Articles

Emily Lakdawalla

Last week, the Mars Odyssey team announced that their mission is being extended another two years. This mission extension will be slightly different from previous mission phases due to a planned change in the spacecraft's orbit.

Emily Lakdawalla

This time around DPS features three separate oral sessions on Titan, indicating just how much attention that moon is getting from the scientific community right now. From the first session, on Titan's lower atmosphere, I'm just covering the two talks on Titan's lakes.

Ryan Anderson

NASA is holding a press conference right now regarding MSL and it sounds like they are going to press on and try to achieve the October 2009 launch date.

Emily Lakdawalla

It's been way, way, way too long since the view from either rover's cameras has changed very much. So I hope you'll join me in a shout of

Marc Rayman

On the first anniversary of its departure from Earth, Dawn continues with what it has been doing for most of its time in space. With the greatest patience, it is gently reshaping its orbit around the Sun with its ion propulsion system.

A.J.S. Rayl

It's been a September to remember for the Mars Exploration Rovers with Spirit producing enough power to return to its science assignments on a daily basis and Opportunity commanding the spotlight once again as it embarked on a long journey toward a new, humongous crater and one of the most ambitious adventures undertaken on the mission.

Emily Lakdawalla

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

Emily Lakdawalla

Good news, everyone! The jillions of you who have asked me

Ryan Anderson

The Mawrth Vallis landing site is actually a set of four possible landing ellipses in an area with huge clay mineral signatures that is cut by a meandering outflow channel.

Ryan Anderson

It looks like the top three sites are Eberswalde, Holden and Gale.

Ryan Anderson

The discussion and arguments are over! We are just waiting for the last few ballots to be submitted, and then the project science group will start counting them.

Ryan Anderson

For those of you playing along at home, I thought I should point out that most of the presentations so far are posted at the

Ryan Anderson

I am sort of breaking my own protocol here by posting about Gale crater before I hear the presentations today, but since we will immediately go into discussion and decision making after it is presented this morning, I figured that it would be good to familiarize you with it now.

Ryan Anderson

The Eberswalde site is interesting because it is unarguably the best example of a delta on Mars.

Ryan Anderson

The next landing site that we heard about was Holden Crater. Holden is a 154 km diameter crater formed early in martian history that happened to fall smack in the path of an extensive fluvial system.

Ryan Anderson

We covered a LOT today, so I have decided to split things up. This post will cover the talks in the morning and then I will give each site its own post.

Ryan Anderson

Miyamoto crater is an ancient crater about 150 km southwest of where the Opportunity rover is right now. The potential landing site has some interesting mineralogy, particularly evidence for phyllosilicate (clay) minerals.

Ryan Anderson

The south Meridiani landing site is a newcomer to the bunch. It was added earlier this summer as a replacement for the north Meridiani site.

Ryan Anderson

This morning we hit the ground running and heard about a very interesting site: the Nili Fossae Trough. This site would land in a big canyon formed when a block of crust dropped down.

Ryan Anderson

It's almost time! Tomorrow the third Mars Science Laboratory Landing Site Workshop begins!