Following in-depth analyses performed after the deployment of the first MARSIS antenna boom on board Mars Express, ESA has decided to proceed with the deployment of the second 20-metre antenna boom. The full operation will be performed during a time frame starting 13 June and nominally ending on 21 June.

A NASA spacecraft circling Mars has spied, for the first time, two of its fellow probes orbiting the red planet. Red planet veteran Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) successfully photographed NASA’s Mars Odyssey probe and the European-built Mars Express spacecraft during a series of observations released Thursday. From its polar orbit around Mars, the MGS probe found Mars Express first as the two spacecraft flew over the red planet on April 20. Separated from its orbital target by a distance of 155 miles (249 kilometers), the MGS probed turned its Mars Orbiter Camera lens toward the passing spacecraft to snap the first two images of a red planet orbiter.

A radar boom antenna aboard Europe’s Mars Express satellite that had failed to lock into place was successfully deployed May 10-11 after ground controllers maneuvered the satellite to expose the boom to the sun, according to the European Space Agency (ESA) and European scientists. The successful operation makes it more likely that ESA will authorize deployment of the second 20-meter-long boom in the coming weeks following an investigation into the first boom’s problem.

The deployment of the second antenna boom of the Mars Express Sub-Surface Sounding Radar Altimeter (MARSIS) science experiment has been delayed pending investigation of an anomaly found during deployment of the first antenna boom.

A European probe circling Mars has hit a snag in the deployment of a water-seeking radar instrument, prompting mission controllers to delay the experiment while engineers investigate the problem. Flight controllers for the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Mars Express probe halted plans to deploy the second boom in a series of antennas that comprise the spacecraft’s subsurface radar instrument after detecting an anomaly on May 7, 2005.

Following green light for the deployment of ESA’s Mars Express radar, given in February this year, the radar booms are now planned to be deployed in the first half of May. Once the deployment is successful, the Mars Express MARSIS radar will enable the first European spacecraft to orbit Mars to complement its study of the planet’s atmosphere and surface. MARSIS (Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding instrument) is the first antenna of its kind which was also designed to actually look below the surface of Mars at the different layers of material, most notably for water.

These images, taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft, show the 'chaotic' terrain of the Aureum Chaos region on Mars. Aureum Chaos is located in the eastern part of Valles Marineris, south-west of the 280 kilometre-wide impact crater Aram Chaos. Like this impact basin, both regions are two examples of the chaotic terrain contained in this part of the Valles Marineris. As the name ‘chaos’ suggests, this terrain is characterised by randomly oriented, large-scale mesas and knobs that are heavily eroded and dominate the area. As seen in the main colour image, these mesas range from a few kilometres to tens of kilometres wide.

The High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft shows flow features that most likely formed by glaciers or ‘block’ glaciers. A so-called ‘block’ glacier, an ice stream with a large amount of scree (small rocks of assorted sizes), flowed from a flank of the massif into a bowl-shaped impact crater (left), nine kilometres wide, which has been filled nearly to the rim. The block glacier then flowed into a 17 kilometre wide crater, 500 metres below, taking advantage of downward slope.

Europe’s Mars Express spacecraft is casting new light on the past and present status of the red planet, wowing scientists with an impressive set of distinctive observations and in some quarters promoting a tinge of jealousy. Europe’s first and on-going mission to Mars has spotted signs of very recent volcanic activity along with the vestiges of glaciers and gigantic waterfalls. Given these and other findings from the Mars orbiting spacecraft, it is not unreasonable to suggest that life on Mars not only emerged but could have survived to the present in underground niches.

European Space Agency scientists think that there was and could even still be life on Mars and want a new European mission to the red planet to take samples, a conference heard on Friday. "Mars is the most Earth-like planet in our solar system," said Agustin Chicarro, ESA Mars Express Project Scientist at the end of a one-week conference during which scientists from around the world discussed ESA's Mars mission findings so far.

Images taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft, were released at the First Mars Express Science Conference this week. They show the areas of focused research - water, ice, glaciers and volcanism.

A frozen sea, surviving as blocks of pack ice, may lie just beneath the surface of Mars, suggest observations from Europe's Mars Express spacecraft. The sea is just 5° north of the Martian equator and would be the first discovery of a large body of water beyond the planet's polar ice caps. Images from the High Resolution Stereo Camera on Mars Express show raft-like ground structures - dubbed "plates" - that look similar to ice formations near Earth's poles, according to an international team of scientists.

After reaching its observational orbit around Mars a year ago, ESA’s Mars Express has already delivered an avalanche of scientific data of unprecedented quality that have completely changed the way in which we think about the Red Planet. In order to compare views and discuss the implications of the new discoveries, over two hundred scientists will be attending the first Mars Express science conference, taking place from 21 to 25 February at ESA’s European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC), Noordwijk, the Netherlands.

The radar stowed on board the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter will finally be unfolded in early May. The Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding (MARSIS) will look for traces of water ice beneath the martian surface, and could potentially detect reservoirs up to five kilometres underground.

The European Space Agency has given the green light for the MARSIS radar on board its Mars Express spacecraft to be deployed during the first week of May. Assuming that this operation is successful, the radar will finally start the search for subsurface water reservoirs and studies of the Martian ionosphere. ESA's decision to deploy MARSIS follows eight months of intensive computer simulations and technical investigations on both sides of the Atlantic. These were to assess possible harmful boom configurations during deployment and to determine any effects on the spacecraft and its scientific instruments.

Britain’s ill-fated Beagle 2 Mars probe should never have been given the go-ahead by the European Space Agency, an official report said today. A peer review committee (PRC) of ESA experts had originally backed the lander only on condition that it was fully funded at the outset. But this did not happen – and in the circumstances the agency’s Science Programme Committee (SPC) should not have agreed to the mission, it was claimed.

Mars, the red planet, may not after all be the dead planet. New research today by European scientists suggests that volcanoes on Mars last erupted only 2 million years ago and could erupt again. And dramatic photographs by a high-resolution stereoscopic camera aboard the European spacecraft Mars Express, in the journal Nature, suggest that glacial ice could survive on the western scarp of Olympus Mons, the biggest volcano in the solar system. Last week, Nature's US rival Science named the confirmation of water on Mars as the scientific breakthrough of 2004. But the revelation that Mars could be geologically "alive" is even more dramatic.

These images, taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft, are Europe’s highest-resolution pictures so far of the Martian moon Phobos. These HRSC images show new detail that will keep planetary scientists busy for years, working to unravel the mysteries of this moon. The images show the Mars-facing side of the moon, taken from a distance of less than 200 kilometres with a resolution of about seven metres per pixel during orbit 756.

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 Mars Express spacecraft has returned stunning images of mountains and valleys that show signs of past volcanic activity, and suggest that glaciers once shaped the red planet's surface. The pictures from Mars Express show the western end of the Valles Marineris canyon system, which stretches for about 4,000 kilometres close to the martian equator. In places, the main canyon is 10 kilometres deep, more than six times as deep as the Grand Canyon in Arizona. Mars Express's High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) has now photographed this area in more detail than ever before, picking out features as small as 50 metres across

The loss of Britain's Beagle 2 project can be traced to the Government wanting a Mars lander "on the cheap", and tensions with the European Space Agency, MPs said yesterday. Previous reports have highlighted the possible technical reasons for the failure of the £50 million lander, part of the agency's Mars Express mission. Yesterday's report from Dr Gibson's committee is the first to publish details of the squabbles, animosity and management upsets behind the mission.

A spindly radar antenna - which could discover underground water on Mars - will now not deploy on Europe's Mars Express spacecraft until at least March 2005, say mission scientists. That represents about a year's delay for the experiment, which has been postponed repeatedly over concerns that the 40-metre-long antenna could smack into the spacecraft on deployment.

Data obtained by the Mars Express probe that is currently orbiting the red planet show that water vapor and methane gas are concentrated in the same regions of the Martian atmosphere, the European Space Agency recently announced. The finding may have important implications for the possibility that microbial life could exist on Mars. If microbes are making methane in the Martian atmosphere as part of their living process, they would rely on water.

These images, taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft, show the Claritas Fossae tectonic grabens and part of the Solis Planum plains. The Claritas Fossae (‘fossa’ is Latin for trough) region is characterised by systems of ‘grabens’ running mainly north-west to south-east. These can be traced several hundred kilometres up to the northern Tharsis shield volcanoes. A graben forms when a block of the planet’s crust drops down between two faults, due to extension, or pulling, of the crust.

For mission controllers, a solar conjunction means that a spacecraft, the Sun and Earth are in alignment. Yesterday, engineers successfully woke up ESA's Mars Express from a lengthy and long-planned 'nap' as it travelled out of a conjunction, avoiding potential communications interference from the Sun.

Methane and water vapour are concentrated in the same regions of the Martian atmosphere, say scientists studying data from Europe's Mars Express orbiter. They say the link may point to a common source - possibly life - but others remain sceptical about the detection.

Recent analyses of ESA’s Mars Express data reveal that concentrations of water vapour and methane in the atmosphere of Mars significantly overlap. This result, from data obtained by the Planetary Fourier Spectrometer (PFS), gives a boost to understanding of geological and atmospheric processes on Mars, and provides important new hints to evaluate the hypothesis of present life on the Red Planet.

These images, taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft, show part of a heavily eroded impact crater at Solis Planum, in the Thaumasia region of Mars. The images were taken during orbit 431 in May 2004 with a ground resolution of approximately 48 metres per pixel.

These images, taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA's Mars Express spacecraft, show a Martian crater with a dune field on its floor. In arid zones on Earth, these features are called ‘barchanes’, which are dunes having an asymmetrical profile, with a gentle slope on the wind-facing side and a steep slope on the lee-side. The dune field shown here suggests an easterly wind direction with its steeper western part. The composition of the dune material is not certain, but the dark sands could be of basaltic origin.

The Beagle 2 mission team has released its own report about what went wrong with the ill-fated Mars lander. The European Space Agency (ESA) reviewed the mission earlier this year and blamed poor management of funds for the failure. But the UK team concludes that the most likely cause of Beagle 2's demise was the fact that the planet's atmosphere turned out to be thinner than expected, so the craft was unable to brake hard enough to land safely.

These images, taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA's Mars Express spacecraft, show the Dao Valles and Niger Valles, a system of outflow channels on Mars. The images were taken during orbit 528 in June 2004, and show the Dao Valles and Niger Valles areas at a point where the north-eastern Hellas impact crater basin and the Hesperia Planum volcanic region meet.

One of NASA's Mars rovers has sent pictures relayed by the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter for the first time, demonstrating that the orbiter could serve as a communications link if needed. The link-up was part of a set of interplanetary networking demonstrations paving the way for future Mars missions to rely on these networking capabilities. The American and European agencies planned them as part of continuing efforts to cooperate in space exploration.

It may be odd to talk about the wintertime blues in the height of summer, but Spirit has a pretty good case of them, sitting as it is on a Martian hill, dimly lit by the pale sun. For weeks, engineers and scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., have been coaching the rover up and over and around rocks and ledges and slopes in an attempt to position Spirit on top of a relatively flat slice of bedrock that faces north — where, for a few hours a day anyway, heat from the sun juices up the rover's ever-hungry batteries.

Mars appears to have been volcanically active more recently than previously supposed, according to growing evidence from Europe's Mars Express orbiter. New estimates suggest volcanoes could have been active between one million years ago and 20 million years ago, but more work is needed to refine the dates. Previous spacecraft data suggested that volcanism on Mars ceased some time around 600-500 million years ago. Some researchers even speculate Mars could be volcanically active today.

This image of the southern part of Valles Marineris, called Melas Chasma, was obtained by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board the ESA Mars Express spacecraft. This image was taken at a resolution of approximately 30 metres per pixel. The displayed region is located at the southern rim of the Melas Chasma, centred at Mars latitude 11° S and Mars longitude 286° E. The images were taken on orbit 360 of Mars Express.

Mars Express has detected an area of high water vapour over a region of the Red Planet called Arabia Terra. The finding seems to confirm earlier data from the Mars Odyssey spacecraft that the region was "wet". Vapour was also found to be enhanced in the Tharsis region of Mars. High water vapour areas seem to match bright patches, when Mars is seen from space.

People at NASA never cease to surprise me. Searching for water or presence of past life of Mars obviously needs drilling beneath the surface. So NASA is developing the Mars Underground Mole (MUM), based on a previous device used for the European Beagle 2 mission. But here is the twist. MUM will include sensors which were previously used to collect spectral imagery of Earth from pilotless aircrafts, especially Hawaii, according to NASA. While the Mole will stay on the surface on Mars and drill up to 5 meters deep, it will transmit data via a fiber optic cable to a digital array scanning interferometer (DASI). And the spectral images produced by the DASI will enable researchers to identify possible water, ice, organics and minerals under the surface on Mars.

The deployment of the MARSIS antenna on ESA's Mars Express spacecraft has been delayed until later this year. The Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding (MARSIS) will seek evidence of underground water, either frozen or liquid, up to five kilometres beneath the surface of the Red Planet.

The deployment of a radar on Europe's Mars Express probe which is to look for water and ice under the Red Planet has been delayed until later this year. The 40m-long Marsis antenna was due to open out of the spacecraft on 20 April. The delay is linked to concerns that the antenna might swing back with a greater range of motion than expected after opening, hitting the spacecraft.

The deployment of a radar on Europe's Mars Express probe which is to look for water and ice under the Red Planet has been delayed until later this year. The 40m-long Marsis antenna was due to open out of the spacecraft on 20 April. The delay is linked to concerns that the antenna might swing back with a greater range of motion than expected after opening, hitting the spacecraft.

On 2 May 2004, the High-Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board the ESA Mars Express spacecraft obtained images from the central area of the Mars canyon called Valles Marineris. The images were taken at a resolution of approximately 16 metres per pixel. The displayed region is located at the southern rim of the Melas Chasma at Mars latitude 12°S and Mars longitude 285°E. The images were taken on orbit 360 of Mars Express.

These images of fluvial surface features at Mangala Valles on Mars were obtained by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board the ESA Mars Express spacecraft. The HRSC has imaged structures several times which are related to fluvial events in the past on Mars.

If a neat line were ever to be drawn under the failure of Beagle 2, a British spacecraft, to arrive safely on Mars on Christmas Day 2003, an independent and transparent investigation was needed. By its own admission, then, the European Space Agency (ESA) has failed to deliver. Six of the nine people who put the report together are existing or past ESA staff members. And, except for a list of recommendations, the report is to remain secret—even from the scientists who designed and built the lander.

The public may never be told why Britain's first Martian probe - Beagle 2 - disappeared last Christmas as it was about to land on Mars. Investigators have not been able to pinpoint a single failure or shortcoming of the $90 million probe, reporters were told at a London news conference Monday.

The Beagle 2 mission to Mars was a disaster waiting to happen, according to the official inquiry into the debacle, whose findings will be made public tomorrow. Hailed as Britain's first probe to another planet, Beagle 2 was supposed to have touched down on the Red Planet on Christmas Day last year and perform experiments to detect signs of alien life. Instead, all contact was lost with the probe just before it was due to land. It is now presumed to have been destroyed on impact.

Claims that Professor Colin Pillinger may be forced to pay back some of the £20million given to him by the Government to fund his Beagle 2 mission to Mars have been rubbished by the British National Space Centre.

Europe's Mars Express probe has sent back detailed images of a region of the Red Planet that was shaped by intensive continental plate activity. Continental plate, or tectonic, activity is responsible on Earth for continental drift, the formation of ocean basins and earthquakes. These tectonic forces are believed to have since ceased on the Red Planet.

Beagle 2 Chief Scientist, Colin Pillinger, talks with Astrobiology Magazine about mission planning for the surface lander and how one might try to detect life using a robotic explorer.

Scientists have delayed the deployment of a radar on Europe's Mars Express probe, which is currently in orbit around the Red Planet. The decision was made after new data suggested the 40m-long antenna could swing with a greater range of motion than expected after it opened up. This led to concerns that the device could swing back and hit Mars Express.

A spindly radar antenna with the ambitious aim of revealing any water or ice buried below the Martian surface is set to be deployed Monday aboard the orbiting spacecraft Mars Express. MARSIS (Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding) is the seventh and final instrument on the European Space Agency probe to be switched on since it arrived in December, and will take 10 days to set up. Its main antenna, composed of two 20-metre segments, will act as a 40-metre-long divining rod that will scout for water as deep as a few kilometres below ground.

During recent observations from the ESA Mars Express spacecraft in orbit around Mars, methane was detected in its atmosphere. Whilst it is too early to draw any conclusions on its origin, exciting as they may be, scientists are thinking about the next steps to take in order to understand more.

A planned new Beagle 2 mission to Mars may hitch a ride on one of NASA's space ships to travel to the red planet, scientists involved in the project claimed last night. And experts behind the latest quest to find life on Mars are considering using James Bond to help them succeed this time. Former Swansea University academic and project leader, Professor Colin Pilinger, wants to call the lander "Beagle 2 . . . 007", as 2007 is when he expects the mission will lift off.

Instruments aboard a European satellite orbiting Mars have confirmed the presence of a vast expanse of water ice at the planet's south pole, overlaid in a small area by a veneer of frozen carbon dioxide, scientists reported yesterday.

A team from a Welsh university which designed a robotic arm for the ill-fated Beagle 2 mission to Mars will be involved in a new attempt to land on the red planet. The five-person team from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, constructed a robotic arm for the Beagle 2 probe which was lost on Mars after attempting to land on Christmas Day last year.

A bid to get the nation talking about the UK’s role in exploring Mars was being launched today, in the wake of the failed Beagle 2 probe’s apparent disappearance. Mars, the frozen Red Planet, is named after the Roman god of war. Of all the planets in the solar system, it is said to be the one that offers the best prospect of discovering extraterrestrial life.

Thanks to ESA’s Mars Express, we now know that Mars has vast fields of perennial water ice, stretching out from the south pole of the Red Planet. Planetary scientists have discovered that the south polar region of Mars can be split into three separate parts. Part one is the bright polar cap itself, a mixture of 85% highly reflective carbon dioxide ice and 15% water ice. The second part comprises steep slopes known as ‘scarps’, made almost entirely of water ice, that fall away from the polar cap to the surrounding plains. The third part was unexpected and encompasses the vast permafrost fields that stretch for tens of kilometres away from the scarps.

The latest data returned from Europe's Mars Express orbiter confirms there are substantial quantities of water-ice held at the Red Planet's south pole. Scientists say the spacecraft has seen the water-ice in three distinct zones: mixed with carbon dioxide, all on its own and in vast tracts mixed with dust.

A report by the UK National Auditor Office concluded that the British space agency did not properly reveal all the risks associated with the Beagle 2 lander when it sought public funding for the mission. The report, a broad review of the UK's civil space efforts, noted that the British National Space Centre (BNSC) and its parent office, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), suffered weaknesses in risk analysis.

A public spending watchdog criticized scientists behind the doomed Beagle 2 mission to Mars Tuesday for neglecting to highlight the chances of mission failure when they applied for British government funding. The government plowed more than $40 million into the British-built Mars lander, which has not been heard from since it was ejected from its mother ship in mid-December.

"Space appears to have become fashionable again," says Dr Colin Hicks, director general of the British National Space Centre (BNSC). Hicks is particularly busy at present. After the ill-fated Beagle 2 mission, the European Space Agency (ESA) has announced its desire to begin another Mars exploration space programme.

European scientists said Monday they are examining an image of its Beagle 2 Mars lander, taken moments after it separated from its mothership and later was lost, that also shows an unidentified object. The mysterious blot on the photograph is being scrutinized as one of several potential reasons for the failure of the mission -- Europe's first attempt to land a probe on the Red Planet

Editor's Note: Shades of Phobos 2's mysterious disappearance...

Beagle 2, the British space probe which disappeared as it descended toward Mars, may have been detected on the surface of the Red Planet, scientists said on Monday. No signal has been received from the craft since it was due to land on Christmas Day last year, despite various attempts by Mars orbiters and telescopes on Earth to make contact. But photographic images of the area where Beagle 2 was to have come down show four bright spots, dubbed a "string of pearls" by scientists, which may be the remains of the probe.

The missing Beagle 2 lander may have crunched into the Martian dust after plummeting through an unexpectedly thin atmosphere. New measurements from the spacecraft's mothership, Mars Express, suggest the upper atmosphere can be far less dense than anyone thought. This could have been fatal for the lander because it relied on the atmosphere's braking effect to trigger the release of its parachute.

The Beagle 2 lander could have crashed into Mars because the atmosphere on the planet was less dense than expected. Mission scientists told a London meeting the probe may simply have been going too fast for its parachute and airbags to bring about a soft landing.

The Beagle 2 team has announced a public event to take place at the Royal Society on Monday 8th March.

Close-up pictures taken by Europe's Mars Express probe of a volcano on the Red Planet reveal water could have flowed on its flanks in the past. Images of the 5,300m-high mountain, Hecates Tholus, taken 275km above Mars, also show signs of cratering on the slopes caused by volcanic activity.

It is the start of eclipse season for Mars Express. That means unavoidable passages of the spacecraft through the shadow of Mars, cutting it off from the sunlight that is converted into electrical power by the orbiter's solar arrays. This creates a nervous time for engineers at the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany.

While NASA's twin rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, garner all the headlines, the European Space Agency's satellite, Mars Express, is poised to deliver just as much science, including important clues in the hunt for Martian life, at a far lower price. NASA spent more than $800 million on its project, while Mars Express cost a mere €150 million, or about $190 million.

Europe's Mars Express orbiter has taken a detailed image of what scientists think is a glacial channel on the surface of the Red Planet. The picture was taken using the orbiter's high resolution camera at an altitude of 272 kilometres above Mars.