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Five years ago on Saturday, the Mars rover Spirit touched down on Mars in a bundle of airbags, beginning a saga of robotic exploration that has delighted NASA scientists and the public alike. The second rover, Opportunity, arrived on the other side of the planet a few weeks later, on January 21. Combined, the rovers have made more than 13 miles of tracks on Mars’ dusty surface and sent a quarter-million images back to Earth. Their instruments have uncovered evidence that Mars was once a far wetter and warmer place than the frigid, dusty world it is now [AP].

The rovers were designed to last at least 90 days on the Red Planet, but NASA had hopes that the robots would exceed their warranty and keep on trucking. However, few expected Spirit and Opportunity to last half a decade in the punishing conditions of Mars. As for what comes next, nobody really knows, says rover project manager John Callas: “We realise that a major rover component on either vehicle could fail at any time and end a mission with no advance notice, but on the other hand, we could accomplish the equivalent duration of four more prime missions on each rover in the year ahead” [BBC News].

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In another promising sign that primitive life could have once existed on the surface of Mars, researchers have found deposits of a mineral that suggest that the planet once had life-friendly bodies of liquid water. The mineral, carbonate, has previously been detected in only trace quantities on Mars, but new data from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s spectrometer shows deposits in a rock outcropping in a region of valleys called the Nili Fossae. Since acidic conditions can prevent carbonates from forming, the discovery suggests that the rocks were created in neutral-pH water that might have provided a cosy habitat for life [New Scientist].

Water ice currently exists on Mars, and over the past few years researchers have accumulated evidence of liquid lakes and streams in the planet’s distant past. Most evidence has pointed to a period when water on the planet’s surface formed clay-rich minerals, followed by a time of drier conditions, when salt-rich, acidic water affected much of the planet. These later conditions would have proven difficult for any Martian life — if it ever existed — to endure or to leave any traces for scientists to find. Because carbonates dissolve quickly in acid, finding them shows at least some areas of the planet escaped the acid bath [SPACE.com].

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The next robotic explorer in NASA’s ambitious Mars program will have to wait an extra two years before taking off towards the red planet, NASA officials announced yesterday. The Mars Science Laboratory was scheduled to lift off in the fall of 2009, but with unsolved issues with some of the spacecraft’s electrical motors … NASA officials no longer thought they could meet that schedule without rushing the testing program.“We’ve determined that trying for ‘09 would require us to assume too much risk, more than I think is appropriate for a flagship mission like Mars Science Laboratory,” Michael D. Griffin, NASA’s administrator, said [The New York Times].

Because Earth and Mars only draw near to each other every 26 months, the next possible launch window will come in 2011. The new delay is just the latest bit of bad news regarding the Science Lab, which has busted deadlines and budgets since the project was approved in 2006. The rover was initially expected to cost $1.6 billion, but the new delay will push costs up to about $2.3 billion, NASA officials said.

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Hope you’re not bored of stories about water ice on Mars: Now that scientists have found it, they can’t seem to stop finding it. Just a few months after the dear, departed Mars Phoenix Lander made history by touching and analyzing water ice beneath the soil near the Martian north pole, researchers using NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have discovered massive glaciers near the equator. The glaciers, buried under rocky debris, are said to be more than three times the size of Los Angeles, up to half a mile thick and skirt the edges of mountains and cliffs [Telegraph].

The glaciers’ presence means that rovers on future scientific missions won’t have to land at the freezing cold poles to study the planet’s ice. The glaciers could even prove helpful as a source of drinkable water to future astronauts exploring Mars. “This says there may be samples of ice within our reach,” [researcher Jim] Head said. “If we’re thinking ahead to human exploration of Mars, it means we could go to some of these places and actually have water ice there” [Wired News]. Astronauts could also make hydrogen fuel from the ice, researchers say.

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NASA engineers have finally tested an “interplanetary Internet” that could be crucial for future communications with rovers and astronauts exploring the moon, Mars, or other planets. NASA says the system would rely on probes and orbiters to serve as relay stations, or routers, to send communications around the solar system. The space agency has been working for 10 years on the project with Vint Cerf, one of the Internet’s key inventors and now chief Internet evangelist for Google [AP].

The protocols (the language computers use to speak to each other) used for our terrestrial Internet won’t work for deep space, because they assume that the network’s nodes will be connected continuously, and that messages will travel swiftly. But communication between objects in space are frequently disrupted by solar storms and obstructing planets, and sending a message from Earth to Mars can take up to 20 minutes. So engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory worked with Cerf to come up with a new protocol, called Disruption-Tolerant Networking (DTN).

With the new communications design, each network node is designed to hold onto data packets, instead of discard them, until a destination path can be found. “The incentive to use Internet-like protocols over space links was to take advantage of automated routing,” [said NASA’s Leigh Torgerson]. “With standard space-link communications, the ground sends commands to spacecraft to tell it what time and what data to send. It’s very hands-on-intensive” [Computerworld].

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New data from NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter supports the long-debated theory that Mars once (or twice) had vast frozen oceans on its surface. The location of certain mineral deposits suggests massive erosion and ancient shorelines. A group of researchers now believes Mars had at least two oceans - one about three and a half billion years ago that was 20 times the size of the Mediterranean and a smaller one about two billions years ago. “These were not like the oceans we know,” says [researcher Victor] Baker. “These were transient bodies that existed long enough to accumulate sediment”, but were not present for billions of years of geologic history, as Earth’s oceans have been [New Scientist].

The Mars Odyssey orbiter identified the mineral deposits using a gamma-ray spectrometer, which can detect elements a third of a metre below Mars’s surface. It found enriched potassium, thorium and iron, lying in shoreline-type patterns, where researchers already suspected water used to lie [Canwest News Service]. Until now, however, their suspicions were mainly based on geographical features such as smooth plains surrounded by higher, more rugged terrain. The new data, to be published in Planetary and Space Science, shows minerals heavily concentrated in the soil below the proposed shoreline and less concentrated above, suggesting erosion of sediments into a large body of water. But study coauthor James Dohm says the new evidence isn’t a smoking gun: “It’s consistent with this ocean potential - it doesn’t confirm it, necessarily,” Dohm said. “I think it’s a significant piece of the puzzle” [Tucson Citizen].

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Just after NASA made the sad announcement that the Mars Phoenix Lander had run out of power and ceased communicating, word comes of power problems with the Mars rover Spirit, which has been blithely rolling over the Martian terrain for almost five years.

NASA revealed yesterday that dust storms last week left Spirit’s solar panels coated with dust and caused power levels to drop to an all-time low, and that the rover then shut down operations and went dormant. Spirit’s scientists are now hoping for a message signaling that the rover survived the storm and has recovered power.

Spirit may emerge unscathed. “We are cautiously optimistic that we can get through this dust storm without a catastrophe,” says rover project scientist Bruce Banerdt…. That’s because spring is dawning in the southern hemisphere, where Spirit is located, and the extra sunlight means the rover needs less energy to run its heaters. Had the storm occurred six months ago, during the local winter solstice, the craft would have less chance of survival, says Banerdt [New Scientist].

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After five months of scraping and digging into the soil at a lonely spot near the Martian north pole, NASA’s Mars Phoenix Lander has finally succumbed to the cold, dark Martian winter. NASA scientists announced yesterday that they hadn’t received a communication from the lander since November 2, and pronounced the death of Phoenix.

While the mission was expected to end this way, with the lander’s solar panels unable to get enough light from the fading sun and temperatures dropping rapidly, Phoenix’s legions of fans couldn’t help but mourn the demise of the robot explorer. NASA official Doug McCuistion counseled people to view Phoenix’s end as “an Irish wake rather than a funeral. It’s certainly been a grand adventure,” McCuistion said [AP].

The beginning of the end for Phoenix came on Oct. 27, just after Phoenix finished its last major experiment analyzing Martian soil, [when] an unexpected dust storm hit. The batteries, already low from running the experiment, ran out of energy. The spacecraft first put itself into a low-energy “safe mode,” then fell silent. It revived itself on Oct. 30, but, with the dust still swirling, was never able to fully recharge its batteries. Each day, the solar panels would generate enough electricity for the spacecraft to wake up, but then the batteries drained again [The New York Times]. NASA will continue to listen for a signal for a few more weeks, but no further communications are expected.

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Researchers have tested a small, portable magnetic field that could be just the protection required for a manned expedition to Mars, when astronauts would need to be protected from radiation from solar storms. Researchers say the lab experiment is the proof of concept for a magnetic force-field that mimics the protective qualities of the Earth’s magnetosphere, which shields our planet from that same radiation.

Outside Earth’s protective atmosphere and magnetic field, supersonic particles from stellar processes run amok, screaming through space and tearing through just about anything in their path—including the bodies of astronauts, where they can wreak havoc on genetic material [Scientific American]. Astronauts on the International Space Station are within Earth’s protective magnetic field, so the Apollo astronauts who went to the moon are the only humans who have been exposed to this radiation; happily, there were no major solar storms during their quick trips to the moon and back. However, a manned mission to Mars would take about six months each way, leaving astronauts much more vulnerable.

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Opal has been detected on Mars by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), an encouraging sign that water may have existed on the planet as recently as two billion years ago. The opal, a hydrated silicate, is the youngest hydrated mineral yet to be found on the 4.5 billion-year-old planet and significantly widens the window of time that Mars is believed to have supported water. “This is an exciting discovery because it extends the time range for liquid water on Mars, and the places where it might have supported life,” [SPACE.com] said team leader Scott Murchie.

Hydrated minerals require water to form and two types have been found on the Red Planet before. The oldest hydrated materials are clay-like phyllosilicates, which formed more than 3.5 billion years ago when volcanic rocks bathed for long periods of time in water. Later, hydrated sulfates formed when salty and occasionally acidic water evaporated [Discovery News]. The newly found hydrated silicates, described in Geology [subscription required], appeared even later, as acidic liquid water slowly altered materials created from volcanic activity and meteorite impacts. Team member Ralph Milliken explains that the water “was there long enough to alter some of the rocks…. It wasn’t an overnight process” [SPACE.com].

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The cold, dark winter is fast descending on Mars, and now it’s time for NASA’s Mars Phoenix Lander, which has conducted five months of (literally) groundbreaking research near the Martian north pole, to begin slowly shutting down. Phoenix’s Earth-bound managers announced yesterday that the lander’s solar panels are generating less power from the decreasing sunlight, while at the same time the craft’s heaters require more energy to keep the lander operational as temperatures drop.

NASA’s engineers were prepared for this inevitability, and say they’ll now begin to shut down some of its systems to save power for the lander’s main camera and meteorological instruments. “If we did nothing, it wouldn’t be long before the power needed to operate the spacecraft would exceed the amount of power it generates on a daily basis,” said Phoenix Project Manager Barry Goldstein…. “By turning off some heaters and instruments, we can extend the life of the lander by several weeks and still conduct some science” [The Tech Herald].

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In a setback to Europe’s space program, the European Space Agency’s flagship mission to Mars will be delayed three years while the space agency tries to cobble together funding for the ambitious rover, the ExoMars. The mission had already been postponed once and was most recently scheduled to launch in 2013, but cost overruns are forcing the space agency to push back to a launch date in 2016.

Approved by space ministers in 2005, the rover was supposed to be a fairly small venture costing no more than 650m euros. But as the project developed, it was decided the endeavour should be upgraded, to provide a bigger, more capable vehicle; and one that could carry a much broader range of science instruments [BBC News]. The ExoMars is slated to include a drill that can bore down two meters into the icy soil, and is expected to search for evidence of Martian life, past or present. However, the rover’s scientific ambition pushed costs up to the current estimate of 1.2 billion euros, and Italy, the mission’s lead financier, has refused to meet those costs. Thus far, no other nation has stepped forward to pick up the tab.

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NASA is keeping the faith and pushing forward with its most ambitious Mars rover mission to date, despite serious cost overruns and technical problems. NASA officials announced on Friday that they expect the Mars Science Laboratory to launch as planned in 2009, rebutting speculation that NASA would postpone the craft’s launch until 2011, or even cancel the mission. “It’s easy to say, ‘let’s just cancel it and move on’ but we’ve poured over a billion-and-half dollars into this,” [NASA official Ed] Weiler said. “The science is critical. It’s a flagship mission in the Mars program and as long as we think we have a good technical chance to make it we are going to do what we have to do” [SPACE.com].

The SUV-sized rover was originally expected to cost $1.6 billion, but it’s already $300 million over budget and the latest cost overruns may push the final price to over $2 billion. To meet costs, NASA may be forced to scale back or postpone other Mars missions, and could even take funds from other planetary missions. A group of scientists that advises NASA on planetary missions called this week for an outside investigation into the Mars Science Lab’s financial troubles. The scientists noted that the pricey project was a “poor model for future missions” [AP].

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NASA’s next robotic Mars explorer may be meticulously designed to trundle over the Martian landscape, but it’s having trouble getting off the planet Earth. Huge cost overruns and technical difficulties may cause the $2 billion dollar [sic] Mars Science Laboratory to be delayed or canceled outright, members of a NASA advisory committee were warned on Oct. 2. “Our problem is enormous,” said Jim Green, director of the space agency’s Planetary Science Division, as project costs soar up to 40 percent above budget [McClatchy Newspapers].

The Mars Science Laboratory is currently scheduled to launch in the fall of 2009, which would get it to Mars the following year. Scientists have high hopes for the big rover, which is intended to study the geology and look for evidence of past microbial life in Mars’ distant past, when liquid water flowed on the planet. But the Science Lab is four times heavier than the current rovers trundling across the planet’s surface. It features a plethora of advanced tools and instruments designed to analyze rocks, soil, and atmosphere. [T]hat complexity has led to technical troubles and higher costs [Science, subscription required].

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NASA celebrated its 50th anniversary yesterday, looking back on a half-century that saw the growth from an 80-person agency sending up the first communication satellites to a massive network of scientific and engineering hubs capable of sending the Voyager probes to the edge of our solar system and sending the robotic Mars Phoenix Lander to dig in the dirt on Mars.

But even as officials raised their glasses of champagne in celebration, many observers questioned NASA’s current direction and wondered whether it will have enough money to carry out its goals. “It’s a rather unfortunate time to be celebrating a 50th anniversary,” says space historian Joan Johnson-Freese of the Naval War College. “Right now, we’re at best at a plateau, if not — I hate to say this — heading downwards” [USA Today].

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