Mars News

HiRISE has been conducting a survey of polar scarps where several dust avalanches were caught in action in the previous Mars year. The first new avalanche found by this campaign can be seen in the images from HiRISE observation ESP_016228_2650.

Questions remain about how these dust avalanches are triggered, though it is believed to be related to the spring warming of CO2. You can find out more in Patrick Russell’s caption for HiRISE observation PSP_007338_2640.

On March 10, 2006, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) arrived at Mars and began to orbit the planet. When MRO began its orbit, it became the sixth spacecraft to travel around or on Mars, along with the Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Express, Mars Odyssey and two Mars Exploration Rovers, setting a record at the time for the most crafts inspecting Mars at one time.

BEIJING - The launch of China's first Mars probe "Yinghuo-1", originally scheduled for October 2009 on a Russian carrier rocket, has been postponed until 2011 due to Russia's "technical reasons", a Chinese space exploration official said here Wednesday.

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander showed no sign during February that it has revived itself after the northern Mars winter. NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter will check again in early April.

The solar-powered Phoenix lander operated for two months longer than its planned three-month mission in the Martian arctic in 2008. It was not designed to withstand winter conditions. However, in case the return of abundant springtime sunlight to the site does revive Phoenix, Odyssey is conducting three periods of listening for a transmission that Phoenix is programmed to send if it is able. The second listening period, with 60 overflights of the Phoenix site from Feb. 22 to Feb. 26, produced the same result as the first listening period in January: no signal heard.

As the planet that most resembles Earth in our solar system Mars has been paid much attention. Since the improvement of observation technology, human beings now know much more about Mars; however, while studying the planet, scientists have discovered a number of mysterious landscapes on the surface which cannot be explained. &$ &$1. Mars gorilla &$ &$ &$ &$ In the pictures sent back by Spirit ...

Images of Mars taken from orbit show a massive system of riverbeds and canyons etched by water. Or maybe not. A new study of one channel shows that it was formed by lava flow and not water, and the results make "a strong case that fluid lava can produce channels that look [...]

PASADENA, Calif., March 9 (UPI) -- The U.S. space agency says major renovation work has started at its Deep Space Network's "Mars Antenna" in Goldstone, Calif.

An actual-size model of the HiRISE, High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, camera in the Sonnett Space Sciences building is displayed next to pictures taken by the camera of the surface of Mars. The UA HiRISE team has been taking public requests for pictures to be taken of specific places of Mars.

Opportunity Status for sol 2166-2171: Opportunity is continuing the circumnavigation of "Concepcion" crater. During this period Opportunity traversed around a ray of ejecta that is comprised of rock debris from the impact that formed the crater.

Spirit is in her winter position, still embedded in the area called "Troy" on the west side of Home Plate.

Good to go for 2011 - 'knock wood', says NASA bigwig NASA bigwigs say that their nuclear powered, laser-packing robotic tank, intended to prowl the ochre plains of Mars, has had its most troublesome bugs ironed out and will be ready to blast off for the red planet next year.… Web threats: Why conventional protection doesn't work

President Barack Obama will outline his administration's vision for space agency NASA and an eventual trip to Mars during a conference in Florida in April, the White House said on Sunday.

# mars Martian rovers with wheels are so 2009, man. And they get stuck in the sand way too easily. What we need is an army of tumbleweed beach ball robots surveying hundreds of miles of Martian surface. NASA's on the case. More »

Flowing lava can carve or build paths very much like the riverbeds and canyons etched by water, and this probably explains at least one of the meandering channels on the surface of Mars.

gyrogeerloose writes "A French amateur radio operator who built his own ground station using equipment from an abandoned telecom uplink site has listened in on the ESA's Mars Express space probe. While his antenna is too small to allow him to download actual data, he was able to record and convert the signal of the probe's X-Band transmitter into an audio file." Read more of this story at ...

John P. Buchanan will give a free lecture titled, "The Geology of Mars and the Scablands"

ESA has close encounter with Red Planet 'rubble pile' The European Space Agency's Mars Express yesterday skimmed past Martian moon Phobos at a distance of just 67km - the closest any manmade object has ever approached the "enigmatic" body.… Offloading malware protection to the cloud

New studies of ripples and dunes shaped by the winds on Mars testify to variability on that planet, identifying at least one place where ripples are actively migrating and another where the ripples have been stationary for 100,000 years or more.

PASADENA, California ? Scientists are impressed with the flood of data beamed back by NASA's most advanced Mars orbiter.The space agency says the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has sent back 100 terabits of information since 2006....

Radar revealing remnants of a vast ice sheet under Mars hint at the Red Planet's climate changes over millions of years.