Blog Archive

Planetary Society Hangout: A Day in the Life of the Opportunity Rover with Emily Dean

Posted by Casey Dreier on 2013/05/09 02:20 CDT | 1 comments

Thursday, May 9th, at noon PDT/3pm EDT/1900h UTC, we are joined by Emily Dean, who works on the camera team for the Opportunity rover on Mars.

Mars Exploration Rovers Update: Opportunity Emerges from Solar Conjunction to Wrap-Up Work on Matijevic Hill

Posted by A.J.S. Rayl on 2013/05/02 03:15 CDT | 1 comments

As the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) team waited out solar conjunction, Opportunity spent most of April atop the western rim of Endeavour Crater, conducting a chemical analysis of an ancient waterborne vein on Matijevic Hill. It was by the book until the last week of the month when the robot field geologist suffered an electronic "hiccup" known as a warm re-boot, and went into auto mode, a kind of safe mode when something doesn't go right.

No Place Like Home

Posted by Bill Dunford on 2013/04/21 03:07 CDT | 6 comments

Mars and Earth share a truly striking family resemblance, but there's no mistaking which one is home.

Aproned mesas in Deuteronilus Mensae, Mars

A walk among the mesas of Deuteronilus Mensae

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/04/19 02:17 CDT | 4 comments

Enjoy some pretty pictures of some bizarre terrain on Mars: the mesas of Deuteronilus Mensae.

Tides of light and ice: Water and rock made from snowmelt on Mars

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/04/17 01:29 CDT | 4 comments

A recently published paper proposes that much of the sedimentary rock on Mars formed during rare, brief periods of very slight wetness under melting snow.

Russia's Mars 3 lander maybe found by Russian amateurs

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/04/12 01:22 CDT | 4 comments

Виталий Егоров (Vitaliy Egorov) is a Russian space enthusiast who enlisted help of fellow enthusiasts to search for -- and maybe find -- the Russian Mars 3 hardware on the Martian surface. Here he explains how he did it.