The project to design and build a European rover to send to Mars has passed an important milestone. Engineers have demonstrated a vented, or dead-beat, airbag technology that could be used to cushion the vehicle's landing on the Red Planet. An effective entry, descent and landing system will be critical to the success of the ExoMars mission, as it is known. The test's success will be welcome news to European space delegations as they meet on Monday to review the project.

China recently announced its first international cooperative project of a joint Chinese-Russian exploration of Mars that has received attention from the governments of both countries. On March 26, 2007, with the Chinese and Russian heads of state as witnesses, the director of the China National Space Administration, Sun Laiyan, and the head of the Russian Space Agency, Anatoly Perminov, both signed the "Cooperative Agreement between the China National Space Administration and the Russian Space Agency on joint Chinese-Russian exploration of Mars."

The UK is to play a key role in Europe's next mission to Mars. The government is to invest 108m euros (£73.2m) to give Britain a major share in building the robotic probe. European Space Agency (Esa) member states approved funding for the ExoMars mission at the agency's minsterial meeting in Berlin. The rover will explore the surface of the Red Planet, in search of traces of life, past and present. The mission is a key milestone in the Aurora programme, Esa's vision to send spacecraft and eventually astronauts to the Moon and Mars.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has settled on a concept for its next mission to Mars. A single robot rover will be sent to the Red Planet, along with another, stationary, science package. A forthcoming meeting at ESA's space and technology centre in the Netherlands will focus on what experiments the craft should take to Mars. The favoured concept - ExoMars - will lead a two-pronged mission.

As the Spirit and Opportunity rovers continue their extended studies of Mars, NASA's Mars program appears headed for change. The shift will be driven by a variety of factors including technical and budget issues, as well as a "rebalancing" of science objectives. NASA has been engaged since last year in what the agency calls a road-mapping effort to flesh out the details of a Mars master plan that would lead to an expeditionary crew landing on that remote world.

Future hunts for past or present life on Mars, hauling back to Earth samples of martian rock and soil, as well as setting the stage for a human voyage to the red planet is taking on a decidedly European look. European Space Agency (ESA) officials are taking steps to shift into high gear the building of the ExoMars robotic rover mission. The lander would be launched in 2011, likely onboard a Soyuz Fregat 2b booster from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana.

NASA’s Mars program could undergo major alternation, driven by budgetary and technical issues, as well as science goals. “We’ve been getting inputs, advice, actions items…from the road mapping teams,” said Doug McCuistion, Mars Exploration Program Director at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. “Nothing is finalized at this point. There have been no final decisions made or, frankly, any interim decisions made as yet.”

The NASA Exploration of Mars Strategic Roadmap Committee will be meeting 4-6 January 2005 at NASA JPL. The agenda for the meeting is as follows:

* Mars science: What we know today.
* Science planning for exploring Mars.
* Overview of robotic science missions.
* Challenges of Mars robotic and human exploration.
* Human mission studies, options, and technology needs.
* Key issues to be studied.

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NASA's Spirit Rover has just completed a long hard slog across difficult Martian terrain to reach the Columbia hills. The short journey of just a couple of kilometres has taken Spirit months. Imagine if it could thoroughly analyze an area and then just pick up and fly somewhere new? NASA is considering a proposal from Pioneer Astronautics, which envisions a vehicle that could land on Mars, refuel with local materials, and then fly hundreds of kilometres to explore; repeating this process over and over again - the Martian Gashopper Aircraft.

Russia's space program is unlikely to launch a planetary mission before 2009 because of cash shortages, a top scientist told AFP. The unmanned mission will aim to land on Phobos, a moon orbiting Mars, and a mission to the Earth's Moon is unlikely in the near future, said Eric Galimov, planetologist and director of the V.I. Vernandsky Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry at the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Five spacecraft are circling Mars and creeping across its ruddy surface, looking for traces of long-gone waters and signs that the cold, arid planet may once have been hospitable to life. The robotic martian invasion - three orbiters and two six-wheeled rovers - has already uncovered strong evidence that water once flowed on Mars and is now locked in subsurface ice. But big questions about water on Mars remain. When did it flow? How long did it last? How much was there? Where did it come from? Where did it go? Perhaps the most tantalizing question: Were there long-lived watery environments where microbial life could have gained a foothold?

The team behind the Beagle 2 mission to Mars has unveiled its design for the successor to the British spacecraft. At a London meeting, Colin Pillinger, lead scientist on the previous venture, outlined plans for putting a new robotic lab on the Red Planet. Scientists hope to launch two landing craft from an orbiter that could fly in 2009 as part of Europe's Aurora programme of space exploration.

The UK is almost certainly going back to Mars and is set to become a major player in Europe's efforts to explore the Solar System. Science minister Lord Sainsbury says the country will pay the £5m interim subscriptions needed to maintain a premier place in the Aurora programme. Aurora sets out a vision for Europe to visit the planets with robotic probes and perhaps one day even with humans.