Starry Skies Network

ESA’s Mars Express has provided images of a remarkable crater on Mars that may show evidence that the planet underwent significant periodic fluctuations in its climate due to changes in its rotation axis.

At 10:31 p.m. PDT today, April 27, (1:31 p.m. EDT), NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory, carrying the one-ton Curiosity rover, will be within 100 days from its appointment with the Martian surface. At that moment, the mission has about 119 million miles (191 million kilometers) to go and is closing at a speed of 13,000 mph (21,000 kilometers per hour).

The latest image released from Mars Express reveals a large extinct volcano that has been battered and deformed over the aeons.

Although NASA didn’t give up on the Spirit rover until last month, scientists last heard from the robot explorer in March 2010, when it went silent at the onset of the cold and dark Martian winter.

It is with a bittersweet sense of both sadness and pride that NASA announced this week the official end of the mission for the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit.

NASA project managers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory sent a final set of commands Wednesday to the Mars rover Spirit, then said goodbye to the vehicle, which has been stuck in sand for about two years.

NASA has ended operational planning activities for the Mars rover Spirit and transitioned the Mars Exploration Rover Project to a single-rover operation focused on Spirit’s still-active twin, Opportunity.
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A massive reservoir of buried frozen carbon dioxide ice (dry ice) detected by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) is intimately related to the mass of the red planet’s atmosphere as the planet tilts on its axis, which in turn could affect the stability of liquid water and the frequency and severity of dust storms.

The joint Mars exploration envisioned by the US and Europe is set for an overhaul, following an announcement by the Americans that their part of the budget is critically short of funds.
Nasa and Esa had agreed to send two rovers to the Red Planet in 2018.

What could be worse a meteorite hitting you? Two meteorites hitting you, at the same time!
As shown in the above HiRISE image, this is exactly what happened on Mars. These two impact craters were formed simultaneously, but how do we know that?

Finding life on Mars could get easier with a creative adaption to a common analytical tool that can be installed directly on the robotic arm of a space rover.

The vast polar sand dunes of Mars have long been thought to be frozen in time. Now scientists have found they are one of the most active and tumultuous landscapes on the planet.

NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission needs an $82 million cash infusion to maintain its late November launch date after development of the $2.47 billion rover exhausted program funding reserves last year, according to agency officials.

The HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter consistently beams down mesmerizing high-resolution images of the Red Planet. Now, the scientists who study the images have stitched together the latest public release into this cool video set to a groovy “Sanskrit” tune they grabbed from Apple’s GarageBand. Let’s take a virtual tour …

Paul Mahaffy, the scientist in charge of the largest instrument on NASA’s next Mars rover, watched through glass as clean-room workers installed it into the rover.

New images of Mars’ Phoenix Lake region show where complex fault lines along a vast Martian plain have resulted in terrain with contrasting light and dark appearances.

Newly released images from 340 recent observations of Mars by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show details of a wide assortment of Martian environments.

NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has visited and photographed two craters informally named for the spacecraft that carried men to the moon 41 years ago this week.

Mars sample return – bringing rocks from Mars back to Earth – has been on NASA’s wish list for decades, and work is underway to develop the necessary technology. Recently a group of scientists field-tested a robotic system that can drill into rocks, collect small core samples and store them for later retrieval.