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Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online NASA said its Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity placed itself in standby mode during April when the sun was blocking out communication with the Red Planet and Earth. The space agency said mission controllers learned of the changed status on April 27, when they first heard from Opportunity after the blocked communication period. Engineers pumped "fresh commands" into the rover on Monday to get it to resume operations. According to...

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online More evidence is coming in Mars used to be thriving with ancient riverbeds, according to a study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. Brown University researchers found networks of narrow ridges in impact craters on Mars that appear to be fossilized remnants of underground cracks through which water once flowed. The study adds more weight to the growing pile of evidence Mars once had an active hydrology and...

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online NASA's Opportunity rover is closing in on its 10-year anniversary, and is still performing science missions on the Red Planet, reports the Associated Press. The veteran rover first entered Mars' southern hemisphere on January 24, 2004, a few weeks after its twin rover, Spirit, landed on the opposite side of the planet. Before the media began to have an appetite for Curiosity, Opportunity was the darling rover, touching down on an...

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online A larger portion of the Mars surface is covered by clay minerals - a type of rock that typically forms in places where water is present over an extended period of time - than was previously believed, claims a new study published in the current online edition of the journal Geophysical Research Letters. Eldar Noe Dobrea of the Planetary Science Institute (PSI) and colleagues identified the clay minerals using a spectroscopic...

Michael Harper for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Though it may be hard to remember from time to time, NASA currently has 2 rovers meandering on the surface of Mars. The newest of the 2 rovers, Curiosity, famously landed on the surface of Mars this summer, but Opportunity has been scooting alone on Mars for nearly 9 years now. Today, NASA announced that Opportunity has just completed a walkabout of an area where scientists believe water might have once existed. "If you are a...

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 4, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The latest work assignment for NASA's long-lived Mars rover Opportunity is a further examination of an area where the robot just completed a walkabout. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) "If you are a geologist studying a site like this, one of the first things you do is walk the outcrop, and that's what we've done with Opportunity," said Steve Squyres, the mission's principal investigator at Cornell...

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online While it seems like Curiosity is the one getting all the headlines these days, NASA's "other" Mars rover, Opportunity, is still alive and well -- and en route to a new site to study the composition and internal structures of small spherical objects similar to the iron-rich ones previously discovered at its landing site. The new spherical objects are "reminiscent of, but different from, the iron-rich spheres nicknamed 'blueberries'...

PASADENA, Calif., Sept. 14, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA's long-lived rover Opportunity has returned an image of the Martian surface that is puzzling researchers. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO ) Spherical objects concentrated at an outcrop Opportunity reached last week differ in several ways from iron-rich spherules nicknamed "blueberries" the rover found at its landing site in early 2004 and at many other locations to date. Opportunity is...

PASADENA, Calif., Sept. 7, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The mission team for NASA's long-lived Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity will be awarded the Haley Space Flight Award. The team will receive the award Sept. 12 during the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Space 2012 Conference and Exposition in Pasadena, Calif. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) The award is presented for outstanding contributions by...

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity teams are slated to receive the Haley Space Flight Award. The team will be receiving the honor September 12 during the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Space 2012 Conference and Exposition in Pasadena, California. The award is being presented for outstanding contributions by an astronaut or flight test personnel to the advancement of the art, science or...