Bloody Vikings!
I’d come across a news item yesterday which irritated me — well, it’s not really new anyway, but I’ll explain.
In 1976, NASA’s Viking Project - an ambitious undertaking destined for Mars - made history when the Viking 1 and Viking 2 landers safely touched down on the Martian surface. They were the first spacecraft […]

After logging a 487-million-kilometer journey to the red planet, Spirit, the first of NASA’s two Mars Exploration Rovers, touched down safely in Mars’ Gusev Crater back on January 3rd, 2004. The rover was originally scheduled to complete a three-month mission surveying interesting scientific targets, and the initial plans estimated that Spirit would only traverse a […]

As the Mars Exploration Rovers continue their respective journeys - now beyond eleven times that of their original mission design - the findings keep accumulating. In reviewing the latest MER press release, I was totally captivated by this layered section of Erebus returned by Opportunity:

Image Credit: NASA /JPL / Cornell (click to enlarge)
The stack […]

As promised, and hot off the presses — behold the new images just released from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
The first color shot from the HiRISE Instrument:
Note: this is just a quick, tiny crop of the very top of the image, since there’s really no effective way of displaying it on my page. It’s HUGE. Follow the […]

Last month, some gorgeous new high-resolution images of the Martian surface were released, taken by the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity. Unfortunately, the timing of the releases coincided with some rather significant events, such as the news of possible H20 reservoirs on Saturn’s moon Enceladus and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s successful orbital insertion, so I’m […]

After successfully entering orbit back on March 10th, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter returned its first images of the red planet today! The spacecraft won’t achieve its optimum science orbit until this November, so these first views will have to last us a while. And, rest assured it will be well worth the wait. The images below […]

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has successfully completed its Mars Orbital Insertion, becoming the third spacecraft in orbit around the red planet. Mission Control indicates that the spacecraft and systems are in good health.
Project manager Dr. Jim Graf stated that the orbital insertion process went flawlessly, and that they couldn’t have scripted it any better. […]