Articles

Emily Lakdawalla

The Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has been studying a lot of meteorites. That made me wonder, why study meteorites on Mars when we can study them in hand on Earth? How are Mars meteorites interesting?

Emily Lakdawalla

It's been an awful long time since we've seen one of these from Spirit: an animation of four Navcam frames documenting motion!

Ryan Anderson

There were some issues with the voting widget on the University Science Writing competition, but they have been resolved, and it turns out it was counting the votes all along! So go vote for my post if you haven't done so yet today!

Ryan Anderson

Remember when I mentioned a few weeks ago that I submitted a blog post about MSL as an action-adventure hero to ScientificBlogging's science writing competition?

A.J.S. Rayl

The Mars Exploration Rover mission logged another textbook-rewriting month in October 2009 with more discoveries of geologic gems, new robot achievements balanced with equal amounts of challenges and frustrations overcome, topped off with special honors.

Emily Lakdawalla

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has been in safe mode for nine weeks, since August 26, the date of the fourth in a series of safing events.

Emily Lakdawalla

These Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter HiRISE images of the defunct Phoenix lander in the early dawn light of northern spring have been out for some time, but no one had accomplished the difficult task of locating the Phoenix hardware in them until this week.

Emily Lakdawalla

Opportunity's been making tracks lately, with brief stops to check out a couple of meteorites. I thought this view of its surroundings on sol 2,034 (a couple of days ago) was neat.

Ryan Anderson

MSL is like James Bond. Want to know why?

Ryan Anderson

Next up in my series of posts about the instruments on MSL is the Mars Descent Imager (MARDI).

Emily Lakdawalla

I wonder if this came from the same original body as Block Island, or if Meridiani is the kind of slowly deflating landscape that accumulates meteorites at its surface, like the ANSMET meteorite hunting spots in Antarctica?

Ryan Anderson

Last time, I talked about the MastCam color cameras on MSL, so it only makes sense to continue with one of the other cameras: The Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI).

A.J.S. Rayl

From notable achievements and new discoveries to trials and tribulations and harbingers of hope, the Mars Exploration Rovers seemed to experience the gamut on the Red Planet this September, their 69th month on an expedition that originally set out back in 2004 for a three-month tour.

Emily Lakdawalla

Opportunity rover is driving, driving, driving. It departed the meteorite named Block Island on sol 2,004 and has routinely clocked 70 meters per driving day (with drives every other day).

Emily Lakdawalla

Doug Ellison has done it again: he's created a spectacular overflight of Gusev crater based upon digital elevation models of the terrain produced by the United States Geological Survey from HiRISE data.

Bruce Betts

Today, the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, decided to delay from 2009 to 2011 the launch of the Phobos Grunt mission to study and return samples from the Martian moon Phobos.

Ryan Anderson

A few weeks ago I gave a lunch talk at Cornell summarizing the MSL mission and particularly the instruments that it will carry and was shocked by the number of people who showed up!

Emily Lakdawalla

Just a cool image to start the morning: after a 70-meter drive yesterday, Opportunity's following not one but two sets of its own tracks.

Ryan Anderson

Greetings from Los Alamos New Mexico!

Emily Lakdawalla

There's a lovely new color HiRISE image of Spirit at Home Plate. It was captured on July 16 (sol 1,968), and Spirit is firmly entrenched at Troy, on the western side of Home Plate.