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.