Magazine SPACE.com today introduced SPACE Illustrated, a bi-monthly magazine dedicated to conveying the wonder of humankind's greatest adventure through spectacular space imagery and real and imagined content. Our mission is to popularize space by providing the most comprehensive and compelling coverage of the biggest story of our age,'' said Lou Dobbs, SPACE.com Chairman and CEO. We are delighted to extend the reach of our brand into print media with the launch of SPACE Illustrated.'' The magazine's first cover features an image of a young member of Gen S'' - the Space Generation - the first generation to live on Mars. Space visionary Robert Zubrin discusses what life will be like for these future children.

5-Sep-2000 - Building The Infrastructure For Martian Exploration NASA is tentatively scheduled to announce its radically redesigned program for Mars exploration in October -- and in preparation for this, they are accepting mission concept proposals from industry. They also held, in July, a three-day conference at Houston -- "Concepts and Approaches for Mars Exploration" -- at which over 150 papers were delivered by scientists and engineers.

28-Aug-2000 - Los Angeles Meteorite Sold At Auction Two fragments of the Los Angeles meteorite were sold at the Butterfields auction yesterday. The meteorites were on display for preview at Butterfields' Los Angeles office prior to the auction. The auction was held concurrently in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and bids were also taken over the telephone and from the Internet. The final bids of both fragments of the Los Angeles meteorite exceeded their estimated price and ended up selling for about $3000/gram, which included a buyer's premium of 15%.

28-Aug-2000 - Discovery Project: Which Mission Next? Promising NASA the most bang for its buck, scientists have flooded the space agency with proposals for Discovery-class projects, including bids to return lunar samples to Earth, hunt extrasolar planets and fly pilotless gliders through the Valles Marineris on Mars.

28-Aug-2000 - A Little Bit Of Mars Gets Sold Two fragments of the Los Angeles meteorite were sold at the Butterfields auction yesterday. The meteorites were on display for preview at Butterfields' Los Angeles office prior to the auction.

25-Aug-2000 - Los Angeles Meteorite Up For Auction On August 27 Two fragments of the Los Angeles meteorite will be up for auction at the Butterfields Auction on August 27 in Los Angeles. The fragments, weighing 4.539 grams and 1.011 grams respectively, will be in lots #1101 and #1102. The Los Angeles meteorite is only one of 15 known Mars meteorites.

24-Aug-2000 - Thursday's Classroom: Divining Water on Mars (Part 3 of 3) In June 2000 NASA scientists revealed new pictures of the planet Mars that seem to show gullies carved by flooding water. Some of the gullies may have formed thousands of years ago, but others appeared to be just a few days or weeks old. Scientists at the press conference expressed amazement at the possibility of liquid water on present-day Mars. Mars is extraordinarily cold and dry, and keeping water in its liquid form near the surface of the Red Planet is nearly impossible.

22-Aug-2000 - Carl Sagan has a crater on Mars named after him (Indian Express Newspapers) A giant Martian Crater has been named after Carl Sagan, the popular scientist and writer who died four years ago, and Shakespeare's tempest has contributed other names, following the meeting in Manchester of the International Astronomical union over the past week,reports UNI.

20-Aug-2000 - Trip fuels pupil's space dream Sam Martin, 16, has just returned from three weeks at the International Space School and at Nasa's Johnson Space Center in Texas. For him it was the trip of a lifetime - and has helped to refine his ambitions to be an astronaut.

31-Jul-2000 - Can Athena Cut A New Path To Mars The decision we've been waiting for has been reached -- NASA will launch a copy of Cornell University's long-range "Athena" rover to Mars in 2003, rather than Lockheed Martin's proposal for a second Mars Global Surveyor orbiter with a new set of instruments. Scientifically, it was a very close decision -- as even Steven Squyres, the head of the Athena scientific team, admits -- but certainly this mission is more likely to interest the general public. However, that same public popularity has apparently led to a sudden startling twist in the mission selection process that began with NASA's abrupt postponement of the press conference at which the selection was to be announced. The reason for this delay was due to the fact that NASA is suddenly considering a totally unexpected plan to launch a second, duplicate Mars rover to another landing site also in 2003.

28-Jul-2000 - Mars mission critical for Nasa Missions to parts of our solar system may be routine these days but Nasa knows only too well that they remain extremely difficult. Losing two Mars spacecraft in a short period of time, through glaringly stupid errors, did the agency no good at all. Had things worked out the public would be logging on to the Nasa website to hear the Martian breeze whistle across the landscape and scientists would be drowning in data. Instead Nasa is now scrambling around for a new Mars mission that will be both cheap and a sure-fire success.

20-Jul-2000 - Flood of data may point to more water on red planet (Christian Science Monitor) Mars may have more water than scientists have expected. Last month, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) showed images that suggest liquid water has carved gullies in the planet's surface in recent times. Now, a new analysis of a Martian meteorite indicates the red planet may have lost less water to space than previously estimated.

19-Jul-2000 - NASA Shapes Blueprint for Mars NASA is all ears for new ways to explore Mars. Future missions could feature smart balloons, robotic rotorcraft, free-flying frisbees or even deep-drilling mechanized inchworms -- there's no shortage of ways to purge that planet of its secrets. Such ideas are among many conjured up by a mix of some 200 engineers, scientists and technologists from around the world meeting here July 18 to 20 at the Lunar and Planetary Institute.

18-Jul-2000 - Scientists Fleshing Out Mars Exploration (Discovery.com) NASA is opening up its exploration initiative to an innovative array of proposals and perspectives in hopes of knitting together a comprehensive yet flexible plan to scope out Mars.

10-Jul-2000 - Space Money Club: Lifestyles of the Rich and Weightless The day is fast approaching when spacefaring citizens will need fast cash out in the cosmos to conduct their daily affairs. That's the position of attorney at law, Declan O'Donnell, a specialist in space legalities -- be they asteroid and lunar property rights or hammering out the finer details of outer-space treaties.

8-Jul-2000 - Charter School Now Has Doors to Open (Albuquerque Journal) An Albuquerque charter middle school can turn to the job of filling its class rosters now that it has a home, organizers said. The school will provide students with in-depth learning in science and technology, Silva said. The school has teamed with Kirtland Air Force Base on the Mars project, which teaches students about the difficulties of colonizing the Red Planet. "Our students are building an inflatable plastic habitat so students can imagine what it would be like to live on Mars," Silva said.

2-Jul-2000 - Waterworld? (The Economist) TIME to chalk up another posthumous half-victory for Percival Lowell, an American astronomer chiefly remembered for two claims: that there was a planet beyond Neptune, and that there were canals of flowing water on Mars. It turns out that he was half-right on both counts. In 1930, tiny Pluto (a body whose claim to planethood is disputed in some quarters) was first spotted from the observatory that Lowell founded in Flagstaff, Arizona. And last week, two scientists announced that they had found evidence of channels and gullies, apparently carved by recently flowing water, on the surface of Mars.

26-Jun-2000 - An Interview With Kim Stanley Robinson The man who can tell you everything about what it takes to terraform Mars is not surprised by the confirmation of water on the Red Planet. In his three "Mars" novels (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars), Kim Stanley Robinson constructed a vision of the Red Planet and humanity's evolving relationship with it that spans hundreds of years and as many characters. The achievement has been likened to "War and Peace with spaceships"; another comparison might be to a space-age Moby Dick. Robinson spoke to SPACE.com about the discovery of an indispensable requirement for life as we know it, whether native to the Red Planet or imported from Earth.

23-Jun-2000 - What now for Mars? The possibility of water on Mars will revitalise our efforts to explore our neighbouring world, on which life could have started and may still exist today. Nasa has produced stunning pictures of crater walls that appear to have channels cut in them by running, liquid water. It is something nobody expected, and shows just how much we still have to learn about the Red Planet.

21-Jun-2000 - Mars Discovery May Speed NASA, European Plans The prospect that NASA's Mars Global Surveyor has detected signs of water at a specific site on the Red Planet is likely to spark debate as to whether or not to send a robotic craft on location to look for life.

11-Jun-2000 - Researchers test Mars rover prototype in Nevada desert (Las Vegas Sun) The six-wheeled rover inches over the gravel of a wind-swept hillside, carefully avoiding boulders and precipices in a slow-motion hunt for a rock that struck the fancy of distant planetary scientists.

6-Jun-2000 - Rare Rocks: New Lunar and Martian Meteorites Found In the world of rocks that have fallen to Earth from space, meteorites from Mars and our moon are scarcer than hen’s teeth. But some persistent scratching by meteorite hunters around the world has left scientists clucking with glee. The August issue of The Meteoritical Bulletin heralds the addition of five previously unreported meteorite finds to the exclusive pantheon of Mars and moon rocks discovered on Earth.

2-Jun-2000 - Smithsonian Air & Space Museum Brings Mars Closer to Earth Ever wanted to rove across Mars in the year 2130? Now you can at the National Air and Space Museum, which has added four, eight-person flight simulators to put passengers behind aircraft controls in a Navy jet and in the seat of a martian rover.

1-Jun-2000 - Concepts And Approaches For Mars Exploration NASA's Space Science Enterprise is openly considering all facets of its Mars Exploration Program starting with the 2005 opportunity and carrying through 15 years and beyond. In order to cast a wide net for capturing ideas and potential participants for missions, mission elements, and experiments that fit within the broadly defined scope of this program, NASA is sponsoring a two-and-a-half-day workshop to be held at the Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI), which is housed in the Center for Advanced Space Studies, 3600 Bay Area Boulevard, Houston, Texas. The dates for this workshop are July 18-20, 2000.

30-May-2000 - Last Chance to Become a Student Scientist with Red Rover Goes to Mars (The Planetary Society) Time is running out. The Planetary Society's Red Rover Goes to Mars program will soon select Student Scientists to join the space science team of an actual Mars mission. Students worldwide, ages 9 to 15 years old, can enter contests to become Student Scientists or Student Navigators on the Red Rover Goes to Mars Team.

25-May-2000 - Rare Mars meteorite discovered in Middle East A meteorite hunter combing the deserts of Oman found a stone thought to have originated on Mars. Of the 20,000 known meteorite discoveries, the brownish gray stone is only the 15th identified as coming from the red planet, scientists said this week.

22-May-2000 - Martian meteorite found in Oman A brownish grey stone weighing 1,056 grams (2.3 lbs) is thought to be only the 15th known meteorite to originate from Mars. The discovery, made on 24 January this year in the Dhofar region of Oman, is extremely rare. Of the estimated 20,000 known meteorites, only a handful are confirmed as having come from the Red Planet or the Moon.

19-May-2000 - NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab Head to Retire Ed Stone, director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who has overseen spectacularly successful unmanned missions to Mars as well as dismal failures, is to retire next year, a lab spokesman said on Friday.

17-May-2000 - Destination: Mars (Arizona Daily Star) Like many high school seniors, Vanessa Crawford plans to travel a bit after picking up her diploma today. Here's her itinerary: Space Camp, Biosphere 2, college, Mars. "I plan to go to Mars someday, yes," the 17-year-old Tucson High Magnet School graduate said matter-of-factly. "I'm thinking probably around 2025 or 2030."

14-May-2000 - Honor Teacher Finalist: Carol Hall (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) Construction-paper mobiles representing Mars and its two moons dangle from the ceiling tiles of Carol Hall's classroom at Hilsman Middle School in Clarke County. One wall is covered with student essays, poems and stories about the Red Planet, along with colorful brochures about the Mars Millennium project, a national project to focus the attention of school-age children on Mars exploration.

13-May-2000 - Luella Merrett Elementary School children shine brightly with yearlong space project (Star-Telegram) Small clusters of students dotted the hallways at Luella Merrett Elementary School yesterday, hovering over homemade spacecraft, robots and other displays representing life on Mars. As visiting dignitaries from NASA and the National Endowment for the Arts paused, the youngsters eagerly explained their contributions to the national Mars Millennium project.

7-May-2000 - NASA Changes Mars Exploration Plans After a pair of high-profile Mars mission flops, NASA is rethinking its approach to the Red Planet in an unprecedented review that includes everything from science and technology to management and bureaucracy. When the soul-searching is done, officials say they will have reinvented the program that helped doom the $125 million Mars Climate Orbiter and the $165 million Polar Lander.

5-May-2000 - Planetary Pileup: Out of Sight, Out of Mind The good news is that on May 5th the Moon and the five bright planets -- Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn -- will come together to form an impressively tight grouping in the sky. The bad news is that we won't able to see it, because the Sun is in the midst of the parade of planets and will hide most of them in its dazzling glare. An even tighter configuration -- this time without the Moon -- will occur (again out of view) on the 17th.

3-May-2000 - NASA Mulling New Roadmap for Mars Five months after the loss of NASA's Mars Polar Lander, U.S. space agency officials said on Wednesday they expect a new architecture'' for exploring the Red Planet by year's end. U.S. space scientists plan to put up an orbital Mars mission in 2001 and participate in the European Space Agency's Mars Express project, but beyond that very little is clear,'' said Jim Cutts of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena Calif.

29-Apr-2000 - NASA Is Designing A Black Box Flight Data Recorder For Its Mars Missions (New Scientist) NASA is preparing for disaster. The space agency is taking a leaf out of the airline industry's book and is designing a "black box" flight data recorder for all its future Mars missions. The hope is that a lot of the guesswork can be taken out of any inquiry into a future failed mission.

26-Apr-2000 - Talking Lower Cost How do you explore the solar system for less money - and what can we learn from this next generation of space missions? To this end more than 300 experts from around the world will address these and related topics during the fourth International Conference on Low-Cost Planetary Missions, May 2-5, 2000, at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, USA.

24-Apr-2000 - Astronaut John Young is NASA's role model - and its conscience (Nando Times) John Young's commander wanted to go skiing after their space shot. But Young didn't want R&R. He just wanted to go back up - as soon as possible, and as often as possible. "I'll be ready to go again as soon as I hit the water with Gemini 3," the 34-year-old rookie astronaut promised before blasting off with Gus Grissom on America's first two-man space flight. That was spring 1965. In spring 2000, after a record six rocket launches - seven, if you count his liftoff from the moon - Young still has no urge to unwind. At 69, he is an active astronaut - the corps' oldest by more than a decade. He is also the country's most experienced space commander.

21-Apr-2000 - The Ultimate E-Ticket: Disney World Gets Rocket Fever Disney announced Thursday that upcoming attraction Mission: SPACE will offer visitors to Walt Disney World's Epcot Center simulated space adventures and "astronaut-like" thrills.

14-Apr-2000 - Scout Spacecraft on Mars: Trustworthy, Thrifty and Brave Bruised by the recent loss of the $165 million Mars Polar Lander, NASA is studying a new class of smaller, cheaper and more robust spacecraft. These probes could land on Mars to reconnoiter terrain that larger missions could later study in detail. Called appropriately enough "Scouts," two of the 220-pound (100-kilogram) spacecraft could venture to Mars as soon as 2003, said Barry Goldstein, who is leading the study at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

10-Apr-2000 - NASA Selects New Mars Manager (Yahoo! News) Spurred by criticism over failed missions, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has chosen scientist Firouz Naderi to head a newly formed Mars program aimed at improving future robotic explorations. Naderi was previously the manager of NASA's Origins Program, which specializes in searching for signs of life beyond the solar system.

8-Apr-2000 - NASA Ames man joins Mars projects (San Francisco Examiner) Scott Hubbard -- associate director of NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View -- has helped send highly successful robotic NASA probes into the solar system. NASA hopes his good luck will rub off on its embattled Mars program. Embarrassed by the recent loss of two expensive Mars probes, NASA has named him the new Mars program director -- their Mars czar, if you will.

5-Apr-2000 - Planetary Alignment: Feast For The Naked Eye Astronomers sometimes call it a naked-eye event, and while it has little significance for the experts, this week's sky show involving four heavenly bodies is one anybody can enjoy. On Thursday, April 6, three planets and the moon will all huddle together in a small patch of the late evening sky. In astronomical terms, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and our only natural satellite will be within 9 degrees of each other (a degree is about the width of two full moons as seen from Earth.)

3-Apr-2000 - When Planets Align An eye-catching group of three planets shines in the western sky at dusk during the first half of April. Anyone with an open view toward the west can watch Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn work through a slow dance of changing configurations from one evening to the next.

2-Apr-2000 - NASA reaction to failures wrong, scientist says The man who took NASA back to the moon with a low-budget spacecraft after a 25-year hiatus fears the nation's civilian space agency is taking the wrong steps in reacting to the failures of two high-profile Mars missions. Alan Binder, a lunar and planetary scientist, said NASA should turn its space science missions over to small teams of experienced scientists and aerospace engineers who have sole responsibility for their project from conception through design, construction, launch and ultimately operations.

28-Mar-2000 - Scathing Reports Take NASA to Task Over Mars Missions In two scathing reports released Tuesday, the failure of NASA's two latest Mars missions -- the Mars Climate Orbiter and the Mars Polar Lander (MPL) -- has been attributed to a combination of bad management, a lack of training and an inadequate system of checks and balances.

28-Mar-2000 - JPL to Bolster Oversight of its Mars Missions NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) will create two new offices, one to oversee all space science missions and one for Mars missions in particular, to bolster the lack of managerial oversight that doomed its two most recent attempts to send spacecraft to the Red Planet.

28-Mar-2000 - Brick Walls In Deep Space An in-depth review of NASA's Mars exploration program, released today, found significant flaws in formulation and execution led to the failures of recent missions, and provides recommendations for future exploration of Mars.

27-Mar-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.

27-Mar-2000 - NASA Begins Clean Up of 'Mars Mess' NASA is bracing itself for the release Tuesday, March 28 of an in-depth review of the space agency's troubled Mars exploration program. The report, according to NASA insiders as well as industry officials, paints a bleak picture of program mismanagement, lack of proper technical oversight of government and industry teams and inadequate testing of spacecraft hardware that led to last year's failure of multiple Mars probes.

17-Mar-2000 - Nasa pulls back from Mars The United States is to abandon its ambitious plans to bring back rocks from the surface of Mars before the end of the decade. It is a decision that could set back hopes of an astronaut landing on the Red Planet by many years.

15-Mar-2000 - A Trip Out of This World (Yahoo! News) Perhaps the recent movie Mission to Mars piqued our collective curiosity, for according to the latest Zogby America poll, more Americans want to set foot on The Red Planet than any other in the solar system.

13-Mar-2000 - Success Should Be Number One Goal, Panel Tells NASA In their zeal to fly space missions under the banner of "faster, better, cheaper," NASA managers are forgetting one thing. Those missions also have to succeed.

13-Mar-2000 - NASA's Mars failures put under microscope The cheaper, faster, better strategy that successfully propelled NASA to Mars with a small roving robot three years ago crumbled just as spectacularly because it took success for granted, according to two reports released by the agency Monday.

13-Mar-2000 - Stumbling on the Path to Mars (Discovery.com) When NASA decided to return to Mars after a 20-year hiatus, the widely popular and successful Pathfinder mission and the beautiful pictures captured by a robust and still-operating orbiter made extraterrestrial exploration look easy.

13-Mar-2000 - NASA Report: Too Many Failures with Faster, Better, Cheaper A former NASA manager issued a critical report Monday of the agency's "faster, better, cheaper" approach that has pushed the agency's engineers and scientists to crank out more frequent, low-cost and stripped-down missions since the early 1990s.

12-Mar-2000 - Piece of Mars Finds Its Way to Museum (Los Angeles Times) It traveled millions of years through space, dropped into the Mojave Desert and was snatched up by rock collector Robert Verish. Then, for 20 years, it was left unnoticed in a crate in his backyard. It's been a long journey for the so-called Los Angeles meteorite, now on exhibit at the Natural History Museum in Exposition Park. UCLA scientists have confirmed that the half-pound chunk of basalt came from Mars--one of only 14 Martian meteorites to have been found on Earth.

9-Mar-2000 - Mission to Mars: How and why It would be humanity’s most hostile home. Mars’ thin atmosphere would afford little protection from suffocation or radiation. The temperatures would be chilling, the dust storms blinding. Help would never be less than 30 million miles away. Settlers would surely sometimes ask themselves — as many ask now, years in advance of their eventual arrival — “Why were we sent here?” For now, the best answer seems to be that they’d be prospecting — not for gold or oil, but for life.

9-Mar-2000 - Mission to Mars: Reality check When it comes to the technologies required for a human mission to Mars, some experts say it’s mostly a case of “been there, done that.” So why not go? That’s mostly a case of price, priorities and politics.

8-Mar-2000 - NASA at the Martian Crossroads Stung by the recent back-to-back losses of two robotic spacecraft at Mars, NASA has embarked on an exhaustive retooling of its entire program to explore the Red Planet. Some missions may be delayed, swapped, beefed up or stripped down. Others may be cancelled outright. But the aim, said Jordan, the Program architect for the Space and Earth Sciences Directorate at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) here, is to tweak the program so it makes technical, scientific and financial sense.

5-Mar-2000 - Mars At Year Zero Mars exploration is at a cross road with competing pressures forcing a major rethink in direction and timetables. Meanwhile, the impact of Polar Lander's failure is about to be felt when the investigation panel's report is released March 16.

23-Feb-2000 - Kirkwood youngsters' plan for city on Mars wins award (St. Louis Post-Dispatch) A city on the surface of Mars? Maybe so, according to the richly detailed fantasy world of three students at Nipher Middle School in Kirkwood. Their futuristic city model won a national competition in Washington on Wednesday.

18-Feb-2000 - What Now — After The Loss Of Three Mars Missions? (The Planetary Society) The Planetary Society invites you to an Open Forum about the U.S. Mars Program: Friday, February 18, 2000 6:30-10:00 p.m. (EST) Radisson Barcelo Hotel, Phillips Ballroom, 2121 P Street NW, Washington, DC. Admission: Free. The forum will also be webcast live.

14-Feb-2000 - A scientist's longtime collection yields valuable surprise (Rocky Mountain News) Bob Verish has a rule that if he can't remember where he found a rock, he must throw it away. Fortunately, the Los Angeles rock hound did not toss two shiny black chunks of basalt he'd stashed for about 20 years among his 60 crates of stones. Because just a few weeks ago, he found out they are meteorites from Mars.

09-Feb-2000 - Boeing, Spacedev to End NASA Moonopoly Imagine watching live on your computer as an un-piloted spacecraft flies over the poles of the moon to search for frozen water that could one day provide fuel for deep space voyages or even sustain a human lunar colony. Or picture a live asteroid flyby, or a view from 20 miles (32 kilometers) above Mars's mysterious shifting polar ice caps, beamed directly to your home.

2-Feb-2000 - Naperville businessman returns from South Pole (Copley News Service) Naperville businessman William Gruber returned to O'Hare International Airport on Saturday after an 18-day expedition to Antarctica. The trip was the first privately funded scientific expedition to the South Pole. "There's a lot of comparison between the environment of Mars and Antarctica," Gruber said. "Antarctica resembles Mars more than any other place on earth."

1-Feb-2000 - New Mars Meteorite Found In California A new Mars meteorite was found somewhere in the Mojave Desert in California (20 years ago, but only recently analyzed), and consists of two stones of 452.6 & 245.4 grams. The two rocks have been classified as Mars meteorites, specifically basaltic shergottites, by analysis done at UCLA. The new meteorite's official name is the Los Angeles meteorite.

1-Feb-2000 - Box of Rocks Yields Slice of Mars A veteran rock hound recently uncovered two martian meteorites in his backyard, where they had languished for 20 years after being plucked from the Mojave Desert. The find, announced this week, brings the total number of martian meteorites – among the rarest of all rocks to fall from the heavens – to 14.

31-Jan-2000 - New Mars Meteorite Found A rare Mars meteorite has been found after languishing in the backyard of a meteorite hunter in California for 20 years. It was originally found in the Mojave Desert in California, and actually consists of two stones. The two rocks have been classified as Mars meteorites, technically basaltic shergottites, by analysis done at the University of California, Los Angeles.

30-Jan-2000 - Sixth-grade project takes class to Mars, City Hall (The Advocate) The first community on Mars should be built inside a huge crater so dust storms don't destroy the buildings. A giant greenhouse can provide oxygen for people's homes. And a recreational center will just have to have an arcade.

30-Jan-2000 - Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn to put on a show for earthlings February opens with a planetary parade as Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn line up in the evening sky as though for review by the waxing moon. On the evening of Feb. 8 look for Mars to the right of the moon. Mars is the dimmest of the parading planets at magnitude 1.2.

28-Jan-2000 - Russia Eyes Mars 2005 Probe Russia is planning to send a space probe towards Mars and its moon Phobos in 2005, to examine the surface of the red planet, if the money can be found, scientists here said Thursday.

23-Jan-2000 - Engineering Contest Shows Off Pupils' Out-Of-This-World Ideas (Chicago Tribune) For years, scientists have pondered how they could build a colony that would sustain life on Mars. But in just a few months, dozens of 7th- and 8th-grade pupils from the Chicago area have come up with some interesting ideas.

23-Jan-2000 - Youths give green light to red planet ideas (The Oklahoman) As part of a National Engineers Week competition, middle-school students from across Oklahoma were invited to design cities -- many for future human settlements on Mars -- from scratch. They were asked to build scale models out of recycled materials, with a budget cap of $100. Moving parts were allowed, but only if they used no outside electricity.

21-Jan-2000 - Can Space Rocks Beat Wall Street Stocks? Ever since 1996, when NASA scientists claimed that a potato-sized bit of Mars that had dropped on Antarctica possibly contained traces of life, the market for meteorites has exploded.

18-Jan-2000 - High School Students To Plan Community On Mars While living at Johnson Space Center the weekend of February 11, Houston area high school students will use their imagination and knowledge to design complete details of a human settlement on Mars in the year 2050. Interested Houston area high school students are encouraged to ask their math and science teachers or school principals for more information about this project. The target deadline for registration is Friday, January 28.

10-Jan-2000 - The Moon and Mars Are All Right Tonight The young crescent moon sidles up next to the Red Planet in tonight's evening sky. Look toward the southwest around 6:45 p.m. for the obvious pairing of the two. That's Fomalhaut, brightest star in Piscis Austrinus shining below and to the left of the moon. And well up above and to the left of the pair (i.e., northeast) is Jupiter, with Saturn just a little further east.

4-Jan-2000 - Chicago-area explorers on road to Antarctica (Daily Southtown) Elementary students in Palatine Township soon will have their own link to the South Pole — teacher Sharon Hopper. Hopper, 24, a science teacher at a Rolling Meadows junior high school, is part of a 10-member expedition heading to the South Pole to search for meteorites and study organisms similar to those that might exist on Mars.

3-Jan-2000 - Ex-Astronaut To Explore South Pole (Yahoo! News) Former astronaut James Lovell isn't done exploring. The man who flew aboard Apollo 8 and Apollo 13 is heading to the South Pole as a member of a privately funded expedition.

2-Jan-2000 - Loss of 3 craft will delay future missions to Mars (The Columbus Dispatch) The disappearance of three U.S. spacecraft into Mars' Bermuda Triangle could take the sizzle out of the space program for at least three years. NASA's three Martian MIAs -- the Mars Observer in 1993, Mars Climate Orbiter in September and Mars Polar Lander last month -- have prompted a total reassessment of the unmanned Mars- exploration program.

1-Jan-2000 - Parade Fans Can Join the Fun This Weekend (Edison International) Ever consider the prospect of life on other planets? Did you know that America's space program is pursuing this possibility? Beginning today, internet enthusiasts around the world can explore these topics by logging onto www.edisonfloat.com, a special Web site hosted by Edison International (EI) in honor of its 2000 Tournament of Roses Parade float.

24-Dec-1999 - Bethlehem girl gets stamp of approval (The Morning Call) Nine-year-old's design is one of two finalists from Pennsylvania in U.S. Postal Service contest. Nadia Rahi's drawing of life on Mars earned the Bethlehem girl finalist status in the ''Stamping the Future'' national stamp contest.

21-Dec-1999 - NASA's Mars Losses Spark Anger and Opportunity The failure of two NASA Mars missions has set off a chain reaction of both criticism and reappraisal of econo-class space projects. A re-blueprinting of plans to study the red planet by robotic means is now underway, actions that are likely to see greater involvement by commercial space companies in 21st century Mars exploration.

20-Dec-1999 - Mars Delayed, Not Lost In the previous two installments of this series, I discussed the possible causes of the Mars Polar Lander failure, and whether in combination with the MCO failure and others, it indicated that NASA should consider ditching its philosophy of "better faster cheaper". My answer to that last question was that it depends on which part of the "BFC" philosophy you're talking about. In the field of unmanned space exploration, chopping missions into smaller, less ambitious individual pieces is usually better -- however other kinds of cost-cutting measures may not be.

18-Dec-1999 - NASA goes boldly into the 21st Century (Design News) In November, Dan Goldin became the longest continuously serving NASA Administrator, having been appointed by President Bush in early 1992. Since then, Goldin’s "faster, better, cheaper" philosophy has transformed the agency, once perceived by critics as bloated—pursuing missions that were too expensive, took too long to develop, and flew too infrequently. According to the agency officials, NASA and Congress have reduced its budgets, for a cumulative savings of $40 billion, and cut the civil service workforce about a third, without forced layoffs. Prior to coming to the agency, Goldin was Vice President and General Manager of TRW’s Space and Technology Group, capping a 25-year career with the company.

17-Dec-1999 - Young to Lead Mars Program Assessment Team A. Thomas Young has been named by NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin to chair the Mars Program Independent Assessment Team which will review the agency's approach to robotic exploration of Mars in the wake of the recent loss of the Mars Polar Lander mission.

13-Dec-1999 - Laser Will Have The Scan On Mars Analyses performed on a sliver of terrestrial rock by the Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory may one day help researchers better understand the makeup of large extraterrestrial bodies such as Mars, comets and asteroids.

10-Dec-1999 - Editorial: Mars will be waiting (The Seattle Times) Disappointments last but briefly, while Mars waits forever.

9-Dec-1999 - Space lab is a stellar hit (Desert News) The Mobile Star Lab is a universal hit. Now, the Jordan School District is looking at a sequel.

8-Dec-1999 - Cast, Crew Deny Reports of Bad Blood on 'Red Planet' If stories making the rounds are true, the Mars adventure "Red Planet" being filmed in Australia might just as well be dubbed "Prima Donnas in Space."

6-Dec-1999 - Mars: Mission impossible? The first mission to Mars was attempted by the former Soviet Union - it was a disaster. The Soviets, flushed with the success of their Moon missions, had turned their attentions towards the Red Planet. But in October 1960, two Mars probes failed to leave the Earth's orbit.

5-Dec-1999 - Future Mars Missions Face Scrutiny (Yahoo! News) NASA's ambitious campaign of Mars exploration could face uncertainty after the embarrassing loss of an orbiter in September and the growing likelihood that the Polar Lander may never be contacted. For a third day Sunday, the lander failed to signal Earth, although engineers believe it made a safe landing.

3-Dec-1999 - Mars Mission Just a Click Away (Yahoo! News) Web sites featuring pictures, weather reports, science data and sound clips from Mars mission:

3-Dec-1999 - Blue Skies: The Mars of 'Total Recall' Hollywood has done pretty well by Philip K. Dick. In an industry where works of literature rarely make the leap to the big screen unscathed, Dick's work has spawned not one but two impressive film adaptations -- "Blade Runner" (1982) and "Total Recall" (1990) -- and at least five other efforts are rumored or on the horizon.

1-Dec-1999 - Little Green Men from a Red Planet: Mars on Film In 1877, astronomer Giovanni Sciaparelli observed what he considered to be "canali" or channels criss-crossing the surface of Mars. Subsequent observation showed that lines on the Red Planet's face weren't artificially created, but it was too late -- the martian invasion of our psyche had begun.

29-Nov-1999 - Man Has Centuries-Old Fascination With Mars (Yahoo! News) The Mars Polar Lander, due to set down on the Martian surface Friday, is set to write a new chapter in the history of exploration of the Red Planet which goes back to the 17th century when man first viewed it through crude telescopes.

22-Nov-1999 - China's launch for respect (Christian Science Monitor) With Beijing's first test flight of a spacecraft capable of sending astronauts into orbit, China is telling the West - as well as its home crowd - it should be treated as a great power on the world stage. Yuan Jiajun, a test flight official at the Chinese Academy of Space Technology says Beijing's push to send its first astronaut into space is just the first step in a more ambitious program to help found human colonies on the moon and Mars, and then extend man's reach beyond the solar system.

21-Nov-1999 - Kennedy Center project sparks minds (The Denver Post) When teachers and students were asked last week to look into the future and envision life on Mars, they got a little help from some experts.

9-Nov-1999 - Mars work sends teens to NASA (The Oklahoman) All told, Putnam City High School students Kevin and Scott Fisher, Curt Haralson and Curtis Bottoms put in about 100 hours creating a kitchen table-size model of a dome they proposed might someday be built over a canyon on the surface of Mars.

3-Nov-1999 - A whole galaxy of stars on Mars (Sydney Morning Herald) It's day 40 on the set of The Red Planet and there's a hitch. One of the five astronauts strapped inside the Mars landing pod has lost communication.

2-Nov-1999 - Richards student is stamp contest finalist (Ledger-Enquirer Online) Ken Avila was among 120,000 participants in the U.S. Postal Service's "Stompin' the Future" art contest which asked students to submit designs for postage stamps based on their vision of the 21st Century. There were four winners and 110 finalists.

30-Oct-1999 - JPL engineer loves coming home to Kansas (The Wichita Eagle) Wichita native Todd Barber giving special presentation on Mars today at Cosmosphere.

24-Oct-1999 - A Mars of earthly dilemmas (The Record Online) Is it right, or even inevitable, that space-traveling humans change untouched planets and make them more like the world they left behind?

21-Oct-1999 - The Crayola Factory is boarding for Mars (The Morning Call) Dozens of children visited a new exhibit, ''Journey to the Red Planet,'' Wednesday at the Crayola Factory at Two Rivers Landing, Easton as part of a national arts, science and technology education initiative called ''The Mars Millennium Project.''

18-Oct-1999 - John Carpenter Directing 'Ghosts on Mars' Filmmaker John Carpenter has caught the Mars bug and will write and direct a science-fiction thriller called "Ghosts on Mars."

8-Oct-1999 - Book for Mars - predicted to be a hot tourist spot (Business Day) The hottest tourist spot of the next century could be Mars, according to experts meeting in Boston who insist astronauts will walk on the red planet in no more than 10 years and that space tourism will follow shortly afterwards.

6-Oct-1999 - 2000 Council Asks Students To Imagine Village on Mars (Education Week) How do sound waves travel on Mars, and what would happen if music were played there? What would art look like on Mars, since its atmosphere is different from Earth's? And what kind of government would human inhabitants of Mars need?

1-Oct-1999 - What if Flying to Mars was Like Driving to Chicago? By now, it's pretty well known what went wrong in the Mars Climate Orbiter Mission: Lockheed gave NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory a computer file with units in the old English notation, and the JPL assumed they were metric. In this case, it was maneuvering data, defining how much thrust was needed out of the maneuvering jets at certain times. The English unit for thrust is called a pound-per-second, the metric unit is called a Newton. So how big is the difference?

29-Sep-1999 - South African Children To Head For Mars (Panafrican News Agency) Some 14,000 South African school children will make their mark in space later in the year when the exploratory space probe, the Mars Polar Lander, touches down on the "red planet." The names of the children were collected by NASA officials in South Africa in 1998 and were transcribed onto a CD-ROM which has been included in the craft's cargo.

27-Sep-1999 - Mars: So Close Yet So Far (Discovery Channel Online) The track record speaks for itself: Of the 30 probes dispatched by humans to study Mars, only eight have managed to complete their missions. The Russians have tried 16 times to get to Mars, but have come up short on every flight. Given all of these failures, why do we still want to get there?

24-Sep-1999 - Mars Missions: Many Have Failed Mars has been a major target of exploration since the beginning of the space age. It also has been an elusive target, as demonstrated once again by Mars Climate Orbiter's failure this week. Overall, about two in three missions to the red planet have failed.

24-Sep-1999 - Congress remains behind NASA's Mars missions Capitol Hill lawmakers who oversee NASA programs reacted supportively Thursday to word the agency's Mars Climate Orbiter may have crashed into the red planet's surface.

23-Sep-1999 - Experts say Mars failures are worth every last dollar (Houston Chronicle) The temperature on its rocky surface is below zero. At its farthest point in orbit, it is 249 million miles away from Earth. And, so far as anyone knows, there isn't a McDonald's restaurant on the place.

21-Sep-1999 - Australia Provides Martian Stand-In Australia's flat, red, rock-strewn Outback is proving an ideal backdrop for a film starring Val Kilmer about the first piloted mission to Mars. For the past two weeks, cast and crew of the Warner Brothers film "Red Planet" have been shooting in the desert roughly 15 miles from the mining town of Coober Pedy. The bleak, desolate, near featureless terrain has hardly any vegetation.

13-Sep-1999 - Mars meets anti-Mars After approaching one another for months, Mars will pass just north of the bright red star Antares on Wednesday. Separated by less than 3 degrees, the two will resemble a pair of red embers smoldering above the southern horizon.

8-Sep-1999 - UI Team To Search For Martian Water University of Iowa professor and space physicist Don Gurnett has won a $4 million NASA contract in collaboration with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. to develop and use radar in a search for underground water on Mars.

23-Aug-1999 - Move Over, Rover Early in the history of space exploration, it looked as if Dogs would follow their human companions to the stars. Dogs just don't meet the requirements Martian colonists will need from domesticated animals. Gangale came to the conclusion that only the domestic rabbit fit the bill.

23-Aug-1999 - Future Martians might go back to living in caves (explorezone.com) While a lot of noise has been made in recent years about the possibility of sending humans to Mars, R.D. "Gus" Frederick is thinking beyond the mere act of getting there. He's thinking about where we'll live after we set up camp. After all, it's not like we can just live in a cave.

16-Aug-1999 - SimMars Update (Computer Gaming World) Sid Meier and ALPHA CENTAURI may have beaten them to space, but Will Wright is betting that gamers will want to master a planet a little closer to home, namely Mars. The goal is to build a colony on the Red Planet that can exist with very little to no support from Earth.

20-Jul-1999 - NASA Takes a Business Lesson from Students In all likelihood, NASA won't be able to foot the entire cost of a program for exploration of the Red Planet, so it's hoping to take a lesson from the private sector and consider private financing. The space agency is taking ideas -- and strongly considering them -- from undergraduates and graduate students.

19-Jul-1999 - Viking Has an Anniversary, Too Apollo 11 shares its anniversary date with another space milestone. Seven years to the day after the moon landing, the Viking 1 lander touched down on Mars.

16-Jul-1999 - NASA Planetary Exploration Program in Danger The budget squeeze that threatened the cancellation of the Mars 2001 lander two weeks ago and ultimately led to the cancellation of the ST4/Champollion project is now menacing the entire structure of NASA's planetary exploration program. Included among missions at immediate risk is the 2003 Mars airplane mission.

16-Jul-1999 - Observations Upon the 30th Apollo Anniversary We are approaching the thirtieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing, which took place on July 20, 1969. The accomplishment of the first human landing on the Moon, in just eight years from program start, was a great feat, and certainly worthy of remembrance and celebration. But it is sad that we have no accomplishments of comparable magnitude to honor in the thirty years since.

11-Jul-1999 - Space Anniversaries in July The month of July boasts two special anniversaries for space events. On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first human being to set foot on the Moon as part of the Apollo 11 mission. On July 4, 1997, the Mars Pathfinder robotic lander mission symbolized America's return to Mars.

07-Jul-1999 - Astronaut Trainees Use Taos for Mars Stand-In (Albuquerque Journal) Space exploration's next great frontier is on the shaded lawn of a Taos bed and breakfast. It's "Mars base," where three New Mexico Tech graduate students surround a laptop computer while they listen to a two-way radio.

1-Jul-1999 - Hubble's close-up on Mars Taking advantage of Mars's closest approach to the Earth in eight years, the Hubble Space Telescope has taken its sharpest views yet of the Red Planet. While Hubble cannot see as fine a detail as the Mars Global Surveyor, which its currently in orbit around Mars, it can obtain a better global picture.

1-Jul-1999 - Hubble snaps Martian close-ups Taking advantage of Mars's closest approach to Earth in eight years, astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope took the space-based observatory's sharpest views yet of the red planet.

30-May-1999 - Building blocks will bridge the distances for Interplanetary Internet (ExpressNews) Radio communications between Earth and distant parts of the solar system take too long to satisfy the needs for interplanetary travel, so an "Interplanetary Internet" is being devised.

20-May-1999 - Giant storm on Mars The Hubble Space Telescope has taken pictures of a giant storm in the northern polar region of Mars. The images were taken during the Red Planet's recent close approach to Earth. The giant cyclonic storm system is more than 1,600 km (1,000 miles) across. The eye of the storm is nearly 200 miles in diameter.

19-May-1999 - Stormy Weather on Mars Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (HST) during Mars's recent close approach to Earth have discovered an enormous cyclonic storm system raging in the northern polar regions of the Red Planet. Nearly four times the size of the state of Texas, the storm is composed of water-ice clouds like storm systems on Earth, rather than dust typically found in Martian storms.

19-May-1999 - Massive Cyclone Batters Mars Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have spotted an enormous cyclonic storm system raging in the northern polar regions of the planet Mars. Nearly four times the size of the state of Texas, the storm is composed of water-ice clouds like storm systems on Earth, rather than dust typically found in Martian storms.

2-May-1999 - Up close and Martian The planet Mars has reached its closest point to the Earth for 10 years, giving observers all over the world an unusually clear view. Mars has been hurtling towards the Earth at almost 50,000kmh - a million kilometres each day. It reached its closest point on 1 May, and will soon start to move away again at the same speed.

23-Apr-1999 - A close encounter with Mars The Red Planet makes its nearest approach to Earth in 1999 this week and next. "Once in about every fifteen years a startling visitant makes his appearance upon our midnight skies,--a great red star that ... mounting higher with the deepening night, blazes forth against the dark background of space with a splendor that outshines Sirius and rivals the giant Jupiter himself." -- from Mars by Percival Lowell (1895)

13-Apr-1999 - Mars and Stars (Mr. Showbiz) Hollywood has this thing about making similar high-concept films and releasing them within months of each other. Now there's a new pair on the block — Mars and Mission to Mars. The Warner Bros. and Disney productions, both big-budget thrillers about astronauts in jeopardy on the Red Planet, will open within spitting distance of each other next year.

5-Apr-1999 - The Student NanoExperiment Challenge Two years this Saturday will see the launch of NASA's Mars Surveyor 2001 Lander that will carrying the first ever student-designed experiment destined for another world.

4-Apr-1999 - Viking Lander 1 in the wrong place (The SETI League) While revising their maps of the Martian surface, German scientists Wolfgang Zeitler and Jürgen Oberst have come to the conclusion that the originally reported location of the Viking Lander 1 spacecraft is wrong.

4-Apr-1999 - Come in Mars, we're (hopefully) receiving you as clear and cloudy (ExpressNews) Scientists are gearing up to receive new photographs from Mars this week, coming after NASA's Mars Global Surveyor successfully deployed its high-gain antenna.

25-Mar-1999 - Students Invited To Explore Mars The Planetary Society, in cooperation with NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, invites young people worldwide to submit prototypes for the first student-designed experiment on Mars -- a 2001 Mars Odyssey: the Student NanoExperiment Challenge.

12-Mar-1999 - Mars' happy face: Have a nice planet! Mars put on a smiley face when a NASA spacecraft began snapping pictures of the red planet this week.

8-Mar-1999 - Mapping The Martian Polar Caps NASA's Office of Space Science has selected a group of researchers at the University of Colorado, Boulder to spend three years mapping the polar ice on Mars using satellite data.

5-Mar-1999 - Have Robot Need Spacesuit NASA has begun testing a new remotely operated planetary rover and an advanced spacesuit in southern California to see how robots and humans work best together in difficult terrains.

4-Mar-1999 - This is the Year of Mars as probes target Red Planet If intelligent creatures inhabit Mars, they're probably wondering where all the UFOs are coming from. In the summer of 1997, a probe smashed into the Red Planet, bounced a few times and disgorged a small robot vehicle that ran around sniffing rocks for several weeks - much to the delight of countless schoolchildren and millions of others back on Earth.

4-Mar-1999 - Red Planet Beckons Stronger Researchers at Marshall Space Flight Center have declared that a self powered Martian base is possible utilizing various local resources that would be mined and extracted to build power receivers that would collect power beamed from solar collectors in Mars orbit.

17-Feb-1999 - CU-Boulder Researchers To Map Polar Ice On Mars (CU Press Release) NASA's Office of Space Science has selected a group of University of Colorado at Boulder researchers to spend three years mapping the polar ice on Mars using satellite data. The research team from the National Snow and Ice Data Center will create a "virtual sensor" by combining data from two instruments currently orbiting the Red Planet on NASA's Mars Global Surveyor satellite, said principal investigator and glaciologist Anne Nolin. The scientists will apply remote-sensing techniques to study the Mars data and help them to both identify the surface composition of Mars' polar ice and plot its perimeters.

12-Feb-1999 - Making Mars Liveable Hearing how to turn Mars into a paradise for humans was just one of the reasons that thousands of astronomers attended European Astrofest 99.

11-Feb-1999 - Mars' hostile environment, possibility of life could block planet's transformation Loretta Hidalgo's tools are simple: 10 buckets of dirt from a Hawaiian volcano, seeds, water, sun, and time. Make that about 100,000-years worth of time.

12-Sep-1998 - Dust covers Martian moon One of Mars' two moon is covered in a thick dust formed by meteoroid impacts over millions of years, according to Nasa. Images captured by the orbiting Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft show the surface of Phobos has been pounded into powder by meteors.

27-Aug-1998 - Inflatable Mars ship may double as space station crew quarters Astronauts aboard NASA's future space station may find themselves eating, sleeping, exercising and unwinding inside a balloon, rather than a can.

20-Nov-1997 - Internet users follow Mars missions The unofficial motto for NASA’s Mars exploration program is “better, faster, cheaper.” The mantra also applies to the team that updates information about the program on a network of Web sites that have drawn more than 700 million hits.

18-Jul-1997 - New book describes Mars' hold on our culture The Red Planet is calling once more. And faithfully, as though we still worship Mars as a god, humanity is responding. Want proof? During the past two weeks many of us on this blue planet have:

6-Nov-1996 - Activists call for more NASA efforts toward Mars Buoyed by a huge turnout at a kickoff lecture earlier in the week, organizers for Wednesday's "NASA About Face" rally outside Kennedy Space Center had hoped for big numbers. But the dozen or so people who brought their homemade signs and slogans to Gate 3 on the NASA Causeway felt they'd made their point.

16-Oct-1996 - Three Mars Missions to Launch in Late 1996 The United States and Russia return to Mars this fall with the launch of three missions destined to explore Earth's planetary neighbor in greater detail than has ever before been accomplished.

8-Aug-1996 - NASA gearing up for Mars assault Electrified by research suggesting that Mars may once have harbored life, America's space agency is gearing up for a scientific assault on the red planet and inviting the world to help out.