Latest Mars exploration Stories

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...

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory The team in charge of successfully landing NASA's Mars rover Curiosity, managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., received the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's highest group honor at a dinner in Washington on Wednesday night, April 24. The 2013 Trophy for Current Achievement honors outstanding achievements in the fields of aerospace science and technology. The Mars Science Laboratory Project built and operates the rover...

ESA Without hi-tech magnetic sensors, rovers wouldn’t be able to roam around Mars. These same sensors will soon boost terrestrial travel by improving the machinery that molds parts for cars and aircraft here on Earth. These devices will ‘feel’ parts in exquisite detail, noting features like the width and depth of drilled holes, helping to create perfect 3D pictures of each highly complex piece. It takes up to 20 minutes to beam information from Mars to Earth – more than...

WASHINGTON, April 12, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA and over 150 partner organizations worldwide will be hosting the International Space Apps Challenge on April 20-21, 2013. The International Space Apps Challenge is a technology development event during which citizens from around the world work together to solve challenges relevant to improving life on Earth and in space. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) NASA and its partners have released 50...

April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter may have captured images of hardware from a Soviet era spacecraft that landed on Mars in 1971. Russian citizen enthusiasts were following news about NASA's Curiosity rover and Mars when they found four features in a five-year old image from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The features resemble four pieces of hardware from the Soviet Mars 3 mission: the parachute, heat shield, terminal retrorocket...

OAKLAND, Calif., April 8, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- On Friday, April 12, 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm, Chabot Space & Science Center is honored to host an all-female discussion panel on the exploration of the red planet, Mars. The panelists, of varied backgrounds, will share their expertise and work as it relates to exploration of the planet and advancements in the science. Panelists include: San Francisco State professor and author Jan Millsapps is a pioneering digital...

Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online NASA’s Curiosity rover has been busy searching for signs that life may have once existed on the Red Planet. In the eight months since NASA dropped the rover on Mars, it has made significant progress in the hunt for water and life. In the latest round of evidence pertaining to Mars’ past, new measurements from Curiosity point towards the sky. These measurements, which consisted of analysis of Argon atoms in the planet’s air,...

NASA An instrument that will measure the composition of Mars' upper atmosphere has been integrated into NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft. MAVEN has a scheduled launch date of Nov. 18. Engineers and scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., in collaboration with partners at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; Battel Engineering, Scottsdale, Ariz., and AMU Engineering, Miami, Fla., built the Neutral Gas and Ion Mass Spectrometer...

ESA [ Watch The Video International Space Apps Challenge 2013 ] In April, you are invited to join thousands of enthusiasts to invent and create applications to help space exploration and improve life on Earth at the International Space Apps Challenge. During this app-jam, participants are challenged to use freely available data and rework them for new purposes or present them in new ways. Can you return the Mars Curiosity rover to Earth, visualize Solar flares that are invisible...

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory Photos from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show how the parachute that helped NASA's Curiosity rover land on Mars last summer has subsequently changed its shape on the ground. The images were obtained by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Seven images taken by HiRISE between Aug. 12, 2012, and Jan. 13, 2013, show the used parachute shifting its shape at least twice in response to wind....