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April 12, 2006
NASA'S Mars Rovers Head for New Sites After Studying Layers of Terrain
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NASA's Mars rover Spirit has reached a safe site for the Martian winter, while its twin, Opportunity, is making fast progress toward a destination of its own. The two rovers recently set out on important -- but very different -- drives after earlier weeks inspecting sites with layers of Mars history. Opportunity finished examining sedimentary evidence of ancient water at a crater called "Erebus," and is now rapidly crossing flat ground toward the scientific lure of a much larger crater, "Victoria."
April 04, 2006
Mars rover's broken wheel is beyond repair
The New Scientist
Mission managers have given up hope of fixing a broken wheel on NASA's Spirit rover and will simply have to drag the wheel on future drives. The glitch means NASA must avoid terrain with loose soil as it maps out a route to a safe winter haven for the rover.
The rover's right-front wheel stopped turning about two weeks ago - apparently because of a broken circuit in the motor that powers the wheel. The same wheel had experienced a surge in current in 2004 but later returned to normal.
March 19, 2006
Spirit Mars Rover In 'Drive Or Die' Situation
NASA’s Spirit Mars rover has wrapped up exploration of a baffling feature called "Home Plate" but now faces the onset of martian winter while dealing with dropping power levels and fighting a balky right front wheel.
"Our current focus is to drive like hell … and try to get [Spirit] to safe winter havens before the power situation gets really bad," said Steve Squyres, lead Mars Rover Exploration scientist at Cornell University.
February 21, 2006
Roving The Red Planet
Space Daily
NASA's Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, have been working overtime to help scientists better understand ancient environmental conditions on the red planet. The rovers are also generating excitement about the exploration of Mars outlined in NASA's Vision for Space Exploration.
February 16, 2006
Mars rover to seek safe winter haven
The New Scientist
While Spirit busily studies a finely layered outcrop dubbed Home Plate, mission planners say the rover's daily power supply is steadily dropping. And with the Martian winter looming and dust accumulating on Spirit's solar arrays, the team is preparing to drive Spirit to a safe haven.
The Martian winter does not officially begin until August, but Byron Jones, rover mission manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, US, says the team would like to get Spirit situated on a slope called McCool Hill, with its solar arrays tilted northward, in plenty of time.
That tilt maximises the sunlight falling on the arrays and worked well for the rovers during their first Martian winter, which peaked in September 2004.
February 13, 2006
Spirit Mars Rover Reaches 'Home Plate': Formation Has Researchers Puzzled
NASA’s Spirit Mars rover has arrived at a site dubbed "Home Plate" within Gusev crater. But what the robot found has left scientists puzzled. As the Mars machinery relays images of the area, the sightseeing has sparked healthy debate within the team running the mission. "Well, so far it has been great," said Steve Squyres, lead Mars Rover Exploration scientist at Cornell University. "It's the most spectacular layered rock we’ve ever seen at Gusev," he told SPACE.com.
January 19, 2006
NASA’s Mars Rovers to Hit the Silver Screen
NASA’s hardy twin robots Spirit and Opportunity currently roving across the surface of Mars will be immortalized in a fresh documentary about their wildly successful mission.
Disney’s new IMAX film Roving Mars, set to open nationwide on Jan. 27, chronicles the exploits of NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission that entered its third year exploring the surface of the red planet this month. Originally slated for a 90-Martian day mission, Spirit and Opportunity have consistently surpassed the expectations of their handlers and filmmakers throughout their mission.
January 02, 2006
Mars rovers keep exploring Red Planet
The warranty expired long ago on NASA's twin robots motoring around Mars. In two years, they have traveled a total of seven miles. Not impressed? Try keeping your car running in a climate where the average temperature is well below zero and where dust devils can reach 100 mph. These two golf cart-sized vehicles were only expected to last three months. "These rovers are living on borrowed time. We're so past warranty on them," says Steven Squyres of Cornell University, the Mars mission's principal researcher. "You try to push them hard every day because we're living day to day."
December 28, 2005
Most Spectacular Mars Photo Yet!
Addict 3D
Scientists and engineers celebrated when they saw the first pictures NASA's Opportunity sent from the rim of a stadium-sized crater that the rover reached after a six-week trek across martian flatlands.
December 06, 2005
Rovers Find Evidence Mars Was Once Hostile
Nearly two years after NASA's twin rovers parachuted to Mars, a Jekyll-and-Hyde picture is emerging about the planet's past and whether it could have supported life. Both Spirit and Opportunity uncovered geologic evidence of a wet past, a sign that ancient Mars may have been hospitable to life. But new findings reveal the Red Planet was also once such a hostile place that the environment may have prevented life from developing. "For much of its history, it was a very forbidding place," said mission principal investigator Steven Squyres of Cornell University.
November 22, 2005
Spirit’s Martian Birthday
If the Spirit rover were your typical 1-year-old, there'd be lots of pictures of the happy tot, perhaps even with a frosting-smeared face. Of course, Spirit is a bot, not a tot, and this is definitely not your typical birthday. In fact, Sunday's big day actually marked 687 Earth days of operations on the Red Planet — not exactly a nice round number on the Gregorian calendar. But by Martian reckoning, it was exactly a year ago that Spirit landed in Gusev Crater, and that's a cause for celebration at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
October 25, 2005
Mars rover begins descent from summit
Spirit, the robot on wheels that reached the top of a Martian hill this summer after an epic climb, is heading back down toward its next target for exploration. After two months at the summit of Husband Hill, the six-wheeled rover is descending to a basin where the scientific instruments it carries will examine an outcrop dubbed "home plate" because from orbit it looks like home on a baseball field.
October 10, 2005
"Spirit" and "Opportunity"
By the time Spirit and Opportunity made Time's "What's Next" list in 2003, the pair were already millions of miles into their journey to Mars. Earth's grounded citizens already had been dazzled by the journey of Sojourner, a much smaller rover that ventured to Mars in 1997. But Sojourner was a test run for its larger siblings. Spirit and Opportunity were well equipped to bring back a plethora of scientific information about the planet that once inspired popular visions of little green people.
September 29, 2005
WUSTL Mars team describes water detection at Gusev crater
The Record
Led by WUSTL earth and planetary scientists, a large team of NASA scientists has detailed the first solid set of evidence for water having existed on Mars at the Gusev crater, the exploration site of the rover Spirit. Alian Wang, Ph.D., senior research scientist in earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences, and Larry A. Haskin, Ph.D., professor of earth and planetary sciences, who died March 24, used an array of sophisticated equipment on Spirit to find that the volcanic rocks at Gusev crater near the rover's landing site were much like the olivine-rich basaltic rocks on Earth. The researchers also found that some of the rocks possessed a coating rich in sulfur, bromine, chlorine and hematite, or oxidized iron.
September 11, 2005
Spirit Rover Captures Animation of Martian Moons
The Spirit Mars rover perched high atop Husband Hill at Gusev Crater is stargazing. Imagery released September 9 by the NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California show the two moons of Mars – Phobos and Deimos cutting across the martian night sky. The unique pictures come courtesy of the Spirit robot, using its onboard camera system to take longing looks at the parade of celestial objects as they flew overhead. An animation has been produced showing both martian moons: Deimos on the left and Phobos on the right – as they travel across the night sky in front of the constellation Sagittarius. Part of Sagittarius resembles an upside-down teapot. Phobos is the brighter object on the right; Deimos is on the left.
August 23, 2005
Mars Rover Reaches Summit, and the View is Spectacular
The Spirit Mars robot is closing in on a milestone moment in its roving history – wheeling up into position atop Husband Hill. Images being transmitted by Spirit show a breathtaking view from its vantage point. "We are within sight of the summit," said Larry Crumpler, a member of the Mars rover science team. He is also research curator in volcanology and space sciences at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science in Albuquerque.
August 17, 2005
Summit in Sight for Mars Rover Spirit
At its Gusev crater exploration site, the Spirit Mars rover is wheeling to the summit of Husband Hill and likely to complete its climb this week. "I think we’re going to make it," said the Mars Exploration Rover program’s lead scientist, Steve Squyres of Cornell University. New imagery from the robot shows a feature that is either the summit or something very close to it, he noted in a newly issued rover update on a Cornell University-based website.
July 20, 2005
It's one small step for a bug, a giant red face for NASA
The Sunday Times
Far from discovering life on Mars, Nasa may have put it there. The American space agency believes the two rover spacecraft scuttling across the red planet are carrying bacteria from Earth, writes John Harlow. The bacteria, bacillus safensis, were found in a chamber in California that had been used to test the rovers. Officials believe it is likely some of the microbes, possibly from scientists’ skin, were on board when the mission left.
July 05, 2005
Mars rovers continue explorations
NASA’s dual Mars rovers — Spirit and Opportunity — are wheeling about in their respective zones of exploration: Gusev Crater and Meridiani Planum.
The Opportunity Mars rover is headed north right now, but only for a little while, said Cornell University’s Steve Squyres, lead scientist on the Mars Exploration Rover program.
Scientists and engineers are delighted to see the golf cart-sized robot free to move about – after being ensnared in sand for some five weeks.
June 30, 2005
Lifting the Iron Curtain on Mars
Free from the "iron curtain" that separated Americans and Russians during the Cold War, the Russian Space Agency and NASA are working together to penetrate the real iron curtain of dust covering Mars.
June 05, 2005
Mars rover freed from sand dune
The Mars rover Opportunity resumed rolling freely across the Martian surface Saturday after scientists freed it from a sand dune where it had been mired for nearly five weeks, NASA officials said. Engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the mission, cheered when images beamed back to Earth showed the rover's wheels were free.
June 03, 2005
Postcards from Mars
NASA's Opportunity rover is still struggling to break free from a Martian sand dune, and half a world away, the Spirit rover is delving deeply into the geology of Gusev Crater. As a result, the Mars mission teams seem to be in a head-down, nose-to-the-grindstone mode. Nevertheless, NASA is releasing Red Planet imagery that ranks high on the coolness scale.
May 24, 2005
NASA's Rovers Continue Martian Missions
NASA's Mars rover Opportunity is trying to escape from a sand trap, while its twin, Spirit, has been busy finding new clues to a wet and violent early Martian history. "Spirit has finally found the kind of geology you can really sink your teeth into," said Dr. Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. He is principal investigator for the Mars rovers' science instruments. According to Squyres, multiple layers of rock in the hills Spirit is exploring suggest successive deposits of water-altered explosive debris.
Spirit Rover Traces Mars' Explosive Past, Opportunity Slowly Digs Out
Explosions and falling rock once peppered the Martian hills that NASA’s Mars rover Spirit currently calls home, astronomers said Tuesday. Spirit, currently scaling Husband Hill above its Gusev Crater landing site, has found evidence of an explosive period in the region’s history, in which volcanoes or a massive impact showered the land with debris and possibly unearthed magma. Whether they were volcanic or impact explosions, however, is not yet known.
May 09, 2005
Mars Rover: Digging Out Of Tough Terrain
When the Opportunity rover landed on Mars last year, scientists were thrilled that it made a cosmic “hole-in-one” by rolling into a crater. But now the robot is struggling to drive itself out of a sand trap. Time will tell whether it’s up to par for the task. Progress is being made on trying to remove Opportunity from a soft-sand dune that the sporty, six-wheeled utility rover has run itself into at its exploration site: Meridiani Planum.
April 29, 2005
Opportunity Mars Rover Stuck in Sand
NASA’s Opportunity Mars rover has run into a sandy snag. All of its six wheels have sunk in deep into a large ripple of soil. Rover operators are optimistic they can extricate the robot from its jam, having gotten dug in before. But ground controllers will need time to wheel back on top of the soil again. Time will also be spent figuring out what’s different about the soil that has bogged down Opportunity, hoping to keep this problem from occurring down the road.
April 27, 2005
Hard-Working Mars Rovers: On the Scent Of Science
There is never a dull moment for a robot on Mars. A fleeting dust devil comes into view -- just right for picture taking. An outcrop of rock is found that yields insight into the planet’s past. And then there’s need to trudge over and around ever-larger sand fields to reach primetime science. Those spunky, full of life rovers -- Spirit and Opportunity -- continue to hit the dusty exploration trail on Mars.
April 26, 2005
Has Spirit Found Bedrock in Columbia Hills?
Universe Today
Since arriving at the Columbia Hills, Spirit, one of the Mars Exploration Rovers, has encountered some mysterious phenomena. The rover’s right front “arthritic” wheel that plagued Spirit’s 2-mile trek across the plains is now suddenly working perfectly and the once dust-covered solar panels whose power output was cut in half have now been miraculously wiped clean. But the biggest mystery of the Columbia Hills may lie in the angled rock outcrops that Spirit has found in the vicinity of “Larry’s Lookout” on Husband Hill.
April 24, 2005
Movie Clip Shows Whirlwinds Carrying Dust on Mars
NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit is taking movies of dust devils -- whirlwinds carrying dust -- scooting across a plain on Mars. "This is the best look we've ever gotten of the wind effects on the martian surface as they are happening," said Dr. Mark Lemmon, a rover team member and atmospheric scientist at Texas A&M University, College Station.
April 19, 2005
Mars rover Opportunity has wheel trouble
New Scientist
The Mars rover Opportunity has lost the ability to steer one of its wheels. While the vehicle can still move, the failure may make it harder to study rocks up close. The rover has six wheels aligned in two rows and each of the four corner wheels has its own steering mechanism. The problem is with the front right wheel, which can still roll but is now stuck at a 7° inward angle. NASA rover project manager Jim Erickson says it is like a car losing its power steering.
April 06, 2005
Durable Mars Rovers Sent Into Third Overtime Period
NASA has approved up to 18 more months of operations for Spirit and Opportunity, the twin Mars rovers that have already surprised engineers and scientists by continuing active exploration for more than 14 months. "The rovers have proven their value with major discoveries about ancient watery environments on Mars that might have harbored life," said Dr. Ghassem Asrar, deputy associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. "We are extending their mission through September 2006 to take advantage of having such capable resources still healthy and in an excellent position to continue their adventures."
April 03, 2005
Hindi, Bengali on sundial aboard Mars Exploration Rovers
IndiaExpress.com
Indian languages Hindi and Bengali find a respectable mention alongside 24 others from across the world on a sundial aboard NASA's Mars Surveyor that landed on the red planet in January 2004. The first sundial ever on a planet other than earth, the three-inch square structure in black and gold, has 'mangal', meaning mars, written on its face in both these languages.
March 30, 2005
Make your own Mars rover
The Martian Soil blog points the way to Web sites that show you how to assemble a downsized paper version of the NASA Mars rovers, as well as a true-scale paper "MarsDial" like the one on each rover (PDF file). All you have to do is print out a copy of the pattern, then painstakingly cut out the pieces and glue them together.
March 24, 2005
Tire tracks and dust devils on Mars
CNET
A recent view across the Martian landscape from the rover Opportunity, which--along with its compatriot Spirit--are still exploring the red planet months after they were expected to shut down.
March 22, 2005
Moon-Watching Mars Rover Catches Deimos Crossing the Sun
That dynamic duo on Mars, the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, are satellite watchers too. Turning their respective camera systems up into the martian sky, the robots have caught sight of the moons of Mars – Phobos and Deimos – scooting across the face of the Sun. “We got four of the possible six Phobos and Deimos transits during this year’s “eclipse season” from the rover sites,” said Jim Bell of the Mars Exploration Rover Project at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.
March 16, 2005
Mars Rover Suffers Instrument Glitch
NASA said Tuesday it has suspended use of one of the mineral-identifying tools on the Opportunity Mars rover due to a problem. The robots thermal emission spectrometer was acting up, and engineers are obtaining data from it while troubleshooting. The problem might be related to a malfunctioning optical switch that tells a mirror in the instrument when to begin moving. Or the mirror might not be properly moving at a constant velocity.
March 12, 2005
Spirit Gets A Dust Devil Once-Over
Mars scientists and engineers are elated about a dust-busting blast that has struck the Spirit rover at its Gusev crater exploration site. Turns out that a martian whirlwind – dubbed a dust devil – likely zoomed over the robot high up in the Columbia Hills. That fleeting flyby effectively cleaned Spirit’s solar arrays, giving the robot a new lease on life. Engineers report that the rover’s power reading quickly shot up to almost as high as when the rover landed on Mars over a year ago.
NASA Mars Program Under Scrutiny
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.”
March 02, 2005
Twin Mars rovers in instrument mix-up
New Scientist
NASA's Mars rovers Opportunity and Spirit are identical twins - so alike that they even fooled NASA. Researchers have discovered that they sent the robots to Mars with an instrument meant for Opportunity inside Spirit and vice versa. While the bungle does not undermine the main scientific conclusions drawn from the data collected by the rovers, it is an embarrassing slip-up for a space agency that once lost a Mars spacecraft because engineers mixed up metric and imperial units.
February 24, 2005
Rover Finds New Signs of Water
The Cornell Daily Sun
Nearly three weeks after the Mars rover Opportunity encountered the first meteorite ever discovered on the surface of a foreign planet, its sibling, the Mars rover Spirit, stumbled upon a native Martian rock that scientists claim provides strong evidence of the existence of liquid water during the Martian past. The rover spent nearly 13 earth days drilling into the rock, analyzing its interior and taking pictures, despite reduced energy due to dust storms. The investigation of the rock, nicknamed Peace, revealed a large quantity of sulfate salt in the rock's interior -- a substance that may have been deposited by liquid water.
February 16, 2005
New Rock Type Found at Mars
NASA's Spirit rover found a new class of rock on Mars that provides additional clues to the planet's watery past. The rock, named "Peace," is an exposure of bedrock in the Columbia Hills within the Gusev Crater, where Spirit landed 13 months ago. Though appearing mundane in a black-and-white image, the rock is significant to scientists for what they've learned by digging into it and analyzing it with a suite of instruments. Peace contains more sulfate salt than any other rock Spirit has examined.
February 12, 2005
The Martian Dust Bowl
Astrobiology Magazine
After a year on Mars, the rovers have been covered with dust. Scientists believe one cannot understand today's changes on Mars--its weather, temperature or water--without also accounting for dust. But the engineers trying to extend the lifetime of the rovers' solar power are as concerned about the first year of dust.
February 08, 2005
Panoramas show rovers’ surroundings in full color
It's been weeks since the Mars rovers marked their anniversaries on the Red Planet, but the happy returns are still being processed back on Earth. Over the past few days, the rover team has released jaw-dropping, true-color panoramas from Spirit as well as Opportunity. The Opportunity rover's panorama shows the place where its heat shield crashed during the probe's descent a little more than a year ago, making a light reddish mark on the brick-red plain called Meridiani Planum.
January 28, 2005
NASA Rovers' Adventures on Mars Continue
NASA lit a birthday candle today for its twin Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity. The Spirit rover begins its second year on Mars investigating puzzling rocks unlike any found earlier. The rovers successfully completed their three-month primary missions in April. They astound even their designers with how well they continue operating. The unanticipated longevity is allowing both rovers to reach additional destinations and to keep making discoveries. Spirit landed on Jan. 3 and Opportunity Jan. 24, 2004, respectively.
January 24, 2005
Opportunity Rover As Seen From Orbit
Malin Space Science Systems
The Mars Exploration Rover (MER-B), Opportunity, landed on the red planet a year ago. This Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) cPROTO image (0.5 cm/pixel) is the only picture obtained thus far that shows the tracks made by the Opportunity rover. This is a sub-frame of MOC image R16-02188. It was acquired on 26 April 2004, during Opportunity's 91st sol--the first day of the MER-B Extended Mission. At that time, Opportunity had recently completed exploration of nearby Fram Crater, and was enroute toward Endurance Crater, where it would eventually spend most of the rest of 2004. The rover itself can be seen in this image-- an amazing accomplishment, considering that the MGS spacecraft was nearly 400 kilometers (nearly 250 miles) away at the time!
January 20, 2005
Mars Rover's Meteorite Discovery Triggers Questions
The discovery of an iron meteorite sitting on Mars by NASA’s Opportunity rover has kick-started a wide-ranging discussion as to what the find may be telling us about the planet itself, past water conditions there, and just how peppered the red planet might be with the fallen objects. Roughly the size of a basketball, the object is mostly made of iron and nickel, and is the first meteorite of any type ever identified on another planet.
January 19, 2005
NASA Rover Finds Meteorite on Mars Surface
In a stroke of luck, the NASA rover Opportunity has discovered a basketball-size metal meteorite sitting on the surface of Mars, the mission's main scientist said Tuesday. Scientists believe the meteorite might lead to clues about how martian winds are reshaping the planet's surface. Opportunity came upon the meteorite last week while performing other tasks. Tests confirmed it was a nickel-iron meteorite, said Steve Squyres, a Cornell University scientist who is the principal investigator for NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers mission.
January 17, 2005
Mars special: Celebrating a year of exploration
New Scientist
IN SPACE, a year can be a long time. Back at the beginning of 2004, the idea that the Red Planet had once been covered with rivers, lakes and seas was just a theory. Now abundant evidence on the ground has turned it into established fact. A year ago it was scientific heresy even to talk of the possibility of life existing today on Mars. But with the proof of past water, plus evidence that there was methane in the air not so long ago, it is now a subject for serious discussion.
Mars Rover Inspects Intriguing Rock – A Meteorite?
Scientists controlling the Opportunity Mars rover are taking an up-close look at an intriguing pitted rock on Mars, now dubbed "Heat Shield Rock". A speculative view about the object is that the Mars robot has come across a meteorite. A detailed investigation of the rock is underway, work that should reveal the true nature of the object.
January 13, 2005
Opportunity Spots Curious Object On Mars
NASA’s Opportunity Mars rover has come across an interesting object -- perhaps a meteorite sitting out in the open at Meridiani Planum. Initial data taken by the robot’s Mini-Thermal Emission Spectrometer (Mini-TES) is suggestive that the odd-looking “rock” is made of metal.
January 04, 2005
NOVA - Welcome to Mars
PBS
NASA's twin Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity have yielded volumes of new data about the red planet in the last year - the least of which involves the planet's history of water. But the rovers have also amazed their human handlers with their longevity, lasting nearly four times their initial 90-day mission despite some early glitches that popped up after landing. A new one-hour documentary NOVA: Welcome to Mars (Public Broadcasting System, Jan. 4 at 8:00 p.m.) chronicles the rover mission from the early days after Spirit's landing through the arrival of Opportunity and some following months.
January 03, 2005
NASA Rover Hits the One Year Mark on Mars
Sitting on the hill of an alien world millions of miles from home, a hardy NASA robot celebrates an anniversary today - one year on the planet Mars. The Mars rover Spirit has come a long way since it hurtled down through the planet's atmosphere and came to a bouncy, airbag-protected stop at Gusev Crater on Jan. 3, 2004. It has survived more than four times its initial 90-day mission, driven miles across the Martian landscape and weathered a red planet winter only to scale hills for its human handlers
January 01, 2005
Mars Rover Wanders Through Littered Landscape
Like the adage here on Earth, so goes it for Mars: One person’s junk is another’s gold mine -- in this case, charred and busted up pieces of a heat shield. NASA’s Opportunity Mars rover is circling leftovers from its entry, descent and landing system that fell to the planet nearly a year ago. Both scientists and engineers are finding value in an up-close inspection of spent entry shield hardware that was shed at high altitude above Mars and fell with a thump onto the expanse of terrain that is Meridiani Planum.
December 30, 2004
'NOVA' Welcomes Viewers to Mars on PBS
When scientists wanted to explore what kind of life might exist on Mars, public television's "NOVA" recorded the building and launch of the rovers sent to the planet. Now, a year later, the "NOVA" team is back with "Welcome to Mars," featuring data collected by the robots as they searched for signs that the planet may once have harbored tiny forms of life. The program airs Tuesday at 8 p.m. EST on PBS (check local listings).
December 28, 2004
Mars Rover Inspects Its Own Debris
NASA’s Opportunity Mars Exploration Rover is wheeling about a field of spacecraft litter -- the remains of heat shield hardware that protected the robot from its plunge through the martian atmosphere last January. Bits and pieces of flotsam scattered across Meridiani Planum -- including a spring and other junked components -- can be clearly seen in new rover images. The heat shield was shed during Opportunity’s descent and landing sequence, falling several miles to the surface.
December 21, 2004
Mystery Martian ‘car wash’ helps rover
A phenomenon akin to a space-borne car wash has boosted the performance of one of the two NASA rovers probing the surface of Mars. Layers of dust have been swept from the solar panels of the Mars Opportunity vehicle while it was closed down during the Martian night. The cleaning boosted the panels' power output close to their maximum 900 watt-hours per day, after at one stage dropping to 500 watt-hours because of the heavy Martian dirt.
Opportunity Rover to Prowl its Entry Debris for Mars Secrets
The Opportunity Mars rover has turned into a junkyard dog, prowling ever closer to a hunk of space litter at Meridiani Planum -- a discarded heat shield. During its January 25, 2004 plunge toward the red planet, the Opportunity rover was encapsulated in a protective aeroshell comprised of two key parts: a heat shield and a backshell that contained essential landing gear.
Mars Rovers Head for New Ground
Discovery News
As the robotic explorers Spirit and Opportunity approached their first anniversaries on Mars, the rovers, working on opposite sides of the planet, were on the move, heading to their next targets. Opportunity, which has been crawling around for six months inside a stadium-sized hole in the ground called Endurance Crater, climbed out this week to begin a new round of studies. Its final task inside Endurance Crater was to make a close inspection of exposed rock layers on a crater wall called Burns Cliff, according to NASA scientists.
December 17, 2004
Science names Cornell-led Mars rover mission science program as Breakthrough of the Year
Cornell
Science magazine has chosen the discoveries of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission as Breakthrough of the Year in its Dec. 17 edition, published today. The principal scientific investigator for the mission's twin-rover science program is Steve Squyres, professor of astronomy at Cornell University, assisted by a large team of researchers, 28 of them at Cornell, including 15 students. The mission is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. The journal, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, says that its annual top honor is awarded for the mission's discovery of evidence for the prolonged presence of potentially life-supporting, salty, acidic water on the planet's surface.
December 14, 2004
On Mars: Earth-Like Clouds and a New Type of Rock
NASA's Mars rovers have returned new evidence for past water, pictures of Earth-like clouds seen for the first time from the planet's surface, and a rock that doesn't look like anything scientists have ever seen. Meanwhile, officials say both robots are in surprisingly good health and could continue their science investigations for months more, despite nagging health problems.
December 03, 2004
Conditions on vast plain on Mars could have been suitable for life, Cornell rover scientist Squyres states in special Science issue
Cornell
Scientists have long been tantalized by the question of whether life once existed on Mars. Although present conditions on the planet would seem to be inhospitable to life, the data sent back over the past 10 months by NASA's two exploration rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, showed a world that might once have been warmer and wetter -- perhaps friendly enough to support microbial organisms. Now a Cornell University-led Mars rover science team reports on the historic journey by the rover Opportunity, which is exploring a vast plain, Meridiani Planum, and concludes with this observation: "Liquid water was once present intermittently at the martian surface at Meridiani, and at times it saturated the subsurface. Because liquid water is a key prerequisite for life, we infer that conditions at Meridiani may have been habitable for some period of time in martian history."
November 12, 2004
Opportunity Rover to Pack Up and Leave Crater
NASA's Mars rover Opportunity will back its way out of a crater it has spent four months exploring after reaching terrain that appears too treacherous to tread. Sitting at an incline inside "Endurance Crater" in Meridiani Planum, Opportunity has apparently reached in impasse. To the rover's right, slopes are too steep to pass, while on the left the terrain appears to contain sandy patches where Opportunity could bog down.
November 11, 2004
Mars answers spur questions
Rocky Mountain News
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?
November 05, 2004
Rover control shifts to Ithaca
The Ithaca Journal
Getting to drive two rovers on Mars all the way from Ithaca is a dream come true for Cornell University's Steven Squyres. "It's home," Squyres said of Ithaca. Principal investigator and lead scientist for the NASA-funded Mars Exploration Rover project, Squyres moved back to Ithaca in September after spending about eight months steering the mission from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. -- the mission's headquarters.
Mars rover overcomes uphill struggle
New Scientist
The Mars rover Opportunity has emerged safely from days of struggling through loose sand and is set to analyse its most tantalising targets yet.
Spinning wheels nearly thwarted the rover's six-wheeled climb inside the stadium-sized Endurance crater. But it is expected to arrive within a robotic-arm's length of a rock exposure dubbed Burns Cliff on Friday, where deep exposures of heavily layered bedrock are visible.
October 31, 2004
NASA's Mars Rovers Pass the 50,000-Picture Mark
A view of the sundial-like calibration target on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit, with a bit of martian terrain in the background, is the 50,000th image from the twin rovers that have been exploring Mars since January. The images stock a treasury of scientific information on scales from microscopic detail to features on the horizon scores of kilometers or miles away, and even include glimpses of Mars' moons, Earth and the Sun. They also provide an always-current understanding of the surrounding terrain for use by the team of rover wranglers planning each day's activities on Mars.
