Articles

A.J.S. Rayl

After taking a

Emily Lakdawalla

There was a worrying update posted on the JPL website for Spirit today: an early-season dust storm has darkened its skies enough that its solar panels produced only 89 watt-hours of power yesterday, sol 1,725. Neither rover has ever, ever seen power production levels that low, not even during last year's massive dust storm.

Emily Lakdawalla

Another day, another drive: on sols 1,693 and 1,695 the Opportunity rover conducted two more lengthy drives to the south, totaling almost 200 meters. On the other side of the planet, Spirit is FINALLY in motion again.

Marc Rayman

The Dawn spacecraft continues on course and on schedule for its bold campaign to unexplored worlds.

A.J.S. Rayl

Spring is still off a ways on the horizon in the Red Planet's southern hemisphere, but the solar-powered Mars Exploration Rovers seemed to shake off their third Martian winter this month, as they roved into new phases and looked to new destinations on their overland expeditions of Gusev Crater and Meridiani Planum. In the process, Spirit and Opportunity both chalked up notable achievements in October, adding to their already long list of accomplishments accrued as the world's first long-lived roving robot field geologists.

Emily Lakdawalla

When MESSENGER flew past Mercury for a second time on October 6, 2008, its cameras snapped photos of an impressive 30 percent of the planet's surface that had never previously been seen by spacecraft.

Emily Lakdawalla

Victoria crater, the site of a Mars year's worth of study, is now far over the horizon, as Opportunity has lately completed a series of very long drives. Opportunity is once again sailing the sand seas of Meridiani Planum.

Emily Lakdawalla

An article in the September 26 issue of Science neatly explains why only the southern half of Mars is strongly magnetized.

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 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

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

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

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.