Phoenix Lander Confirms Ice on Mars

(LOS ANGELES) — The Phoenix spacecraft has tasted Martian water for the first time, scientists reported Thursday. By melting icy soil in one of its lab instruments, the robot confirmed the presence of frozen water lurking below the Martian permafrost. Until now, evidence of ice in Mars’ north pole region has been largely circumstantial.

In 2002, [...]

Date set for Mars sample mission

Space officials have set a date of 2018 for launching an unmanned international mission designed to return samples of Martian rock and soil to Earth.
Mars Sample Return is billed as the most complex and costliest exploration of Mars ever conceived.
Once samples are on Earth, laboratories will be able to extract more data than by [...]

UK Mars rover hopes face set-back

Teams right across Europe are involved in the ExoMars project

Has a wheel just come off Britain’s participation in the biggest European space mission of the next decade?
Funding for UK-led experiments on the ExoMars rover and lander is to be cut by 25% in their key development phase.
The one-billion-euro mission to search for life on the [...]

Mars’ two-faced riddle ’solved’

The impact would have hit the northern half of Mars

The puzzle of why the northern and southern hemispheres of Mars look so different may now have been solved.
Mars’ crust is thicker in the southern hemisphere, and magnetic anomalies are found in the south but not the north.
New studies in Nature magazine suggest that a massive [...]

Phoenix straight up – on the rocks

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Texas A&M University/SSV
Scientists who focus their time on the Red Planet cheerfully call themselves “Martians”.  Well, it turns out these “Martians” know their turf well – and  have hit some pay dirt in the Arctic region of the Fourth Rock from the Sun. Mars Odyssey spotted the telltale signs of water ice beneath [...]

Radio problems delay lander’s work on Mars

The lander took a photo of the ground’s polygonal pattern, similar to icy ground in the arctic regions of Earth.
TUCSON, Arizona (AP) — NASA couldn’t send commands to the Phoenix Mars lander for most of Tuesday because of a radio glitch, delaying a second day of activities, officials said.
The minor problem was fixed later in [...]

NASA probe lands in Martian arctic in search for life

A new NASA probe executed a near perfect landing on the north pole of Mars and sent back pictures Monday in the most ambitious effort to date to find signs the Red Planet once supported life..
After a nine-month journey from Earth, the Phoenix probe touched down in a relatively rock-free, flat target area, said Barry [...]

NASA preps for ‘7 minutes of terror’ on Mars

An artist’s rendering of the landing of the Phoenix Mars Lander.
(CNN) — In the wake of the wildly successful Spirit and Opportunity rover missions, you would think NASA would approach the landing of the next Martian probe with high confidence.
But the truth is sometimes not what you would think.
“I do not feel confident. But [...]