Articles

Ryan Anderson

Well, it looks like the next-generation rover that will be launching to Mars in 2011 (and happens to be the focal point of my PhD thesis) just got a name!

Alan Stern

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.

Ryan Anderson

This is a tiny subframe from the HiRISE image PSP_009294_1750.

Ryan Anderson

The voting has begun to give the Mars Science Laboratory a genuine, non-acronym name!

Ryan Anderson

Today we visited Grand Falls and the nearby dune field. Grand Falls is especially interesting because it combines many of the processes that are active in shaping planetary surfaces.

Ryan Anderson

There are a pair of excellent articles in this week's Space Review by Adrian Brown, looking at the Technical and Budgetary reasons that the Mars Science Lab launch was delayed until 2011.

Ryan Anderson

NASA has put together a nice movie of Dr. Mike Mumma summarizing his discovery of methane on Mars.

Ryan Anderson

As I post this, NASA is holding a press conference in which they are announcing that the Mars Science Laboratory's launch date will be slipped by two years.

Ryan Anderson

At 12 noon EST. I know what the announcement is, but I'm not allowed to tell you! How frustrating is that?!

Ryan Anderson

Mike Griffin started the press conference, and got right down to business announcing the launch delay and indicating that the actuators as well as other technical problems are responsible.

Ryan Anderson

I just heard, via this article at Universe Today, that the sample cache on MSL has been canceled.

Ryan Anderson

I've known about this for a little while but it was finally made public: The list of MSL landing sites had now been trimmed to four.

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.

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.

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

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.