A MARSNEWS.COM EXCLUSIVE

Taking less than 10 minutes to travel between Mars and Earth, ESA's Mars Sample Return Vehicle (MSRV) has successfully demonstrated a new form of antimatter propulsion, and has docked with the International Space Station, delivering the martian rock samples from the Spirit and Opportunity rovers.

The propulsion module, under secret development for the last four years, allowed the MSRV spacecraft to accellerate to 10% of the speed of light, and allowed the MSRV to travel millions of miles between the two planets in an extremely short period of time. Using traditional chemical propulsion, the transit times between Earth & Mars are typically from 6-9 months.

At a press conference that just concluded in Paris, France, NASA and ESA officials announced that today's events had been many years in the making, and required a lot of coordination between the two agencies to maintain secrecy. "We certainly were concerned that the funding for our respective Mars exploration programs would be cut, especially for undertaking such a daring mission," noted NASA's Administrator Sean O'Keefe, who had been monitoring the activities at ESA mission control. "If we are ever going to send people to Mars, the milestones accomplished during today's events would need to be hurdled. I just got a call from President Bush, and he offered his congratulations to both space agencies for today's successes."

"We are happy to say that today, we have taken a giant leap towards the human exploration of the Red Planet." remarked ESA Director General Jean-Jacques Dordain. "Today's demostration of Antimatter propulsion is a profound statement by the human race, that the solar system is now our backyard, and we aim to explore it."

They also noted at the press briefing that the samples from Mars had been placed in quarantine in the ISS's Destiny lab module, and will be brought back to Earth during the next crew rotation.

Happy April Fools Day!

Ok, I guess you figured it out by now. I hope that at least we gave you a few brief moments of excitement today. Returning samples of the martian surface and the development of new forms of propulsion are both important aspects of the exploration of Mars, and we will continue to cover them in an honest & sober fashion (that is, every day except for today!)

We had been planning to feature this scenario since last year's harmless April Fools prank, when we reported that Bill Gates had announced a new private expedition to send Humans to Mars.

We hope you enjoyed this year's fun, and thanks for all the comments you have left. Maybe we went a bit overboard, but it sure was fun!

Posted by jburk at April 1, 2004 08:13 PM | TrackBack