The launch of China's first Mars probe "Yinghuo-1", originally scheduled for October 2009 on a Russian carrier rocket, has been postponed until 2011 due to Russia's "technical reasons", a Chinese space exploration official said here Wednesday. Ye Peijian, chief designer of Chang'e-1, the country's first moon probe, told Xinhua about the delay on the sidelines of the ongoing annual session of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) National Committee, China's top political advisory body. "Actually, China is now completely capable of exploring Mars independently," said Ye, also a member of the CPPCC National Committee. "With the improvement of our technologies, there is no problem for China to launch its Mars probe with its own observation and control system." Ye said the most suitable time to launch the Mars probe would be in the years 2011, 2013 and 2016 when the distances between Mars and the Earth are the shortest.

Before Mars can become the next great frontier for human exploration, we need to send more robotic missions to gather as much information as possible about our planetary neighbor. But what kind of robot has the right combination of weight, cost and range, while still being able to carry out groundbreaking science? Cue the Tumbleweed Mars rover, an ingenious concept vying for attention in the hope of becoming an entirely different method to explore vast regions of the Martian surface, one that rolls across the surface instead of six-wheeling.

On April 15, President Barack Obama will visit Florida to host a White House Conference on the Administration’s new vision for America’s future in space, the White House today announced. The President, along with top officials and other space leaders, will discuss the new course the Administration is charting for NASA and the future of U.S. leadership in human space flight. Specifically, the conference will focus on the goals and strategies in this new vision, the next steps, and the new technologies, new jobs, and new industries it will create. Conference topics will include the implications of the new strategy for Florida, the nation, and our ultimate activities in space.

The Russian space agency, Roskosmos, has decided to postpone the launch of a mission to the Martian moon Phobos from 2009 to 2011, according to a U.S. scientist involved in the first Russian-led interplanetary mission in more than a decade. The Phobos-Grunt mission had been slated to lift off aboard a Zenit rocket in October on a three-year mission to study Phobos and return rock and soil samples to Earth. The rocket also was to carry a Mars orbiter contributed by China.

quarry in the south of England has been the site of an "eye test" for Europe's planned rover mission ExoMars. The quarry - chosen for its similarity to Martian terrain - saw cameras and image processing software tested on the ExoMars prototype rover Bridget. The rover will be equipped with a raft of cameras and the aim is to integrate them and the data they will send back. The technology developed for the mission has applications not only in space science but also here on Earth.

Driving a rover on Mars and obtaining useful scientific information is something you don't learn from one day to another. You need a lot of training and you need to be able to work with people who have different scientific backgrounds. One way to learn it is by carrying out the Science Operation Work Group (SOWG) during the AMASE expedition.

What should be the nation's goals and priorities for exploring Mars in the 2013 to 2022 timeframe? To help answer this question, Mars scientists from the United States and around the world will gather Sept. 9 to 11 at the Faculty Club on ASU's Tempe campus. Most of the discussions will be open to the public, in person and by webcast.

On 29 and 30 June the ESA Director of Science and Robotic Exploration, David Southwood, met NASA’s Associate Administrator for Science, Ed Weiler, in Plymouth, UK, to establish a way for a progressive programme for exploration of the Red Planet. The outcome of the bilateral meeting was an agreement to create a Mars Exploration Joint Initiative (MEJI) that will provide a framework for the two agencies to define and implement their scientific, programmatic and technological goals at Mars. Discussions between ESA and NASA began in December 2008, driven by the ESA Ministerial Council’s recommendation to seek international cooperation to complete the ExoMars mission and to prepare further Mars robotic exploration missions. At the same time, NASA was reassessing its Mars Exploration Program portfolio after the launch of its Mars Science Laboratory was delayed from 2009 to 2011.

China's first Mars probe is expected to be launched in the second half of this year on top of a Russian rocket, said Xinhua on Thursday, the latest milestone in the nation's ambitious space program. Yinghuo-1, or Firefly Light-1, weighs 115 kgs (253 lb) and passed an important test, Xinhua quoted Zhang Weiqiang, deputy secretary of the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology as saying. The probe has an expected life of two years and would go into orbit around Mars in 2010 after a 10-month, 380-million-km journey, Zhang said. The probe won't land on Mars, but would only orbit and monitor the planet, he said.

NASA chose a University of Colorado proposal for a $485 million Mars mission on Monday after a nine-month delay caused by a conflict of interest in the selection process. The delay cost the space agency time, money and science. The price of the probe increased by $10 million, its launch was postponed by two years, and the science-gathering mission will be cut in half to one year, an official said. NASA chose the University of Colorado's proposal to study the Martian atmosphere from 20 other ideas to study Mars that were trimmed to just two before a conflict of interest was declared. NASA has not disclosed what the conflict of interest was or who it involved, other than to say last year that it was not created by NASA but by one of the two groups. The space agency said last December that a "serious" conflict of interest in one of two proposals forced it to disband the board formed to pick the winner, and create a new panel to award the contract.

Engineers have unveiled the latest prototypes for a European rover that is due to land on Mars in 2015. BBC News has had exclusive access to the test vehicles which are being put through their paces by space company UK Astrium at its HQ in Stevenage. The British team on this European Space Agency (Esa) project has nicknamed the prototypes Bruno and Bradley. The six-wheeled robots are claimed to be the most robust and manoeuvrable planetary rovers to be built. According to Chris Draper, Astrium's ExoMars rover vehicle industrial manager, they can go literally where no rover has gone before.

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.