Space News Archive - March 08, 2006

Two Mars orbiter missions will open new vistas in the exploration of Mars through the use of sophisticated ground-penetrating radars, providing the first direct clues about the Red Planet's subsurface structure.

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's best-known astronomer Patrick Moore has been admitted to hospital with heart problems, a hospital spokeswoman said on Wednesday.

Jittery NASA scientists waited on Wednesday for the most advanced spacecraft ever sent to another planet to make its risky final approach to Mars, where it is due to return 10 times the data of all previous probes put together.

A NASA craft carrying a $40 million camera created by University of Arizona scientists is set to orbit Mars on Friday.

In this week's issue of Nature, scientists at Penn State University and their U.S. and European colleagues discuss how this explosion, detected on 4 September 2005, was the result of a massive star collapsing into a black hole.