What's New

Flight controllers of NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey mission report that the aerobraking phase is proceeding right on schedule and should be completed in early January.
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NASA researchers are developing new prototype robots that can drive up steep hills and descend almost-vertical cliffs. Working alone or as a team, these autonomous robotic explorers may go where no rover has gone before -- the cliffs of Mars.
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Ulysses gets a new partner -- the 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft -- in the hunt for the source of gamma-ray bursts.
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Scientists have found indications of a type of bacteria that consume sulfate and produce sulfide as a waste product, possibly one of the oldest known life forms on the planet.
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Flight controllers for NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft report that Odyssey has reduced its orbit period to just under 10 hours.
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An analysis of high-resolution topographic maps and photographs, as well as recent studies of Martian meteorites suggest the presence of water on the Red Planet for a longer time scale than scientists had previously believed.
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NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft has now entered the main aerobraking phase of the mission.
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NASA today announced the selection of 10 scientific investigations as part of the 2005 Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission. The 2005 mission will carry six primary instruments that will greatly enhance the search for evidence of water, take images of objects about the size of a beach ball, and search for future landing sites on the martian surface. The investigations selected include two principal investigator instrument investigations and eight facility team leader or member investigations.
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NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey gave mission managers a real treat this Halloween with its first look at the red planet. It's a thermal infrared image of the martian southern hemisphere that captures the south polar carbon dioxide ice cap at a temperature of about minus 120 C (minus 184 F).
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NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft took its first thermal infrared temperature image of Mars at approximately 1300 Universal time (5 a.m. Pacific time) today.
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Flight controllers for NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey mission report the spacecraft is in excellent health and is in a looping orbit around Mars of 18 hours and 36 minutes.
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The United States returned to Mars last night as NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey fired its main engine at 7:26 p.m. Pacific time on Oct. 23rd (0226 UT on Oct. 24th) and was captured into orbit around the red planet.
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The United States returned to Mars tonight as NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey fired its main engine at 7:26 p.m. Pacific time and was captured into orbit around the red planet.
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After more than six months cruising through interplanetary space, NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey is nearing its destination.
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After 200 days of travel and more than 460 million kilometers (about 285 million miles) logged on its odometer, NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft will fire its main engine for the first and only time Oct. 23 and put itself into orbit around the red planet.
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A pair of eagle-eyed NASA spacecraft -- the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) and Hubble Space Telescope -- are giving amazed scientists a ringside seat to the biggest global dust storm seen on Mars in several decades.
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Three months after it began, an awesome global dust storm on Mars is waning. Two NASA spacecraft have captured dazzling images of the planetary tempest.
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Following last night's final planned course correction, NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft is now on target to enter Martian orbit later this month.
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NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft performed its third trajectory correction maneuver last night to fine-tune its flight path for arrival at Mars next month.
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NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft, now 18.5 million kilometers (11.5 million miles) from Mars on its way to a rendezvous with the red planet on Oct. 23, remains in overall good health.
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An amusing accident in the Mojave desert has inspired a new kind of Mars rover -- a two-story high beach ball that can descend to the Martian surface, land safely, and explore vast stretches of the Red Planet.
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NASA's Mars Technology Program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., has awarded three industry contracts for the development of concepts for a small rocket that will lift science samples gathered by NASA's Mars Sample Return mission from the Martian surface and support their return to Earth.
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On July 20, 1976, NASA's Viking 1 lander touched down safely on the surface of Mars, revealing an alien world that continues to puzzle scientists and tempt explorers.
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Twenty-five years ago, on July 20, 1976, NASA's Viking 1 lander soft-landed on the surface of Mars, becoming the first successful mission to land on the red planet, as well as the first successful American landing on another planet.
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An enormous dust storm exploded on Mars three weeks ago, shrouding the planet in haze and raising the temperature of its atmosphere a whopping 30 degrees C.
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At 8:30 a.m. Pacific time today, NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft passed the halfway point on its journey to Mars. It has been 100 days since Odyssey's launch and 100 days remain until it arrives at the red planet.
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The largest dust storm to be seen on Mars since NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft arrived in 1997 is currently raging across about half the planet.
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NASA’s 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft fine-tuned its flight path for arrival at Mars in October as it performed its second trajectory correction maneuver this morning.
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Today Earth and Mars will be closer together than at any time during the last 12 years. Stargazers won't want to miss the Red Planet blazing bright in the midnight sky.
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NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft is in excellent health as engineers continue to check out and evaluate the performance of its systems and science instruments during its early cruise phase.
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The 10 most promising mission concepts of the 43 proposed to NASA for possible launch to Mars in 2007 were selected today to receive funding for six months of continued studies.
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Hold on to your hats and keep a pair of binoculars handy: After a 26-month sprint around the track of the solar system, we are about to lap Mars again.
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Scientists are creating a new breed of glowing plants, part mustard and part jellyfish, to help humans explore Mars.
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New high-resolution images and 3D altimetry from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft reveal the Face on Mars for what it really is: a mesa.
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NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft performed its first trajectory correction maneuver this morning as it fired its thrusters to fine-tune its flight path for arrival at Mars in October.
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By the time you finish reading this sentence, you'll be 50 kilometers closer to the Red Planet.
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This morning, flight controllers for NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory successfully tested the ability of the high-gain communications antenna to send and receive commands.
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Future human explorers of Mars can leave their umbrellas back on Earth, but perhaps they shouldn't forget their Geiger counters! A NASA experiment en route to the Red Planet aims to find out.
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NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft turned its multipurpose camera homeward last week and took its first picture -- a shot of a faint crescent Earth -- as the spacecraft heads off toward its destination, the planet Mars.
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This morning flight controllers turned the Mars Odyssey spacecraft and pointed the thermal emission imaging system at Earth and the Moon to calibrate the instrument. All calibration objectives were met.
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Due to a favorable launch trajectory on Saturday, flight controllers for Mars Odyssey have decided that they can postpone the first maneuver to fine-tune the spacecraft's flight path. All systems on the spacecraft are in excellent health.
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One day after launch from Cape Canaveral, Fla., the Mars Odyssey mission continues to go exceedingly well.
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Scientists think Mars has a bad case of rust. Martian soil is full of iron-bearing compounds that, over the eons, have reacted with trace amounts of oxygen and water vapor in Mars' atmosphere to form iron oxide -- the same chemical that covers innumerable rusty nails in garages and workshops on Earth.
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When NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey launches in April to explore the fourth planet from the Sun, it will carry a suite of scientific instruments designed to tell us what makes up the Martian surface, and provide vital information about potential radiation hazards for future human explorers.
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When NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey launches in April to explore the fourth planet from the Sun, it will carry a suite of scientific instruments designed to tell us what makes up the Martian surface, and provide vital information about potential radiation hazards for future human explorers.
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The 2001 Mars Odyssey Launch Press Kit is now available.
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Curious chains of magnetic crystals have turned up in a meteorite from Mars. Why didn't the single-file crystals collapse long ago into a magnetized clump? Scientists say ancient martian microbes may have kept them in line.
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An international team of researchers has discovered compelling evidence that the magnetite crystals in the martian meteorite ALH84001 are of biological origin.
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In a case of beginner's luck, a group of international students, who won the chance to image Mars with a NASA spacecraft camera, have stumbled upon a surprising cluster of dark-colored boulders situated in the middle of light-colored terrain.
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Nine budding scientists can all pat themselves on the back, having become the first-ever elementary and high school students to direct a camera on NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft and image Martian sites.
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For the first time ever, student scientists will direct a camera on board NASA's Mars Global Surveyor, currently orbiting the red planet, and image interesting sites on the Martian terrain.
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Ancient life on Mars, oceans on Europa, a rendezvous with an asteroid - these are just a few of the many fascinating topics that will be covered at the 32nd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, March 12-16, 2001, at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston.
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The Science Potential of In Situ Investigations and Returned Sample Analyses
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Richard Volpe, former manager of robotic autonomy architecture at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., has been named manager of JPL's Mars Regional Mobility and Subsurface Access Technology office.
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Here on Earth the only way to make carbonate rocks is with the aid of liquid water. Finding such rocks on Mars might prove, once and for all, that the barren Red Planet was once warm and wet.
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NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, which has collected more information about the red planet than all previous missions combined, completes its primary science mission today and begins a new era of continued exploration.
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Mars Global Surveyor's (MGS) main goal was to gather observations of the red planet over the course of one martian year (about 687 Earth days). On January 31, 2001, the Primary Mission of MGS was "officially" declared complete.
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The solar wind has slowly eroded the Martian atmosphere for billions of years -- transforming the planet into a barren desert.
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James Graf of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., has been named manager of NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission.
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James Graf of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., has been named manager of NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission.
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Engineers operating NASA's highly successful Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, which concludes its primary mission at the red planet next week, report that one of the spacecraft's reaction wheels, which helps stabilize the spacecraft's orientation, has turned itself off.
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Global topographic map of Mars with major surface features labeled.
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On January 31, 2001, Mars Global Surveyor completed its primary mapping mission of Mars. The mapping mission consisted of the spacecraft observing Mars continuously for one full Mars year (687 days), in order to globally map the planet and monitor seasonal changes.
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On 20 December 2000, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced the selection of a landing site for the British Mars lander, Beagle 2, that will be carried to the red planet aboard ESA's Mars Express orbiter in 2003.
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On 20 December 2000, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced the selection of a landing site for the British Mars lander, Beagle 2, that will be carried to the red planet aboard ESA's Mars Express orbiter in 2003.
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Plenty of clues suggest that liquid water once flowed on Mars --raising hopes that life could have arisen there-- but the evidence remains inconclusive and sometimes contradictory.
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The first major step toward NASA's return of a spacecraft to an orbit around Mars was achieved late Thursday night, Jan. 4, when the Mars Odyssey spacecraft arrived at Kennedy Space Center, Fla.
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