NEWS
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Spirit On Final Approach To Mars
12/30/03
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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Scientists and engineers still waiting to hear from Beagle 2 on Mars
12/27/03
Two attempts to communicate with Beagle 2 during the last
24 hours - first with the 76 metre (250 feet) Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank
Observatory in Cheshire, UK, and then this morning with the Mars Odyssey orbiter
- ended without receiving a signal.
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Merry Christmas from Mars
12/25/03
This morning, after a journey lasting 205 days and covering 400 million
kilometres, the European Mars Express space probe fired its main engine at 03:47
CET for a 37-minute burn in order to enter an orbit around Mars.
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Cornell Hopes To Spin A Few Spokes with Rover Wheelies
12/22/03
After the twin Mars Exploration Rovers bounce onto the red
planet and begin touring the Martian terrain in January, onboard spectrometers
and cameras will gather data and images --- and the rovers' wheels will dig
holes.
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An Odyssey Of Mars Science
12/18/03
An in depth look at the Mars Odyssey mission and what valuable clues it has reveiled about Mars.
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Mars May Be Emerging from an Ice Age
12/17/03
NASA's Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey missions have provided evidence of
a recent ice age on Mars. In contrast to Earth's ice ages, a martian ice age
waxes when the poles warm up 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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Odyssey Studies Changing Weather and Climate on Mars
12/08/03
Mars may be going through a period of climate change, new findings from NASA’s
Mars Odyssey orbiter suggest.
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Anxiety Builds as Rovers Near Their Destination
12/08/03
With NASA’s twin Mars rovers closing fast on the red
planet, agency scientists and engineers are bracing for what could be two
agonizing nights of waiting to hear from the robotic explorers once they begin
their harrowing descents to the martian surface.
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Japan Poised To Abandon Martian Probe Mission
12/08/03
Japan's trouble-plagued first mission to Mars is set to be
abandoned in the latest of a series of costly failures to hit the country's
space development programme.
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Mars Missions Have International Flavor
12/04/03
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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Crucial Moments On Route To Mars
12/04/03
Mars Express, ESA's first probe to Mars, still has some
challenges to face. The spacecraft has successfully come through its first power
test after the gigantic solar flare on 28 October.
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Planet Mars from 5.5 million kilometres
12/03/03
This picture shows planet Mars as seen from a distance of about 5.5 million
kilometres. This is a very unusual view of Mars because the planet is
illuminated in a way never seen from Earth.
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Mars Rover Teams Get Ready For Action
12/02/03
NASA's twin Mars rovers -- Spirit and Opportunity -- are drawing ever closer to
the Red Planet, headed for separate landings early next year. Meanwhile, teams
of scientists and engineers have been hard at work, perfecting their planetary
skills at driving robots across Mars and fine-tuning their abilities to conduct
long-distance science.
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Mars Rovers Head for Exciting Landings in January
12/02/03
Spirit is the first of two golf-cart-sized rovers headed for Mars landings in
January. The rovers will seek evidence about whether the environment in two
regions might once have been capable of supporting life.
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Mars Odyssey Mission Status
11/26/03
On Oct. 28, 2003, during a period of intense solar activity, the martian radiation environment experiment
on board Mars Odyssey stopped working properly. Controllers’ efforts to restore the instrument to
normal operations have not been successful. These efforts will continue for the
next several weeks or months.
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Hoping to Avoid Contamination, Japan Attempts to Fix Mars Probe
11/15/03
Japan's space agency, hoping to prevent its first interplanetary probe from
crashing into Mars, is scrambling to fix an on-board glitch before the
spacecraft reaches the planet next month, an agency official said Friday.
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Mars Images Suggest Persistent Rivers Past
11/14/03
In a long-running debate over whether Mars ever had long-lasting rivers, the
latest images supporting the "yes" side have been put forth.
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Mars Rover Spirit Mission Status
11/04/03
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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Sand Ripples Taller On Mars
11/03/03
Mars is kind of like Texas: things are just bigger there.
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Mars and Muddied Waters?
10/30/03
Images taken from orbit on Mars show good evidence for the
effects of erosion and flowing (fluvial) water at one time in the martian past.
If Mars was wet once in its geological history, it is likely not wet today - or
at least too cold for water to flow.
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The Odyssey Orbiter Continues to Share the Adventure of Mars Exploration
10/01/03
NASA's Mars Odyssey team has released another significant installment of science data for the public and science community to review and analyze.
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MSSS Adds Another 10,000 Surveyor Images To Database
10/01/03
Thousands of newly released portraits of Martian landscapes from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft testify to the diversity of ways geological processes have sculpted the surface of our neighboring planet.
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What Iron Can Tell Us about Mars
9/29/03
If Mars ever harbored living things, it must have had liquid water. Searching for liquid water on a mostly dry planet would be hard enough, but how do you search for evidence of water that evaporated long ago?
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If You Thought That Was a Close View of Mars, Just Wait
9/23/03
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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Drip Drip Drip Under A Feeble Sun
9/04/03
A team of researchers from the University of Arkansas has measured water evaporation rates under Mars-like conditions, and their findings favor the presence of surface water on the planet.
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Marine Picks First Public Mars Global Surveyor Image
9/12/03
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?
Now we know, after NASA released today the first picture selected from hundreds of public suggestions.
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The Future of Mars: Plans for NASA's Next Decade of Red Planet Probing
9/10/03
NASA is formulating a Mars exploration plan for the next decade, receiving
advice from all quarters, from outside academic circles to internal NASA working groups,
as well as from the White House.
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NMSU Astronomer Analyzes Mars Rover Landing Sites
9/10/03
As telescopes around the world focus on Mars because
of its historic nearness to Earth, two NASA spacecraft are hurtling toward the
Red Planet to look for evidence that it might once have been wet enough to
sustain life.
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The Planet that Won't Go Away
9/08/03
Mars' closest approach to Earth was on August 27th--but the red planet
is even easier to see now.
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Mars: Close Encounter
8/27/03
These two images, taken 11 hours apart with NASA's Hubble Space
Telescope, reveal two nearly opposite sides of Mars. Hubble snapped these photos as
the red planet was making its closest approach to Earth in almost 60,000 years. Mars
completed nearly one half a rotation between the two observations.
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Mars Express Status Report - August 2003
8/25/03
Now in interplanetary cruise more than 20 million kilometers from
Earth, the Mars Express spacecraft platform subsystems continue to behave in a nominal manner.
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Hot Spots On Mars Give Hunt For Life New Target
8/11/03
Giant hollow towers of ice formed by steaming volcanic vents on Ross Island,
Antarctica are providing clues about where to hunt for life on Mars.
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Mars Is Melting
8/07/03
The south polar ice cap of Mars is receding, revealing frosty mountains,
rifts and curious dark spots.
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Mars Exploration Rover Mission Status
8/06/03
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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Liquid Water Likely Supports Life On Mars Today, Scientists Claim
8/06/03
Even on the present-day cold and dusty surface of Mars, liquid water
may be sustaining a world of Martian microbes.
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Mars 2007 'Phoenix' Will Study Water Near Mars' North Pole
8/04/03
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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Mars Rover Opportunity Mission Status
7/18/03
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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Mars Rover Opportunity Mission Status
7/09/03
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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Newly Launched 'Opportunity' Follows Mars-Bound 'Spirit'
7/7/03
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 Odyssey Orbiter Watches a Frosty Mars
6/26/03
NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft is revealing new details about the intriguing,
dynamic character of the frozen layers now known to dominate the high northern latitudes of Mars.
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Mars Rover Spirit Mission Status
6/12/03
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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NASA's 'Spirit' Rises on Its Way to Mars
6/10/03
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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