What's New

NASA's Spirit rover spacecraft fired its thrusters for 3.4 seconds on Friday, Dec. 26, to make a slight and possibly final correction in its flight path about one week before landing on Mars.
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NASA's Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey missions have provided evidence of a relatively recent ice age on Mars. In contrast to Earth's ice ages, a Martian ice age waxes when the poles warm, and water vapor is transported toward lower latitudes. Martian ice ages wane when the poles cool and lock water into polar icecaps.
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Mars may be going through a period of climate change, new findings from NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter suggest.
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A European Space Agency mission that will arrive at Mars this month has American participants, and Europeans are team members for two NASA spacecraft that will reach Mars in January.
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The Martian radiation environment experiment on NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter has collected data continuously from the start of the Odyssey mapping mission in March 2002 until late last month. The instrument has successfully monitored space radiation to evaluate the risks to future Mars-bound astronauts. Its measurements are the first of their kind to be obtained during an interplanetary cruise and in orbit around another planet.
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Newly seen details in a fan-shaped apron of debris on Mars may help settle a decades-long debate about whether the planet had long-lasting rivers instead of just brief, intense floods.
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A series of tests of one of the science instruments on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit has enabled engineers and scientists to identify how to work around an apparent problem detected in August.
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Today, 30 September 2003, the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) team is pleased to announce the release of 10,232 newly-validated, archived images acquired between August 2002 and February 2003.
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As Earth pulls away from Mars after last month's close approach, NASA is developing a spacecraft that will take advantage of the next close encounter in 2005.
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If you were given a chance to aim the camera on NASA's Mars Global Surveyor Mars Orbiter and take a picture of something on the red planet, what would you shoot?
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NASA's Hubble Space Telescope made observations of the planet Mars on August 26 and 27, when Earth and Mars were closer together than they have been in the last 60,000 years.
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Earth comes closer to Mars this month than it has in nearly 60,000 years, but one new opportunity for seeing details on the red planet comes from a vantage point much closer.
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Two free public programs in Pasadena this week will offer an introduction to the challenges and excitement of NASA's project to examine two areas of Mars with robotic rovers that are currently flying to Mars.
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Mars' closest approach to Earth was on August 27th--but the red planet is even easier to see now.
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The south polar ice cap of Mars is receding, revealing frosty mountains, rifts and curious dark spots.
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The first in-flight checkouts of the science instruments and engineering cameras on NASA's twin Spirit and Opportunity spacecraft on their way to Mars have provided an assessment of the instruments' condition after the stressful vibrations of launch.
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In May 2008, the progeny of two promising U.S. missions to Mars will deploy a lander to the water-ice-rich northern polar region, dig with a robotic arm into arctic terrain for clues on the history of water, and search for environments suitable for microbes.
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NASA's Opportunity spacecraft made its first trajectory correction maneuver today, a scheduled operation to fine-tune its Mars-bound trajectory, or flight path.
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While the ultimate field trip might someday be an actual journey to Mars, NASA is doing the next best thing - giving high school teams the opportunity to explore Mars by working on specific research projects during the Mars Exploration Rover missions, set to land on the red planet in January 2004.
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A unique view of our home planet and its natural satellite - the Moon - is one of the first data sets coming from ESA's Mars Express.
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Using only backyard telescopes, amateur astronomers are enjoying great views of dust clouds on Mars.
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NASA's Opportunity spacecraft, the second of twin Mars Exploration Rovers, has successfully reduced its spin rate as planned and switched to celestial navigation using a star scanner.
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NASA launched its second Mars Exploration Rover, Opportunity, late Monday night aboard a Delta II launch vehicle whose bright glare briefly illuminated Florida Space Coast beaches.
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NASA's Spirit spacecraft, the first of twin Mars Exploration Rovers, performed its first trajectory correction maneuver today.
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NASA's Spirit spacecraft, the first of twin Mars Exploration Rovers, has successfully reduced its spin rate as planned and switched to celestial navigation using a star scanner.
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A NASA robotic geologist named Spirit began its seven-month journey to Mars at 1:58:47 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (10:58:47 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time) today when its Delta II launch vehicle thundered aloft from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla.
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Twin robotic geologists NASA is sending to Mars will embody in their newly chosen names -- Spirit and Opportunity -- two cherished attributes that guide humans to explore.
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Europe's first mission to the Red Planet, continues its successful mission with another successful 'high-risk' post-launch milestone. Mars Express engineers breathed a sigh of relief this morning at the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC), in Germany.
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The first overview analysis of a year's worth of high-resolution infrared data gathered by the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) on NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft is opening Mars to a new kind of detailed geological analysis and revealing a dynamic planet that has experienced dramatic environmental change.
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NASA's Mars Exploration Rover project kicks off by launching the first of two unique robotic geologists on June 8. The identical rolling rovers can see sharper images, explore farther and examine rocks better than anything that's ever landed on Mars. The second rover mission, bound for a different site on Mars, will launch as soon as June 25.
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The European Mars Express space probe has been placed successfully in a trajectory that will take it beyond the terrestrial environment and on the way to Mars - getting there in late December 2003.
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Americans are participating several ways in the European Space Agency's first mission to Mars, launched today from Baikonur, Kazakhstan.
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What does Earth look like when viewed from Mars? At 13:00 GMT on 8 May 2003, the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) had an opportunity to find out. In addition, a fortuitous alignment of Earth and Jupiter---the first planeary conjunction viewed from another planet---permitted the MOC to acquire an image of both of these bodies and their larger satellites.
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Just before midnight on 2 June 2003 (23:45 local time, 19:45 CEST), a Soyuz rocket operated by Starsem will lift off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, and Mars Express will be on its way. The spacecraft was given the green light to launch following a successful flight readiness review on 3 May 2003.
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Today, scientists from all areas are working together to answer the ultimate question: can life (in any shape or form) exist anywhere else in the Universe?
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NASA has chosen two scientifically compelling landing sites for twin robotic rovers to explore on the surface of Mars early next year.
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NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft has transformed the way scientists are looking at the red planet.
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New information about what is inside Mars shows the red planet has a molten liquid iron core, confirming the interior of the planet has some similarity to Earth and Venus.
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Images from the visible light camera on NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft, combined with images from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor, suggest melting snow is the likely cause of the numerous eroded gullies first documented on Mars in 2000 by Global Surveyor.
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A 70.2 gram meteorite completely coated with fusion-crust found in Morocco in December 2001 is almost certainly paired with basaltic shergottite NWA 480 (acquired in November 2000 by Bruno Fectay and Carine Bidaut).
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NASA scientists have discovered how an intricate martian network of streams, rivers and lakes may have carried water across Mars.
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NASA hosts "Explore Mars!" - a Cape Canaveral-area community and family day focusing on the upcoming Mars Exploration Rover-2003 mission, on Wednesday, Feb. 19, from 9 a.m. - 7 p.m., at the Radisson Resort at the Port Convention Center, 8701 Astronaut Blvd., Cape Canaveral, Fla.
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NASA is reminding America's school kids that time is running out on a chance to make history by naming two rovers being launched to explore Mars.
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