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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – NASA gave visitors to the National Mall in Washington a peek at a full-size mock-up of the spacecraft designed to carry U.S. astronauts back to the moon and then on to Mars one day. The U.S. Navy-built Orion crew exploration vehicle will replace the space shuttle NASA plans to retire in 2010, and become the cornerstone of the agency's Constellation Program to explore the moon, Mars and beyond. "We're just very proud to build this, do some testing and demonstrate to America that we're moving beyond the space shuttle onto another generation of spacecraft," said Don Pearson,...

WOODLANDS, Texas — Evidence is building that NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander plopped down on a microbe-friendly location. Descending onto Mars on May 25, 2008, Phoenix was designed to study the history of water and habitability potential in the Martian arctic's ice-rich soil. It did not pack instruments designed to find life. To date, there is no firm evidence that Mars ever hosted biology. But researchers say the landing site has or had the ingredients necessary to support life as we know it.

But it may not explain the presence of the gas on the Red Planet today.Traces of serpentine found at Nili Fossae on Mars.NASA/JPL/University of Arizona Surprises keep coming from Nili Fossae, a long, deep scar in the surface of Mars. In December last year, scientists reported evidence there for carbonates — minerals that typically form in the presence of water1. Then, in January, reports came that there was a large plume of methane in the area. On Earth the gas is made mostly by animals as a by-product — although it can also be produced naturally in the absence of...

Several photographs taken by NASA’s Phoenix Mars spacecraft show what look like water droplets clinging to one of its landing struts. Some of the scientists working on the mission are asserting that that is exactly what they were. They contend that there are pockets of liquid water just under the Martian surface even though the temperatures in the northern plains never warmed above minus 15 degrees Fahrenheit during the six months of Phoenix’s operations last year. The scientists believe that salts may have lowered the freezing temperature of the Martian water droplets to perhaps minus 90 degrees, or more than...

Google has upgraded its Red Planet browser to reveal fresh as well as long-faded views of Mars, marking the latest advance in a visualization revolution. Today's add-ons for Google Earth 5.0 include a "Live From Mars" layer that incorporates the latest available imagery from NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft, as well as historical maps of the planet's "canali" as seen by 19th-century astronomers and guided tours that are narrated by NPR's Ira Flatow and Bill Nye the Science Guy.

HAMPTON, Va., March 11 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA is working on the building blocks to return humans to the Moon by 2020, then send them onto Mars. It's part of the national Vision for Space Exploration established five years ago. Just what is America's plan and is it the right one? Four international experts will address those questions and others in a special Moon-Mars Forum, March 17, from 7-9 p.m. at the Virginia Air & Space Center in downtown Hampton.

January-February 2009 One-Way Ticket to Mars by  James C. McLane III Our best hope to reach the red planet might be to send just one person there ... forever.I once worked in America’s Manned Space program, proud to be one of perhaps a quarter million folks around the world trying to send humans into space. We like to think it’s humanity’s destiny to spread out across the universe, but less than one out of twenty-five thousand of us on this planet are really doing anything toward that goal. There was a time when human space travel was big business....

No one knows if there is life on Mars, but if all goes well with a Russian science mission later this year, there will be life on the Martian moon Phobos -- for a short time anyway. An assortment of critters and microbes are scheduled to make a round-trip journey to Phobos as passengers aboard a Russian spacecraft, scheduled to launch in October. The mission, called Phobos-Grunt, aims to return samples of the Martian moon to Earth for analysis. It will be the first Russian-led mission to Mars since the loss of the Phobos 1 and Phobos 2 probes in...

Life on Mars: Former presidential candidate Fred Thompson appears in this 1973-set crime drama as Police Chief Harry Woolf. http://www.star-telegram.com

Liquid droplets seem to form and move on the leg of the Phoenix Mars lander, as seen in images taken on days 8, 31, and 44 (seen above from left to right) of the craft's mission. Scientists think the water could stay liquid even in the frigid Martian arctic because of its high concentration of perchlorates, salts that acts like antifreeze. Images courtesy Image NASA/JPL-Caltech//University of Arizona/Max Planck Institute

WHAT'S painting Mars? Every spring, dark streaks appear on its polar dunes, which may be caused by liquid water near the surface - a fillip for the hunt for life. The dark streaks of sand a few metres wide slide downslope at about a metre a day. "They show a branching pattern, so it seems like some liquid material is flowing," says Akos Kereszturi at the Collegium Budapest in Hungary.

Congress is currently debating an economic stimulus package that would spend nearly a trillion dollars on measures of doubtful timeliness and efficacy. Here are three ideas on how to really hit the target much quicker, harder and for a lot less. 1. To resolve the credit crisis, make all down payments on house purchases tax-deductible. The credit crisis has been caused by a collapse of the housing market, which has made trillions of dollars of mortgage-backed securities held by major financial institutions worthless. This can be rapidly remedied by reboosting the housing market, which a tax deduction on all (not...

The two Viking landers that went to Mars in the 1970s were heat-sterilized to prevent contaminating the red planet with any Earth microbes. Since then, procedures have been relaxed because of the presumably inhospitable conditions on Mars. But in a policy forum article in the journal Science this week, Christopher McKay of NASA's Ames Research Center argues for tougher restrictions.

Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.tsa.gov/press/happenings/seattle_stso_flooded_in_place.shtm STSO 'Flooded In Place' Puts Radio Operator Skills to Good Use News & Happenings January 30, 2009 When more than two feet of snow gave way to rain and heavy flooding earlier this month, Supervisory TSO Donn Gallon of Seattle-Tacoma International Airport put his skills as an amateur radio operator to good use. As Gallon put it, he was “flooded in place” in his home on the Skookumchuck River in southwest Washington for more than two days. But from that vantage point he was able to report on water levels and other...

NASA engineers are scratching their heads over some unexpected behavior from the long-lived Spirit rover, which began its sixth year exploring Mars this month. Spirit failed to report in to engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., last weekend, prompting a series of diagnostic tests this week to hunt the glitch's source. The aging Mars rover did not beam home a record of its weekend activities and, more puzzlingly, apparently failed to even record any of its actions on Sunday, mission managers said. ... By Monday, Spirit's mission controllers decided to tell the rover to find the...

A surprising and mysterious belch of methane gas on Mars hints at possible microbial life underground, but also could come from changes in rocks, a new NASA study found. The presence of methane on Mars could be significant because by far most of the gas on Earth is a byproduct of life — from animal digestion and decaying plants and animals. Past studies indicated no regular methane on Mars. But new research using three ground-based telescopes confirmed that nearly 21,000 tons of methane were released during a few months of the late summer of 2003, according to a study published...

Is there life on Mars? We don't know — but there's more good evidence there may be. NASA and Science magazine will announce Thursday afternoon that large amounts of methane have been found on the Red Planet, which could be a sign of biological activity.

ALIEN microbes living just below the Martian soil are responsible for a haze of methane around the Red Planet, Nasa scientists believe.

"On the return flight from a meeting at NASA headquarters a couple of years ago, my mind was reflecting upon the Space Shuttle program...its milestones...its tragedies...and its soon-to-be fleet retirement. While gazing out over the clouds through the airplane window, a number of thoughts swirled in my head: Instead of retiring the Space Shuttle, and simply moth-balling the orbiters at museums and "rocket parks" around the country, could we give the fleet a heroic assignment? A grand mission commensurate with their thirty years of service? The concept: • Fly two Space Shuttle orbiters into earth orbit. • Rendezvous and connect...

The co-founder of a rocket launch firm has proposed an audacious plan to send astronauts on a one-way trek to Mars using a pair of tethered U.S. space shuttles that would parachute to the Martian surface. Inventor Eric Knight, a co-founder of the rocket firm UP Aerospace, detailed the plan - which he's billed "Mars on a Shoestring" - in a thought exercise designed to encourage unconventional thinking for future human spaceflight. "My thought paper is a mental exercise to encourage new ideas," Knight told SPACE.com in an e-mail interview. "I also hope it spurs a re-evaluation of the timeline...

There aren't a lot of machines that operate 20 times longer than they were supposed to. There aren't a lot of scientists doing 20 times more research than they intended to. There aren't a lot of explorers covering 20 times more ground than they were supposed to be able to. But then again, there aren't a lot of things like NASA's Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers, the robotic ships that landed on the Red Planet five years ago this month with an expected lifespan of 90 days, and yet have chugged along ever since — surviving paralyzing cold, blinding dust...

Okay, I'll start: 1) Blagojevich walks scott free 2) My salary continues to remain stagnate 3) The bailout results in a massive debt to taxpayers with zero benefit to them 4) Iran aquires nuclear weapons and we (including Bush) failed to do anything about it 5) Jamie Gertz continue's to become even more attractive as she ages

This mosaic of frames from the navigation camera on NASA\'s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity gives a view to the northeast from the rover\'s position on its 1,687th Martian day, or sol (Oct. 22, 2008). By that date, Opportunity had driven southwestward from Victoria Crater, beginning a long trek toward a larger crater, Endeavour. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech (PhysOrg.com) -- NASA rovers Spirit and Opportunity may still have big achievements ahead as they approach the fifth anniversaries of their memorable landings on Mars. Of the hundreds of engineers and scientists who cheered at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., on Jan. 3,...

Researchers using a powerful instrument aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have found a long sought-after mineral on the Martian surface and, with it, unexpected clues to the Red Planet's watery past. Surveying intact bedrock layers with the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars, or CRISM, scientists found carbonate minerals, indicating that Mars had neutral to alkaline water when the minerals formed at these locations more than 3.6 billion years ago. Carbonates, which on Earth include limestone and chalk, dissolve quickly in acid. Therefore, their survival until today on Mars challenges suggestions that an exclusively acidic environment later dominated the planet....

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has completed its primary, two-year science phase. The spacecraft has found signs of a complex Martian history of climate change that produced a diversity of past watery environments.

Conspiracy theorists can't see the wood for the trees as they spot 'timber plank' on Mars An image sent back from the Red Planet has revealed an object bearing an uncanny resemblance to a wooden log. It was captured by the Mars Rover near the Endurance Crater. The find has excited conspiracy theorists...who claim it is evidence there are vast forests on Mars that have been kept from the public. Enlarge A picture of what looks like timber (close-up below) has excited conspiracy theorists who claim it is proof there are vast forests on Mars It is more likely to...

NASA announced today that their next flagship mission, the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover, will not be ready to launch in the October 2009 launch window. Because Mars launch opportunities only occur once every 26 months, any delay beyond October 2009 means that the mission must wait until late in 2011 for its next chance to launch to Mars. The delay will add a further $300 to 400 million to the price tag for the mission, which now stands at $2.2 to 2.3 billion. That represents an approximately 40% cost increase over the$1.63 billion figure given at MSL's August 2006...

One of the gravest dangers facing future astronauts traveling to Mars will be radiation in space: If the long trip doesn't kill them, cancer eventually could. These threats can, however, be defeated. In Star Trek, a deflector shield surrounded the Starship Enterprise, and radiation bounced off it. Now tests show it's possible to create a real deflector shield that would have the same effect. A new study found that a portable magnetic shield could be the key to protecting spacefarers during long-duration missions. A spaceship could be outfitted with a mini magnetosphere that would force the harmful charged particles in...

Scientists led by a University of Texas geologist report that data from an unmanned NASA space probe suggests there's much more ice on Mars than previously thought. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, according to an article in the journal Science, has identified several dirt-covered glaciers — including one that is three times longer than the city of Los Angeles and up to a half-mile thick. The glaciers may be remnants of warmer conditions on the Red Planet.

NASA and other spaceflight programs worldwide should focus on putting people on Mars, not the moon, an advocacy group for space exploration said in a new plan announced today. "The U.S. landed humans on the Moon nearly 40 years ago," said Louis Friedman, executive director of The Planetary Society. "Returning to the moon has not sufficiently excited the public and will require resources that will be badly needed elsewhere in the space program."

The end seems to have finally come for NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander mission at the planet's north pole, scientists said Monday. "At this time we're pretty convinced that the vehicle is no longer available for us to use," said Phoenix project manager Barry Goldstein of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

The craft is dangerously low on power because of dust covering its solar arrays. News of the problem comes a day after NASA declared an end to the Phoenix polar mission.

- NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has ceased communications after operating for more than five months. As anticipated, seasonal decline in sunshine at the robot's arctic landing site is not providing enough sunlight for the solar arrays to collect the power necessary to charge batteries that operate the lander's instruments. Mission engineers last received a signal from the lander on Nov. 2. Phoenix, in addition to shorter daylight, has encountered a dustier sky, more clouds and colder temperatures as the northern Mars summer approaches autumn. The mission exceeded its planned operational life of three months to conduct and return science data....

Hey all! I was listening to Ramon Raquello and his orchestra (and who doesn't?) and just as they were playing "La Cumparsita", the program was interupted by a breaking news story from the Intercontinental Radio News with a bulletin on Mars. "At twenty minutes before eight, central time, Professor Farrell of the Mount Jennings Observatory, Chicago, Illinois, reports observing several explosions of incandescent gas, occurring at regular intervals on the planet Mars. The spectroscope indicates the gas to be hydrogen and moving towards the earth with enormous velocity. Professor Pierson of the Observatory at Princeton confirms Farrell's observation, and describes...

Finding could influence choice of landing site for Mars Science Laboratory. Ithaca, New YorkMore than four years after researchers first said they had found methane gas on Mars, a scientist claims that he has "nailed" the controversial detection and identified key sources of the gas.Nili Fossae is a hotspot for martian methane, says Michael Mumma (below).JPL-Caltech/Univ. Arizona/NASA On Earth, methane is mostly biological in origin; on Mars, it could signal microbes living deep underground. The latest work suggests that martian methane is concentrated in both space and time - at a handful of hotspots hundreds of kilometres across, plumes of...

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander, having already uncovered water ice in the soil of the Red Planet's northern polar plains, has now spotted another sight familiar to those of us who dwell in the higher latitude climes back on Earth: falling snow. Using lidar (analogous to radar, with pulses of laser light standing in for radio waves), Phoenix picked up signs of snow drifting down from clouds some 2.5 miles (four kilometers) overhead. It has not been seen reaching the Martian surface; it appears to vaporize before landfall.

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has detected snow falling from Martian clouds. Spacecraft soil experiments also have provided evidence of past interaction between minerals and liquid water, processes that occur on Earth. A laser instrument designed to gather knowledge of how the atmosphere and surface interact on Mars has detected snow from clouds about 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) above the spacecraft's landing site. Data show the snow vaporizing before reaching the ground. "Nothing like this view has ever been seen on Mars," said Jim Whiteway, of York University, Toronto, lead scientist for the Canadian-supplied Meteorological Station on Phoenix. "We'll be looking...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - NASA extended the mission of the busy Phoenix lander Monday, saying it will operate the lander until it dies in the cold and dark of the Martian winter. It is already snowing there, above the equivalent of the Arctic circle on Mars, the researchers said. The explorer found evidence that the dust on the surface of Mars resembles seawater in its chemical makeup, adding to evidence that liquid water that once may have supported life flowed on the planet's surface. The Phoenix lander already has operated far longer than expected when it was dropped onto the Martian...

Recent high-resolution images taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter suggest Mars may have stayed wet a billion years longer than most previous estimates, scientists report. Researchers say they have identified water-carved features that date to the Hesperian Epoch, 3.7 to 3 billion years ago. The time frame is far more recent than the period scientists most often associate with the presence of liquid water on Mars—the Noachian Epoch, which spanned the first billion years on the red planet from about 4.6 to 3.5 billion years ago. Catherine Weitz is a senior scientist with the Tucson, Arizona-based Planetary Science Institute. She...

The team operating NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has chosen southeast as the direction for the rover's next extended journey, toward a crater more than 20 times wider than "Victoria Crater." Image credit: NASA/JPL/ASU Click here to enlarge image (PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Mars Rover Opportunity is setting its sights on a crater more than 20 times larger than its home for the past two years. To reach the crater the rover team calls Endeavour, Opportunity would need to drive approximately 7 miles to the southeast, matching the total distance it has traveled since landing on Mars in early 2004....

A newly discovered species of a blind, subterranean predator — dubbed the "Ant from Mars" — is likely a descendant of one of the very first ants to evolve on Earth, a new study finds.

A new study suggests that ancient features on the surface of Mars called valley networks were carved by recurrent floods during a long period when the martian climate may have been much like that of some arid or semiarid regions on Earth. An alternative theory that the valleys were carved by catastrophic flooding over a relatively short time is not supported by the new results... Often cited as evidence that Mars once had a warm environment with liquid water on the surface, valley networks are distinctive features of the martian landscape. In the new study, researchers used sophisticated computer models...

NATIONAL MILITARY ESTABLISHMENT OFFICE OF PUBLIC INFORMATION Washington 25, D. C. MEMORANDUM TO THE PRESS NO. M 26 - 49 IMMEDIATE RELEASE APRIL 27, 1949 RE 6700 Ext. 3201 The following report is a digest of preliminary studies made by the Air Material Command, Wright Field, Dayton, Ohio, on "Flying Saucers." PROJECT "SAUCER" On Tuesday, June 24, 1947, a Boise, Idaho businessman named Kenneth Arnold looked from his private plane and spotted a chain of nine saucer-like objects playing tag with the jagged peaks of Washington's Mt. Ranier at what he described as a "fantastic speed." Arnold's report set off...

This 180-degree panorama shows the southward vista from the location where Spirit is spending its third Martian winter inside Mars' Gusev Crater. Click here to enlarge image (PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Mars Exploration rover Opportunity is heading back out to the Red Planet's surrounding plains nearly a year after descending into a large Martian crater to examine exposed ancient rock layers. "We've done everything we entered Victoria Crater to do and more," said Bruce Banerdt, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Banerdt is project scientist for Opportunity and its rover twin, Spirit. Having completed its job in the...

Q: That would be an area where you’d like to depart from the current course – because in the COTS program, both of the companies receiving NASA money are developing space capsules as well. A: You’re very observant, following my well-chosen words. I’m quite aware that a number of years ago, the Russians had a design that they tested with scale models. We re-engineered and studied it and renamed it the HL-20. … My group of engineers thought it was very, very attractive, and together with Raytheon we were working on a proposal… It really surprised us when the upper...

New results from NASA's Phoenix Mars lander suggest that the surface layers of the Martian arctic region may not be as friendly to life as initial results suggested, NASA said today. Two samples analyzed within the last month by Phoenix's Microscopy, Electrochemistry and Conductivity Analyzer (MECA) suggest that the Martian dirt may contain perchlorate, a highly oxidizing substance, which would create a harsh environment for any potential life. The findings stand against the results from MECA's first analysis, which indicated the dirt was Earth-like in certain respects, including its pH and the presence of certain minerals. "Initial MECA analyses suggested...

he White House has been alerted by NASA about plans to make an announcement soon on major new Phoenix lander discoveries concerning the "potential for life" on Mars, scientists tell Aviation Week & Space Technology. Sources say the new data do not indicate the discovery of existing or past life on Mars. Rather the data relate to habitability--the "potential" for Mars to support life--at the Phoenix arctic landing site, sources say.

In a discovery that could qualify as one of the most important in the history of space exploration, NASA’s Phoenix Mission may have confirmed the presence of water ice on the planet, Popular Mechanics has learned. The scheduling of a press conference for Thursday at 2 p.m. Eastern by NASA and the University of Arizona has raised hopes in the space community that scientists will announce the breakthrough. When pressed for details, a spokesperson for the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory refused to elaborate beyond saying that the Phoenix team would unveil new findings from the ongoing robotic mission to Mars....

PARIS (AFP) - Water bathed the surface of southern Mars for millions of years, helping to create an environment theoretically capable of nurturing life, according to a new study into the planet's mysterious oceans. Scientists at Brown University in Rhode Island used an instrument aboard a US spacecraft, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, to hunt for traces of phyllosilicates, or clay-like minerals that preserve a record of water's interaction with rocks. They found phyllosilicates in thousands of places, in valleys, dunes and craters in the ancient southern highlands, pointing to an active role by water in Mars's earliest geological era, the...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Scientists with the US Phoenix lander will make their first analysis of Martian ice fragments in coming days but it could be the last done in one of the probe's small ovens, NASA said on its website Friday. ADVERTISEMENT A team of engineers and scientists were trying to get to the bottom of what caused a short-circuit on the TEGA (Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer) which has four small ovens able to heat samples of Martian soil up to 1,000 degrees Celsius. "Since there is no way to assess the probability of another short circuit occurring, we are...