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Door 11 in the 2010 advent calendar
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2010/12/11 02:35 CST
Time to open the eleventh door in the advent calendar. Until the New Year, I'll be opening a door onto a different landscape from somewhere in the solar system. Where in the solar system are these sinuous ridges?
Mars Climate Sounder Watches Mars Weather to Prepare for Curiosity Landing
Posted by David Kass on 2010/09/29 12:00 CDT
Two weeks ago Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Climate Sounder (MCS) started a four-week campaign to support entry, descent, and landing phase for the next Mars rover, Mars Science Laboratory (or "Curiosity").
Tracing the Big Picture of Mars' Atmosphere
Posted by Bruce Betts on 2010/08/26 12:00 CDT
One of the instruments on a 2016 mission to orbit Mars will provide daily maps of global, pole-to-pole, vertical distributions of the temperature, dust, water vapor and ice clouds in the Martian atmosphere.
Observing the Martian Atmosphere for Two Mars Years
Posted by David Kass on 2010/07/13 12:00 CDT
June 29, 2010 was the second Martian anniversary of the start of Mars Climate Sounder (MCS) observations at Mars.
Pretty (strange) picture from HiRISE: Dust flow crater?
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2010/04/08 11:38 CDT
Yesterday was the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter HiRISE team's latest flood of archived images, 1,025 of them. I skipped forward to page 42 (what other number would I pick?) and started browsing from there.
CTX and MARCI -- The OTHER Cameras on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
Posted by Tanya Harrison on 2010/01/25 07:45 CST
"What?" you might say, "There are cameras other than HiRISE?" Yes indeed, there are. There are two other cameras aboard MRO: the Context Camera (CTX) and Mars Color Imager (MARCI).
Your chance to shoot your own high-resolution pictures of Mars
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2010/01/20 11:48 CST
The HiRISE public suggestion tool, called HiWish, is a Web site that allows you to log in and select a spot on Mars as a suggestion for where the HiRISE instrument should take an image.
Figuring out the shape of Mars (and other places)
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2010/01/19 01:31 CST
An amateur named Bernhard Braun ("nirgal" on unmannedspaceflight) has been posting the results from a new piece of software he's developed that generates 3-D models of landscapes from single photos.
Odyssey's going to start listening for Phoenix
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2010/01/11 05:26 CST
Odyssey's going to start listening for Phoenix
What's up in the solar system in January 2010
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2010/01/04 01:29 CST
While we don't have Moon bases, we do have plenty of spacecraft. Before I get into my more detailed look at the activities of the 20-odd spacecraft wandering about the solar system, I thought I'd look ahead to 2010 more generally and see what the year has in store for us.
Looking at Mars with the MRO CTX
Posted by Ken Edgett on 2009/05/29 12:21 CDT
Looking at Mars with the MRO CTX
Mars: "Follow the Water" Is Not Dead
Posted by Ken Edgett on 2009/05/26 11:53 CDT
Mars: "Follow the Water" Is Not Dead
Exciting Times Ahead: 2010 Will Sizzle, and 2011 Will Really Cook!
Posted by Alan Stern on 2009/05/18 03:56 CDT
Today, I'm kicking the week off with a look at the unusually intense confluence of far flung planetary exploration that's just around the corner, starting the middle of next year.
Mars Climate Sounder Gives First Warning of a Major "Dust Event"
Posted by David Kass on 2009/03/31 12:00 CDT
Opportunity's got a long road ahead
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2008/09/19 05:03 CDT
Mars Exploration Rover principal investigator Steve Squyres announced on National Public Radio's Science Friday show the next goal for Opportunity, and it's a long, long, long way away: a huge crater about 12 kilometers southeast of its current location, which the team is referring to internally as "Endeavour."
Mars Climate Sounder Collects 20 Millionth Sounding
Posted by Bruce Betts on 2008/03/10 12:00 CDT
Last week Mars Climate Sounder collected its 20 millionth sounding at Mars. Mars Climate Sounder is scanning without problems, collecting science observations of the atmosphere of Mars. Mars Climate Sounder has now been observing Mars for over 17 months (three quarters of a Mars year and also approximately three quarters of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter primary science mission).
Millions of soundings yield clues to Mars' weather
Posted by Bruce Betts on 2007/04/03 12:00 CDT
Two months after the start of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's primary science phase, the Mars Climate Sounder instrument has already acquired more than four million soundings, building toward a vast data set on the three-dimensional structure of Mars' atmosphere over the full Martian year of the orbiter's nominal mission.
Spacecraft Set to Reach Milestone, Reports Technical Glitches
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2007/02/07 11:00 CST
A launch delay for Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2005/08/09 12:57 CDT
The Space Shuttle couldn't land at Kennedy Space Center today because of concerns about weather, so I have been expecting a launch delay to be announced for Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Indeed, a 24-hour delay has just been announced; the new launch date is Thursday, August 11 from 7:50 to 9:35 a.m. EDT (11:50 to 13:35 UTC).
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