An instrument on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity can check for any water that might be bound into shallow underground minerals along the rover's path. "If we conclude that there is something unusual in the subsurface at a particular spot, we could suggest more analysis of the spot using the capabilities of other instruments," said this instrument's principal investigator, Igor Mitrofanov of the Space Research Institute, Russia. The Mars Science Laboratory mission will use 10 instruments on Curiosity to investigate whether the area selected for the mission has ever offered environmental conditions favorable for life and favorable for preserving evidence about life. "The strength of Mars Science Laboratory is the combination of all the instruments together," Mitrofanov added.

Assembly of the powerful Atlas V booster that will rocket NASA’s Curiosity Mars Science Laboratory rover to Mars is nearly complete. The Atlas V is taking shape inside the Vertical Integration Facility at Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The rocket is built by United Launch Alliance under contract to NASA as part of NASA’s Launch Services Program to loft science satellites on expendable rockets. Blastoff of Curiosity remains on schedule for Nov. 25, 2011, the day after the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S. The launch window for a favorable orbital alignment to Mars remains open until Dec. 18 after which the mission would face a 26 month delay at a cost likely to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Curiosity is set to touchdown on Mars at Gale Crater between August 6 & August 20, 2012. The compact car sized rover is equipped with 10 science instruments that will search for signs of habitats that could potentially support martian microbial life, past or present if it ever existed.

A giant crater on Mars destined to be the stomping ground for NASA's next rover could provide a treasure trove of intriguing science finds, researchers say. NASA's car-size, $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover, also known as Curiosity, is slated to blast off in late November and arrive at the Red Planet in August 2012. It'll touch down near the foot of a 3-mile (5-kilometer) high mountain in a massive crater called Gale. Curiosity's traverses around Gale Crater and its central mountain should reveal a great deal about Martian history and the planet's past potential to host life, scientists say.

NASA plans to send a new rover, Curiosity, on an expedition to Mars in hopes of finding evidence of the possibility of microbial life, NASA officials said at the Jet Propulsion Lab on Thursday. Curiosity, or the Mars Science Laboratory, is targeted for a Nov. 25-Dec. 11 launch period, after overcoming obstacles that conflicted with its original target launch date of 2009. The mission’s main purpose is to explore a landing site as a potential habitat for life and assess its potential for the preservation of biosignatures (substances that provide evidence of life), NASA said.

Engineers finished up functional testing of the $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory last week, verifying the Curiosity rover can make it to Mars and pursue scientific clues that the planet may have once harbored life.

NASA's unmanned Curiosity rover will explore one of the tallest, climbable mountains in the Solar System to discover if signs of life ever existed on the red planet. The landing site for the US$2.5 billion dollar Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) was unveiled the day after the 30-year shuttle era ended with the return to Earth of Atlantis after its final mission to the International Space Station.

It's official: NASA's next Mars rover has a landing site and it's a giant crater called Gale. NASA's $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission is slated to launch in late November, and will drop a car-size rover named Curiosity at the Gale crater.

NASA has just selected Gale Crater as the landing spot for its next Mars rover, Curiosity, which will launch late this year and arrive at the Red Planet in August 2012. Here's what you need to know about Gale Crater.

NASA and the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum will host a news conference at 10 a.m. EDT, Friday, July 22 to announce the selected landing site for the agency's latest Mars rover. NASA Television and the agency's website will provide live coverage of the event that will be held at the museum's Moving Beyond Earth Gallery.

NASA is deciding between two places on Mars to send its next rover. The space agency said that the project team and outside scientists have narrowed the options and that a final decision on the destination for the nuclear-powered rover nicknamed Curiosity will likely be made by the end of the month. The rover will touch down either in Gale Crater near the Martian equator or the Eberswalde crater in the planet's southern hemisphere.

US and European efforts to send joint missions to Mars have encountered yet another hitch. A letter from Washington formally committing to combined ventures at the planet this decade was expected in Paris this week, but has not arrived. It makes it harder for Europe to authorise its industry to start the next phase of building on an orbiter to hunt for Methane in Mars' atmosphere.

More than 34,000 Floridians will go to Mars this year, attached to the back of a wheeled rover. Well, sort of. As part of an ongoing NASA initiative, the space organization invited people to submit their names online to be included on a dime-sized microchip to land on the red planet later this year.

When NASA's newest Mars rover dives into the Martian atmosphere next year, it will be cocooned in the largest "beat the heat" system ever sent to the Red Planet. To ensure that the nuclear-powered rover — called the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), or "Curiosity" for short — survives its fiery entry and reaches a pinpointed landing spot, it will have a huge heat shield and back shell that together form a protective aeroshell. The heat shield is outfitted with something called the Mars Science Laboratory Entry, Descent and Landing Instrument (MEDLI) — a set of sensors that will record atmospheric conditions and gauge how well the heat shield thwarts the brutal welcoming that Curiosity will receive high above the red Martian dirt.

Curiosity is the rover that will house NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), due to launch on November 25, 2011, and land on Mars on August 6, 2012. The rover and its mobile lab will perform a wide range of remote sensing tasks, including (hopefully? finally?) answering the question of whether Mars is or was capable of supporting microbial life.

By the end of this year, a bigger and smarter rover will be on its way to Mars. Called Curiosity, NASA‘s six-wheel-drive, 9-foot-long robotic research vehicle will be delivered to the planet’s surface using the most unusual method yet, which you can see in the video above. Unlike its predecessors that landed on Mars inside huge balloons that bounced along the surface until they came to a halt, the heavier Curiosity will be suspended by a tether from a crane-like rocket platform that gently lowers the robot to the surface. Then that platform will fly away and crash elsewhere into the surface of the Red Planet while Curiosity gets its 687-Earth-day (1 Mars year) mission underway.

The NASA rover to be launched to Mars this year will carry the Mast Camera (Mastcam) instrument already on the vehicle, providing the capability to meet the mission's science goals. Work has stopped on an alternative version of the instrument, with a pair of zoom-lens cameras, which would have provided additional capabilities for improved three-dimensional video. The installed Mastcam on the Mars Science Laboratory mission's Curiosity rover uses two fixed-focal-length cameras: a telephoto for one eye and wider angle for the other. Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, built the Mastcam and was funded by NASA last year to see whether a zoom version could be developed in time for testing on Curiosity.

A space-simulation chamber at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., is temporary home this month for the Curiosity rover, which will land on Mars next year. Tests inside the 25-foot-diameter chamber (7.6-meters) are putting the rover through various sequences in environmental conditions resembling Martian surface conditions. After the chamber's large door was sealed last week, air was pumped out to near-vacuum pressure, liquid nitrogen in the walls dropped the temperature to minus 130 degrees Celsius (minus 202 degrees Fahrenheit), and a bank of powerful lamps simulated the intensity of sunshine on Mars.

From private spaceflights to NASA missions to the moon, Mars and beyond, the next year promises to be a busy one for Americans in space. Here's a preview of just some of the coming attractions for U.S. spaceflight in 2011.

About eight months before the NASA rover Curiosity touches down on Mars in August 2012, the mission's science measurements will begin much closer to Earth. The Mars Science Laboratory mission's Radiation Assessment Detector, or RAD, will monitor naturally occurring radiation that can be unhealthful if absorbed by living organisms. It will do so on the surface of Mars, where there has never before been such an instrument, as well as during the trip between Mars and Earth. RAD's measurements on Mars will help fulfill the mission's key goals of assessing whether Curiosity's landing region on Mars has had conditions favorable for life and for preserving evidence about life. This instrument also will do an additional job. Unlike any of the nine others in this robotic mission's science payload, RAD has a special task and funding from the part of NASA that is planning human exploration beyond Earth orbit. It will aid design of human missions by reducing uncertainty about how much shielding from radiation future astronauts will need. The measurements between Earth and Mars, as well as the measurements on Mars, will serve that purpose.

The rover Curiosity, which NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission will place on Mars in August 2012, has been rolling over ramps in a clean room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to test its mobility system. Curiosity uses the same type of six-wheel, rocker-bogie suspension system as previous Mars rovers, for handling uneven terrain during drives. Its wheels are half a meter (20 inches) in diameter, twice the height of the wheels on the Spirit and Opportunity rovers currently on Mars. Launch of the Mars Science Laboratory is scheduled for 2011 during the period from Nov. 25 to Dec. 18. The mission is designed to operate Curiosity on Mars for a full Martian year, which equals about two Earth years. A public lecture by Mars Science Laboratory Chief Scientist John Grotzinger, of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, will take place at JPL on Thursday, Sept. 16, beginning at 7 p.m. PDT Time (10 p.m. EDT). Live video streaming, supplemented by a real-time web chat to take public questions, will air on Ustream at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasajpl.

Slamming into the Martian atmosphere at 13,000 mph and enduring temperatures of up to 3,800 degrees Fahrenheit, a peak deceleration of up to 15 Gs, and the jerk of a supersonic braking parachute--that's just the opening act. For NASA's Mars Science Laboratory, the real fun will start 50 seconds before touchdown when the one-ton nuclear-powered rover falls free of its parachute for a nail-biting rocket-powered final descent to the surface. (For the main story in this package, see "On Mars, satisfaction awaits Curiosity.") Unlike past Mars missions, the Curiosity rover will not set down atop a legged lander or bounce to the surface surrounded by shock-absorbing airbags. Instead, it will be lowered to the ground and set on its wheels by a slowly descending "sky crane" designed to unreel the lander like a lure on a fishing line.

A downward-pointing camera on the front-left side of NASA's Curiosity rover will give adventure fans worldwide an unprecedented sense of riding a spacecraft to a landing on Mars. The Mars Descent Imager, or MARDI, will start recording high-resolution video about two minutes before landing in August 2012. Initial frames will glimpse the heat shield falling away from beneath the rover, revealing a swath of Martian terrain below illuminated in afternoon sunlight. The first scenes will cover ground several kilometers (a few miles) across. Successive images will close in and cover a smaller area each second. The full-color video will likely spin, then shake, as the Mars Science Laboratory mission's parachute, then its rocket-powered backpack, slow the rover's descent. The left-front wheel will pop into view when Curiosity extends its mobility and landing gear.

The Mars Descent Imager for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory took this image inside the Malin Space Science Systems clean room in San Diego, Calif., during calibration testing of the camera in June 2008. It shows the instrument's deputy principal investigator, Ken Edgett, holding a six-foot metal ruler that was used as a depth-of-field test target. The camera is focused at 7 meters (23 feet) so that everything between about 2 meters (7 feet) and infinity is in focus. This image shows a slightly out-of-focus rock (a rounded cobble of Icelandic basalt with tiny crystals and vesicles) at a distance of about 70 centimeters (2.3 feet), equivalent to the distance the camera will be from the ground after the rover has landed.

While NASA is counting on an act of Congress or a renegotiated deal with Russia to acquire plutonium for its next robotic deep space missions, the European Space Agency is considering alternative nuclear fuels to power its own probes traveling into the sun-starved outer solar system. NASA's dwindling supply of plutonium-238 nuclear fuel will not be sufficient to power an orbiter to visit Jupiter's moon Europa, NASA's contribution to a planned $4.5 billion joint flagship mission between the U.S. space agency and Europe. That's unless the U.S. Department of Energy, which supplies nuclear fuel for NASA missions, receives funding to restart domestic production of plutonium or successfully resolves a contract dispute with the Russian government, said Jim Adams, the deputy director of NASA's planetary science division.

Europe, a leader in nuclear power, has announced that it intends to lend its American counterparts a hand by making Pu-238 for NASA. David Southwood, ESA's director of science and robotic exploration, in an interview with Spaceflight Now, states, "Our target is to have an independent capability, which may help our American friends." Since the Pioneer and Voyager missions of the 1970s, NASA has been using the radioactive plutonium-238 (or Pu-238) isotope to power its deep space missions. The radioactive source has a very long half-life of 87.7 years. Over that period it slowly decays, releasing a steady stream of thermal energy in the process. That thermal energy is harvested by radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) in the probes to make power. Unfortunately, NASA's plutonium stockpile has almost been exhausted, even as agency prepares its new Mars Space Laboratory which will require the isotope for power. There's really no alternative currently for NASA, as the operational range of many of its missions place it well outside the spatial volume where the sun's rays are strong enough to provide a decent level of solar power.

NASA's next Mars rover just got a new set of wheels and an innovative suspension system in preparation for its journey to the red planet. The Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity, a robot car is scheduled to launch in 2011 and reach Mars soil in August 2012. Each of its six new wheels is about 20 inches (about half a meter) in diameter. The ambitious rover is designed to collect samples and conduct tests on rocks across the Martian surface in order to dissect the planet's geological history.

The latest Mars robot may be dead, but NASA scientists have plenty to keep them busy as they scout out four potential stomping grounds for an ambitious new rover pegged to be the next red planet explorer. NASA declared the Phoenix Mars lander – its youngest Mars probe – officially dead in late May after photos taken of it from orbit revealed substantial damage from its environment in the Martian arctic. Those photos came from the same powerful orbiter that has been searching for the ultimate drop zone for NASA's new Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) which is currently set for a November 2011 launch. The new roving robot lab, known as Curiosity, is expected to determine whether Mars is or was ever habitable to microbial life. The rover's combination of technical improvements should make any potential landing sites more scientifically rich than anywhere Mars landers have gone before.

Engineers with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., are running diverse trials with a test version of the radar system that will enable NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission to put the Curiosity rover onto the Martian surface in August 2012. One set of tests conducted over a desert lakebed at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, Calif., in May 2010 used flights with a helicopter simulating specific descent paths anticipated for Martian sites. During the final stage of descent, NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission will use a "sky crane" maneuver to lower Curiosity on a bridle from the mission's rocket-powered descent stage. The descent stage will carry Curiosity's flight radar.

The life of a Mars rover is probably bit like that of Wall-E at the start of the Pixar movie: a lot of lonely treks in dutiful fulfillment of a mission through the remains of a planet's earlier days. The rovers Spirit and Opportunity may not be Hollywood icons, but they have done NASA proud. And in just the last day or so, Opportunity hit yet another milestone--it now holds the record for the longest active service on the surface of Mars, surpassing the mark of six years, 116 days (in Earth time) set by the Viking 1 lander, which arrived on the Red Planet in the summer of 1976.

Any proof that there’s life on Mars is still non-existent. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) agency of the U.S. government has made a statement to that effect in answer to the sensational article in the British tabloid newspaper “The Sun”, saying that the Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, have allegedly found a biological substance similar to a bog. It is really not very important whether purposefully or simply wrongly interpreting the NASA reports, the author of the publication in the daily tabloid newspaper “The Sun” deceived its readers. In any case, everybody, as before, is interested to know whether there is life on Mars. New arguments have appeared in the dispute over the presence of primitive life on Mars. Scientists have proved that there’re bacteria on the Earth, which can live under extreme conditions, similar to the conditions existing on Planet Mars. This provides us sufficient grounds to reconsider the results of the experiments, which denied the existence of life on Mars.

Imagine a focused laser beam that can evaporate rocks on a far-away planet. The stuff of science fiction, right? Well, not if you're a NASA scientist working on the newest martian rover being built at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. A full-scale model of the rover, about the size of a compact SUV, is on display at Seattle's Museum of Flight from May 4 until May 31, 2010.

If the next generation rover is able to take high-resolution color movies in 3-D on Mars, it will be thanks to the reigning king of 3-D cinema himself, "Avatar" director James Cameron. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory scaled back its plans in 2007 to mount such a camera atop the rover Curiosity, set to launch in 2011, after that next flagship mission to Mars came in consistently over budget and behind schedule. But Cameron lobbied hard for inclusion of a 3-D camera for the mission, taking his concerns directly to NASA administrator Charles Bolden in a one-on-one meeting in January. Cameron, whose film "Avatar" has brought in more money worldwide than the $2.3 billion Mars mission, convinced Bolden that a rover with a better set of eyes would help the public connect with the mission. "He actually was really open to the idea," Cameron said. "Our first meeting went very well." It went so well that Cameron convinced NASA to buy a 3-D camera for Curiosity. It will sit on top of the rover's mast - even though a mast camera, without 3-D capabilities, had already been built and was delivered to JPL this month.

While Bad Religion aren’t technically heading to outer space, the names of the band members, as well as the name of their record label, Epitaph Records, are going to Mars. Apparently, NASA astronaut Jerry Stoces is a big fan of the band, and according to the Epitaph blog, he listened to the group while training for his mission into space, going down next year on the Lynx spacecraft. Stoces also happens to be working on the next Mars Exploration Rover Mission and had the opportunity to add some names to a microchip that will be carried by the Curiosity rover, which goes to Mars next year. Naturally, he picked the dudes in Bad Religion and Epitaph Records as choices for Martians to understand English proper nouns.

Fill in your information and your name will be included with others on a microchip on the Mars Science Laboratory rover heading to Mars in 2011!

Mars rovers "Spirit" and "Opportunity" were successful beyond NASA's wildest dreams. Now they're building a new, nuclear-powered Mini Cooper-sized rover to be lowered onto Mars by a hovering drop ship in 2013. Meet "Curiosity," the new Mars Science Laboratory.

It weighs almost a tonne, has cost more than $2bn and, in 2013, it will be lowered on to the surface of Mars with a landing system that has never been tried before. The Mars Science Laboratory will "revolutionise investigations in science on other planets", says Doug McCuistion, director of Nasa's Mars exploration programme. It will, he says, lay the foundations for future missions that will eventually bring pieces of the Red Planet back home to Earth. "The ability to put a metric tonne on the surface... gives us the capability to undertake sample collection," says Dr McCuistion. "To collect and launch samples back into orbit will require that size of a vehicle."

new technique that uses a laser to vaporize materials like rocks and steel to analyze their chemical composition is finding new applications from Mars to forensics. Thanks to its relatively small size and low cost, laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy is emerging from the laboratory and turning into a precise tool for figuring out what something is made of. What had been a technique largely for scientists now can be transformed into a tough, small system that can be operated by a technician instead of a PhD. “The same things that make it amenable to go to Mars also make it amenable to go out in the field,” said Jose Almirall, a chemist at Florida International University who has a grant from the Department of Justice to explore how crime labs can use the technology. NASA will be deploying a LIBS system called the “ChemCam” on its new Mars rover, now named Curiosity and scheduled to launch next year.

If you found your grandmother's diary, tattered and dust covered, up in the attic, would you read it? Of course you would. Granny was a pistol! Brush off the dust, open up the little book, and foray into her lively and interesting past. Dust cloaks some fascinating tales in other places, too. NASA scientists will soon brush the dust off some Martian rocks that are practically bursting their seams to give their lively account of the red planet's past. The Mars Science Lab -- aptly named "Curiosity" -- is heading up there in 2011 to read the diary of Mars. The small, car-sized rover will ramble about on the rocky surface, gizmos at full tilt, not only brushing dust off rocks but also vaporizing them with a laser beam, gathering samples to analyze on the spot, taking high resolution photographs, and more.

NASA is running out of the special kind of plutonium needed to power deep space probes, worrying planetary scientists who say the U. S. urgently needs to restart production of plutonium-238. But it's unclear whether Congress will provide the $30 million that the administration requested earlier this year for the Department of Energy to get a new program going. Nuclear weapons use plutonium-239, but NASA depends on something quite different: plutonium-238. A marshmallow-sized pellet of plutonium-238, encased in metal, gives off a lot of heat. "If you dim the lights a little bit, it glows a little red, because it's very hot," says Stephen Johnson, director of space nuclear systems and technologies at the Idaho National Laboratory. All that heat can be converted into electricity. "And this electricity is very, very useful, when you're in a remote or a hostile environment," says Johnson, "such as when you're in space and when you're too far away from sun to use solar power."

Fill in your information below and your name will be included with others on a microchip on the Mars Science Laboratory rover heading to Mars in 2011!

The parachute for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory passed flight-qualification testing in March and April 2009 inside the world's largest wind tunnel, at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. In this image, an engineer is dwarfed by the parachute, the largest ever built to fly on an extraterrestrial flight. It is designed to survive deployment at Mach 2.2 in the Martian atmosphere, where it will generate up to 65,000 pounds of drag force. The parachute, built by Pioneer Aerospace, South Windsor, Conn., has 80 suspension lines, measures more than 50 meters (165 feet) in length, and opens to a diameter of nearly 16 meters (51 feet).

In a "clean room" in Building 150 of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is something that looks very much like a flying saucer. It's a capsule containing a huge, brawny Mars rover, a Hummer compared with the Mini Coopers that have previously rolled across the Red Planet. This is the Mars Science Laboratory, the space agency's next big mission to the most Earth-like planet in the solar system. But it's been a magnet for controversy, and a reminder that the robotic exploration of other worlds is never a snap, especially when engineers decide to get ambitious.

The Mars Science Laboratory rover may be retargeted to land near a methane vent on Mars to specifically seek direct evidence of current Martian life. This new consideration of MSL landing sites comes in the wake of compelling new data that large pockets of methane found in the Martian atmosphere could have been exhaled or vented from abundant microorganisms living underground on Mars. The MSL rover's launch was recently delayed from 2009 to 2011 because of technical delays, but the slip could enable a new landing site selection related to the methane findings, says Michael Meyer, the lead Mars program scientist at NASA headquarters in Washington.

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory will launch two years later than previously planned, in the fall of 2011. The mission will send a next-generation rover with unprecedented research tools to study the early environmental history of Mars. A launch date of October 2009 no longer is feasible because of testing and hardware challenges that must be addressed to ensure mission success. The window for a 2009 launch ends in late October. The relative positions of Earth and Mars are favorable for flights to Mars only a few weeks every two years. The next launch opportunity after 2009 is in 2011. "We will not lessen our standards for testing the mission's complex flight systems, so we are choosing the more responsible option of changing the launch date," said Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Up to this point, efforts have focused on launching next year, both to begin the exciting science and because the delay will increase taxpayers' investment in the mission. However, we've reached the point where we can not condense the schedule further without compromising vital testing."

The Mars Science Laboratory mission, a jumbo rover originally slated to launch for the red planet next year, has been delayed until 2011, NASA announced today. "We will not be ready to launch by the hoped-for date next year," said NASA Administrator Michael Griffin at a briefing. A major review of the mission conducted earlier this year had concluded that MSL "had a solid chance of making the 2009 launch" if the launch window was extended into October 2009, which was done, and an additional $200 million was added to the project, said Ed Weiler, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. But new technical issues that came up since that review as well as missed delivery schedules have prompted NASA officials to further delay the mission to avoid a "mad dash to launch," Weiler said. "Failure on this mission is not an option, the science is too important," he added.

Detecting water underground does not require a magical stick. Neutrons reflecting out of the soil can indicate the presence of water or ice. A novel instrument that can detect those neutrons is planned for NASA's next rover mission to Mars. Because neutrons penetrate most materials, neutron beams and detectors are often used to study crystal structure, as well as explore oil and mineral reserves underground. The same physics motivates the Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons (DAN) instrument, a contribution from the Federal Space Agency of Russia to the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) that is scheduled to launch next year. The goal of the DAN instrument is to use neutrons to detect water that might be lurking underneath the rover as it moves along the martian surface.

Planetary scientists at NASA's Goddard Flight Center claim to have identified hotspots of methane gas emission, extremely localized plumes whose concentration fades quickly in time. An atmosphere-wide distribution that's stable in time would indicate a balance between geological sources and destruction by sunlight. Localized sources, however, suggest much more active sources. What's the best source of methane most people know about? Cows. That's unlikely on Mars. But backing off a level, the important factor is LIFE. NASA team leader Michael Mumma puts forward the idea that subterranean bacteria could be producing the noxious fumes, which periodically percolate to the surface in short lived bursts. But it could also be a geological source deep below the surface. The CH4 was identified spectroscopically, analyzing the exact wavelengths of the light emitted from certain regions over time. It's exactly the same strategy the astronomers of old used, "just looking at what color things are", but since we worked out (some) quantum mechanics the same light can tell us so much more. Unfortunately, it can't make the crucial distinction between life or rock-based gas. But if we can just get a bit closer we can find out.

A NASA decision may be forthcoming on the cost-overrun and highly complex Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission. Will a decision be made to stay the course to Mars with a liftoff next year…or move it to 2011?…or decide its fate at a later time? But time is running out. The call itself is expected to come from NASA chief, Mike Griffin. MSL is being tagged as “the first real astrobiology mission to Mars” - with a price tag sailing past $2 billion. The project has already exceeded the 15 percent “overguide”, (that’s an “overrun” in taxpayer parlance) set by Congress in the fiscal year 2008 NASA authorization law. The next overguide benchmark is 30 percent. MSL’s total cost overrun is expected to be between 33 and 40 percent. Why not delay the launch to 2011? Doing so will cost NASA an additional $300 million - $400 million.

NASA's new Mars rover aims high. It's bigger, more powerful and more sophisticated than any other robotic vehicle that has landed on another planet. It will try to answer a big question: Has life existed elsewhere in the solar system? Its very ambition has gotten the rover in trouble. Thanks to a mix of technological setbacks and engineering misjudgments, the rover's epic scale is matched by epic problems. Its story offers a cautionary tale as NASA plans to devote large chunks of its science budget in coming years to grand "flagship" missions, including a spacecraft to return Mars rocks to Earth and another that would visit a moon of Jupiter or Saturn. The new rover, known as the Mars Science Laboratory, is $235 million, or 24%, over budget. Work on it has run so late that engineers are racing to prepare the rover for its blastoff in 2009. After that, the next good launch window, when Mars and the Earth are closest, is in 2011.

Less than a year since beginning the prime science phase of its mission, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has passed a mission-success milestone for the amount of data returned. The data-volume target of 26 terabytes, which was surpassed this week, is equivalent to about 5,000 CD-ROMs full and exceeds the total from all other current and past Mars missions combined. The biggest shares of the data come from two of the orbiter's six science instruments: the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment and the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars. The high-resolution camera's team of investigators, based at the University of Arizona, Tucson, today released 143 color images. The images reveal features as small as a desk. They are valuable to researchers studying possible landing sites for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory, a mission launching in 2009 to deploy a long-distance rover carrying sophisticated science instruments on Mars.

The nuclear-powered Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) has escalated in cost. It’s now an outlay of loot hovering at $1.7 billion. NASA senior Mars management has directed the project to — among a suite of actions — expend no additional funds on a remote-sensing laser instrument called ChemCam, take off a descent imaging camera, and cost-cap a couple of other instruments at their current budgets. The MSL “required some focused and prudent reductions in scope in order to better ensure project success,” according to a NASA statement on the large Mars rover project. From higher-ups at NASA Headquarters, the marching order is for the MSL project team to dig into their collective science and engineering pockets and cover the $75 million cost overrun to “clean up the mess” so as not to “slaughter the innocent,” I’ve been advised. Translation, and in tough love language: MSL gets no more money from NASA Headquarters.

Yesterday I deposited the baby with her grandmother and went to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for a press junket to the opening of their new Mars Yard. (I did ask if I could bring Anahita along but I guess it's too complicated to get kids under 12 access to the Lab. Too bad, I think she would have enjoyed it!) The Mars Yard is an outdoor facility where the robotics lab test-drives their rovers. For a long time, it has been an area roughly the size of a softball infield, perfectly flat, peppered with rocks ranging in size from pebbles to a soccer ball or so. This was adequate for developing and testing the Rocky series of rovers that led to Sojourner, the subsequent FIDO and its sister rovers, and the Mars Exploration Rover, but once the rovers were on Mars the robotics lab ran into a problem: there were no sloping surfaces in the Mars Yard for test-driving. They had to truck a bunch of dirt in to the loading dock of the building where they housed the engineering model to build a slope. Clearly, the Mars Yard needed upgrading. Yesterday's opening showed us the new-and-improved Mars Yard, which was six times larger, contained much larger rocks, and included one area with a variably sloping surface. All of which was interesting, but that wasn't the best part of the day. They used the opportunity to unveil to the press the mobility model of the next Mars rover, Mars Science Laboratory or MSL.

Go to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory website and check out the newest video showing the Mars Science Laboratory mission, and you'll see the latest and greatest design for a roving mission to Mars. I've clipped and posted a few screen caps below. The first part of the video shows the landing, which will not be at all like the last three successful Mars landings. Pathfinder, Spirit, and Opportunity all landed by means of an absolutely crazy scheme where the whole hundreds-of-millions-of-dollars' worth of spacecraft was encased in airbags and smashed at a relatively high speed onto the surface of Mars, bouncing a dozen or more times until rolling to a stop. That system produced three successful landings in three attempts, so the engineers clearly knew what they were doing, but I have got to say that, to me, that seems like no way to treat a spacecraft. Mars Science Laboratory (abbreviated MSL) is much bigger than Pathfinder, Spirit, and Opportunity and absolutely cannot use the same landing technique, so the engineers had to go back to the drawing board. They're using a heat shield and parachute to decelerate through Mars' upper and middle atmosphere, the same as Pathfinder and the rovers, but after that the landing system changes. In the video, you'll see the heat shield fall off and -- surprise! -- there's no lander; while MSL is still way up in the air, the six wheels are already out and ready to touch Martian soil. Retrorockets fire, slowing the descent, much like Viking. The descent slows and slows. Then the rover is lowered on cables to the ground as the backshell -- retrorockets still firing -- floats overhead.

When NASA’s next wheeled robot—the Mars Science Laboratory—rockets skyward in 2009, the mega-rover will carry the largest, most sophisticated array of science gear ever shot to the martian surface. Far more robust and powerful than those smaller robotic look-alikes now laboring on Mars—Spirit and Opportunity—the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) is intended to turn a new page in planetary exploration. But here’s the issue at hand: Where to land the hunk of high-tech machinery; deciding the ideal spot that’s safe but also maximizes the rover’s chances to help figure out if Mars ever was—or is today—an abode for life.

Make way Spirit and Opportunity � big daddy is coming! The next wheels on the red planet will belong to the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL)�a huge step in how that planet is further poked, probed, and more fully plumbed for new information. MSL is a huge chunk of machinery. At liftoff in September 2009, it will carry the largest, most advanced set of instruments for on-the-spot science duties ever dispatched to the martian surface. The nuclear-powered rover is being designed to assess whether Mars ever was, or is still today, an environment able to support microbial life.

The next rover to land on Mars will come packing heat. On a mast above the six-wheeled, car-sized, insect-looking contraption will be a space laser system designed by Los Alamos National Laboratory. The laser will shoot at rocks from a distance and analyze what they're made of, said Roger Wiens, a scientist working on the system. A Mars rover can't drive up to everything that seems interesting - "They'd would never get anywhere," Wiens said. The laser can zap interesting things from up to 30 feet away, and "if (the scientists are) still interested, they can drive up and whack off a sample."

Several of Jet Propulsion Laboratory's future missions, including its next Mars rover, might be delayed or cut to compensate for other NASA priorities, the agency administrator said Thursday. Michael Griffin, NASA's new administrator, told a Senate subcommittee the space agency will have to revise its spending plan for the year in order to offset costs associated with the space shuttle's return to flight, possible human servicing of the Hubble Space Telescope and growth in upcoming missions.

How do you follow a flat-out success like the Mars Exploration Rovers, still cruising Mars after all these months? By thinking "bigger and better." The Mars Science Laboratory, currently scheduled for launch in 2009, will land a rover three times as massive as Spirit or Opportunity and with ten scientific instruments, among them some never before flown in space. MSL will assess the habitat potential of its landing site, providing a bridge between MER and later direct searches for life on Mars.

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.�

Four Cornell space scientists are part of a team planning NASA's next Mars rover mission, the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL). Scheduled for launch in 2009, the mission will explore the region for organic molecules to determine if Mars' environment is suitable for potential life or has hosted life previously. Filmmaker James Cameron, the director of Titanic, is also collaborating with the team to work with the camera.

While those unflappable interplanetary twins � Spirit and Opportunity � continue to trudge across Mars, engineers and scientists are readying the next robotic rover destined to trail across the distant sands of the red planet. The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) is bigger, heavier, and more powerful than the machinery now at work on Mars. As the next robot to go mobile on Mars, building, testing, and then flying MSL has its challenges. That being said, and while now a solo mission, there is already talk that MSL may follow in the wheel tracks of Spirit and Opportunity � that is, doubling up on Mars.

NASA has selected eight proposals to provide instrumentation and associated science investigations for the mobile Mars Science Laboratory rover, scheduled for launch in 2009. Proposals selected today were submitted to NASA in response to an announcement of opportunity released in April. The Mars Science Laboratory mission, part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program, would deliver a mobile laboratory to the surface of Mars to explore a local region as a potential habitat for past or present life. The laboratory would operate under its own power. It is expected to remain active for one Mars year, equal to two Earth years, after landing.

Aerojet, a GenCorp Inc. (NYSE: GY) company, recently test-fired a Viking flight spare rocket engine assembly in order to help design a new engine which will deliver the next rover to the surface of Mars in 2009. The rocket engine used in the test was originally built, tested and delivered in 1973 for the Viking program. The engine was put into storage after the successful landing of the Viking 1 and Viking 2 spacecraft on Mars in 1976. "Aerojet hardware has flown on every U.S. mission to Mars," said Aerojet President Michael Martin. "We are extremely proud that the hot fire testing of the Viking Lander rocket engine assembly further proved Aerojet's heritage capabilities in design, manufacture, test and production of propulsion systems. Our role in the Mars Science Laboratory mission will bring our work full-circle."

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?

People could land on Mars in the next 20 to 30 years provided scientists can find water on the red planet, the head of NASA's surface exploration mission said on Wednesday. Two partially solar-powered "robot geologists" -- Mars Exploration Rovers, or MERs -- have been trundling across 3 miles of the planet and into craters since January, beaming back data about the makeup of what scientists believe is Earth's sister planet. Asked how long it could be before astronauts land on Mars, Arthur Thompson, mission manager for MER surface operations, told Reuters in an interview in Lima, "My best guess is 20 to 30 years, if that becomes our primary priority."

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration originally hoped that its rovers Spirit and Opportunity would survive long enough to travel at least half a mile each. Now the space agency has awarded Ohio State engineer Ron Li and his team nearly $900,000 to develop tools that will enable the next-generation rover to travel at least three miles. Other research teams around the country have received an initial round of funding as well. Future field tests will determine which team will help build the control system for the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), set to launch in 2009.

Colin Pillinger has asked the US space agency to put a Beagle "pod" on its Mars Science Laboratory probe for 2009. Professor Pillinger says he wants to send a second Beagle instrument package to the Red Planet as soon as possible. "We wrote to NASA last week, asking them if they'd like to put a Beagle pod on MSL and drop it off in an interesting place," he said.

NASA is not wasting time in moving forward on its next rover that will strut its stuff across the far-flung sands of the red planet. The space agency released mid-month an "Announcement of Opportunity" that calls for science gear and related ideas that could wind up onboard the Mars Science Laboratory -- or MSL, for short. The overall MSL science objective is to explore and quantitatively assess a local region on the Mars surface as a potential habitat for life, past or present.

A miniature laboratory that can spot a tell-tale chemical signature of life is set to be part of NASA's 2009 Mars mission. The device will look for amino acids, the molecular building blocks of proteins. "Amino acids are the best molecules to look for if you want to find evidence of life that existed a long time ago. Unlike DNA, they could last for millions of years on Mars without changing," says Alison Skelley, a chemist at University of California, Berkeley, who helped build the 'life chip'.

NASA�s nuclear future promises more maneuverable, longer-lasting spacecraft and rovers with more onboard power than scientists know what to do with. Nuclear propulsion and power systems also could greatly reduce travel times to distant planets and supply energy to future planetary settlements, said Al Newhouse, director of NASA�s Project Prometheus nuclear power and propulsion program.

NASA's two Mars rovers were busy through the long holiday weekend, one progressing toward a distant crater and the other digging a trench to expose material beneath the martian surface for study by geology instruments, mission officials said Tuesday. NASA, meanwhile, changed the leadership of the $820 million double-rover mission to allow project manager Pete Theisinger to join a new program aiming for a Mars launch in 2009. Deputy project manger Richard Cook will take over the rovers.

Spherix Chairman Gilbert V. Levin has watched the images from NASA's Martian rovers with a mixture of amazement and envy. Like others, he is fascinated by the otherworldly images from the $820 million space mission. However, he is also disappointed that the scientific mission may leave a controversial question lingering: Is there life on Mars? "I wish I were going back with my experiment," Levin said.

While the Spirit and Opportunity rovers wheel themselves into the history books of Mars exploration, get ready for the next giant leap in rolling across the red planet. The Mars Science Laboratory is an all-terrain, all-purpose machine, akin to an extraterrestrial Sport Utility Vehicle. To be rocketed toward Mars in 2009, this long-range, long-duration robot is a trend setter. It will scope out Mars like never before to assess that puzzling planet as a potential habitat for life -- past or present -- and help verify if human explorers could exist there in the future.

If you think the Mars rovers are interesting, wait until you see a mini-van clambering over the planet's red rocks and dusty lake beds. The two golf-cart size rovers that are mesmerizing the country now are preparing the way for a 2009 mission to Mars called the Mars Scientific Laboratory, says William Hiscock, head of the physics department and director of the Montana Space Grant Consortium based at Montana State University-Bozeman. The 2009 mission will involve a rover, too, but that vehicle will be the size of a mini-van.

If you think the Mars rovers are interesting, wait until you see a mini-van clambering over the planet's red rocks and dusty lake beds. The two golf-cart size rovers that are mesmerizing the country now are preparing the way for a 2009 mission to Mars called the Mars Scientific Laboratory, says William Hiscock, head of the physics department and director of the Montana Space Grant Consortium based at Montana State University-Bozeman. The 2009 mission will involve a rover, too, but that vehicle will be the size of a mini-van.

NASA scientists are testing a robot named FIDO for a trip to Mars. The six-wheel, 145-pound, solar-powered "K9 rover," FIDO (Field Integrated Design and Operations), is undergoing research at Graniterock Co.�s quarry. Liam Pedersen, NASA scientist, said NASA needed a rocky Mars-like research spot that isn�t covered in vegetation. The quarry fit the bill. The rover will act as a research guinea pig to develop another robot NASA will use for its 2009 Mars Science Laboratory mission.

Using an anonymous patch of the American West as a stand-in for Mars, NASA has begun the second field tests of an advanced rover prototype developed to help it explore the Red Planet.

The FIDO prototype rover that is being used to test technologies in support of the Mars Sample Return Mission in 2005 has taken another spin around JPL's MarsYard.