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This artist concept features NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover, a mobile robot for investigating Mars' past or present ability to sustain microbial life. (Courtesy photo | NASA/JPL-Caltech)

In other Mars news, there's this.

Stranded Mars probe sends further signals

More attempts have been made by the European Space Agency (Esa) to contact the stricken Russian probe Phobos-Grunt - with partial success.

Communication with the craft as it passed over Australia was achieved again on Thursday, but not all of the commands prompted a response.

Phobos-Grunt was launched two weeks ago on a mission to visit one of Mars' moons, but became stuck in Earth orbit.

Engineers still hope to fix the probe and get the mission under way.

But first they need to be able to talk with it. Europe's 15m dish in Perth was the first to successfully make contact with the spacecraft in a fortnight of trying by tracking stations around the globe.

[WorkingClassFilth]

Time to pull the plug. Mars has nothing to do with our problems and NASA is another budgetary white elephant. The glory has faded and it’s time to move on.

[djf]

I’m gettin sick of this BS.

Either send men up there or return a couple samples.

Let’s get down to the nitty gritty.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have no connections to the space program, but I have no doubt that there is life on Mars.
And I have no doubt that some powerful people know that already.

[BigCinBigD]

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