Articles

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

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

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

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!

Ryan Anderson

One year from today, the Mars Science Laboratory will launch. It seems fitting that the workshop during which we choose the final three possible landing sites begins today.

Ryan Anderson

I'm in the airport on my way to California to participate in the third Mars Science Laboratory Landing Site Workshop, so I thought I would take this chance to post my blog entry from day three of last year's workshop.

Ryan Anderson

Today was a marathon of landing site presentations, ranging all over the martian globe, and targeting just about every potentially water-related feature on Mars.

Ryan Anderson

Coming up next week is the 3rd Mars Science Laboratory Landing Site Workshop, where the Mars science community will come together to narrow down the possible landing site choices for MSL.

A.J.S. Rayl

Clear skies and a warming Sun brightened winter in the southern hemisphere of the Red Planet, giving the Mars Exploration Rovers, appropriately enough, an august month. Opportunity packed up, left Cape Verde in the dust, and made headlines when it roved out of Victoria Crater last Thursday. On the other side of the planet, Spirit picked up the pace of photographing its surroundings for its next big, 360-degree, full color panorama.

Emily Lakdawalla

It's official: Opportunity is out of Victoria. A news release from JPL stated today that Opportunity has, as of late yesterday (sol 1,634), exited Victoria crater.

Marc Rayman

The Dawn spacecraft continues to make good progress on its adventure to unlock scientific secrets hidden deep in the main asteroid belt, between Mars and Jupiter.

Emily Lakdawalla

Don Davis is a space artist who takes the question of color in space very seriously.

Emily Lakdawalla

Here's another wonderful self-portrait silhouette by Opportunity.

Marc Rayman

Dawn continues its flight through the solar system with all systems functioning well.

A.J.S. Rayl

After cruising through winter solstice in late June, the Mars Exploration Rovers (MERs) roved into July taking every advantage of a winter that is by all appearances now proving to be rather mild for the Red Planet. At Gusev Crater, Spirit managed to maintain its power level and get back to doing a little bit of science, while on the other side of the planet, at Meridiani Planum, Opportunity finished photographing Cape Verde and began to chart its course back to Duck Bay where it will exit Victoria Crater.

Emily Lakdawalla

A press release from the Cassini VIMS team today is titled