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NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) scientists announce that the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Opportunity is currently producing increased amounts of energy from its solar panels, after the end of the fifth winter it spent on the Red Planet. The robot has recently taken its first drive in many months.
The explorati... |
10 May 2012
03:59 GMT |
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Planetary sciences would stand to gain a lot from a potential mission to Europa, one of Jupiter's icy moons. An ocean of liquid water is believed to lie under a thick layer of solid ice, and sending a submarine to scout it out could reveal data about how life evolves, among others. Investigator Steve Squyres, a... |
23 March 2012
03:53 GMT |
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Officials at NASA are currently celebrating Opportunity's eight anniversary on the surface of Mars. The event stretches from January 24-25, since the machine arrived at Mars at 21:05 PST, but 12:05 am EST the following day, in 2004.
The spacecraft is the second of two Mars Exploration Rovers (MER), and it land... |
25 January 2012
03:19 GMT |
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The Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Opportunity is celebrating its 8th anniversary on the surface of the Red Planet today, January 24. The spacecraft took off aboard a Delta II 7925 rocket on July 7, 2003, and landed successfully in Meridiani Planum on January 24, 2004.
Originally scheduled to endure on the Martian su... |
24 January 2012
11:17 GMT |
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As winter on the Red Planet prepares to descend over Opportunity's current location, mission managers at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), are continuously planning how to use the rover without draining it of its energy. A solution would be for the machine to analyze the planet's interior.Such studi... |
20 January 2012
15:31 GMT |
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Yesterday, January 3, the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Spirit turned 8 since arriving on the surface of Mars. The spacecraft landed there on January 3, 2004, followed several days later by its sister rover, Opportunity. The latter arrived on January 25.
The two were supposed to operate for about three months, and d... |
4 January 2012
03:53 GMT |
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The 2011 NASA Software of the Year prize was awarded to the Autonomous Exploration for Gathering Increased Science (AEGIS) software, which was installed on the NASA Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Opportunity in December 2009.
The program was put together by experts at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), in Pasad... |
9 December 2011
04:08 GMT |
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After arriving at Endeavour Crater in mid-August, the NASA Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Opportunity is currently heading for a feature called Cape York, which oversees a large portion of the crater. The location will provide favorable conditions for the robot during the Martian winter.
The explorations rover uses s... |
21 November 2011
06:43 GMT |
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An amazing video posted on YouTube yesterday, November 14, shows the entire journey of the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Spirit on the surface of Mars. The time-lapse clip covers everything from the moment the robot was deployed to when it became embedded in loose sand and had to be abandoned.
Spirit spent more than ... |
15 November 2011
03:25 GMT |
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Experts at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), in Pasadena, California, have just released a new video produced using data from the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Opportunity. The dataset includes photos collected over the past three years of driving on the Red Planet. A total of 319 images gathered over the pa... |
11 October 2011
03:41 GMT |
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The NASA Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) Spirit and Opportunity will receive a lifetime achievement award on October 10, during a ceremony to be held in New York City. The fact that the mission will receive this Breakthrough Award was announced on October 3 by Popular Mechanics magazine.
Originally, the two machines... |
4 October 2011
03:08 GMT |
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New data relayed to Earth by the NASA Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Opportunity indicate that it discovered an interesting rock, which may hold telltale signs of past water flows on the Red Planet. The formation is called Chester Lake, and has been under scrutiny since last week.Since arriving at the rim of Endeavour ... |
17 September 2011
04:21 GMT |
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Aluminum cuffs on both Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) are made of metal recycled from the World Trade Center buildings, engineers at Honeybee Robotics reveal. They say that they did this in order to honor the memory of the thousands of victims of the 9/11 attacks.
As part of both Spirit and Opportunity, these smal... |
9 September 2011
04:22 GMT |
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The NASA Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Opportunity has finally reached the western rim of the massive Endeavour Crater, on the surface of the Red Planet. The robot has been traveling towards this objective for nearly three years, and mission controllers were reluctant they would ever get there. However, the impressive... |
11 August 2011
03:01 GMT |
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After several years of trekking on the surface of the Red Planet, the NASA Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Opportunity was finally able to observe the rim of its long-term target, the Endeavour Crater. The explorations robot has been heading towards this large impact crater since mid-2008m when mission controllers at th... |
9 August 2011
02:57 GMT |
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The NASA Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Opportunity has just surpassed another record on the surface of the Red Planet, after it traveled for more than 50 times the original distances planned for the mission. At this point, the robot's odometer is well over 20 miles. The rover exceeded the 20-mile mark during a 40... |
3 August 2011
16:01 GMT |
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Experts at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), who manage the Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) mission, say that Opportunity has just reached an amazing milestone, traveling for more than 20 miles (32.18 kilometers) on the Martian surface. Now in its seventh year on the Red Planet, the robot was originally suppose... |
20 July 2011
03:43 GMT |
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After nearly seven years of roaming the surface of the Red Planet, the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Spirit has finally been declared dead by mission controllers at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), in Pasadena, California. Operational planning activities for the exploration robot have concluded at NASA, and a... |
26 May 2011
16:01 GMT |
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Scientists with the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, say that hopes of getting the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Spirit back online are starting to dwindle. The Martian spring is in full swing, and yet no radio signals have been heard from the machine.An important threshold was reached last week... |
19 March 2011
07:12 GMT |
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NASA released two updates about that state of the two components of the Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) mission, Spirit and Opportunity. While the former is still keeping mum near Home Plate, the latter has just wrapped up investigations of a rock at its current location.Opportunity is now on the rim of the Santa Maria... |
18 March 2011
11:53 GMT |
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A NASA orbiter flying in low-orbit above the Red Planet has recently captured a set of images showing one of the twin rovers the American space agency operates on Mars. The vehicle is currently perched on the rim of a crater, conducting geological research. This photo also reveals the tracks that Opportunity – ... |
10 March 2011
03:18 GMT |
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Today, January 25, marks the seventh anniversary of the rover Opportunity, since it landed on Mars in 2004. The machine has been conducting explorations at the planet ever since, and has contributed to our current understanding of our neighbor extensively. Opportunity touched down on the Red Planet just three weeks a... |
25 January 2011
03:29 GMT |
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The two exploration robots that make up the NASA Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) mission have started the eight year of their stay on the Red Planet today, January 4. While Spirit turns 7 today, its twin Opportunity will reach the mission milestone on January 25. The former rover has been in a state called a safe mode ... |
4 January 2011
09:55 GMT |
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When the two components of the Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) mission touched down on the surface of the Red Planet all those years ago, no one expected the two robots to last this long in the harsh conditions of their new homes. Yet, they did, and have been going so for nearly 7 years. Spirit will turn 7 tomorrow, Ja... |
3 January 2011
04:13 GMT |
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The Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Opportunity will be spending New Year's Eve at a large crater on the Red Planet, called Santa Maria. The football-field-size landscape feature was most likely generated millions of years ago, when a small asteroid impacted the surface. The rover made its way to Santa Maria on Dec... |
30 December 2010
03:15 GMT |
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NASA is proud to announce that the Mars Odyssey orbiter, which launched in 2001, is currently the new record-holder for the longest-duration mission around Mars, exceeding the record set by the agency's Mars Global Surveyor mission.The latter functioned around the Red Planet from 1997 to 2006, but the mission ev... |
16 December 2010
05:17 GMT |
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Scientists at the NASA lab managing the rovers Spirit and Opportunity announce that the former has not yet shown any signs of activity. The exploration robot is stuck in a patch of loose sand on Mars. The new status report covers sols (Martian days) 2362 to 2368 of the mission the battered machine has been condu... |
7 September 2010
04:40 GMT |
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Scientists at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, announce that Opportunity snapped a new image of its destination, the Endeavour crater on the surface of Mars. The small explorations robot has been traveling on the surface of the Red Planet for more than six years, and mission managers ... |
3 May 2010
05:55 GMT |
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As we were telling you earlier today, the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) component Spirit has been immobilized on the surface of the Red Planet, following a series of misfortunes. The exploration robot thus comes at the end of a journey that lasted several tens of times longer than it was originally planned. Since land... |
27 January 2010
09:22 GMT |
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On Saturday, November 28, the American space agency's oldest enduring orbiter around the Red Planet, the Mars Odyssey, put itself into safe mode. At this point, both spacecraft, the Odyssey and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) are nonoperational, but NASA engineers say that the former experienced just a mi... |
2 December 2009
03:23 GMT |
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Experts at the Technical University of Prague Center for Machine Perception, under the direction of scientist Dr. Michal Havlena, have recently announced the development of a new computer system, capable of reproducing the Red Planet in 3D detail within minutes. The platform can also be fed images collected by explor... |
18 September 2009
17:31 GMT |
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The Martian rover Spirit remains blocked in its sandy patch of soil on the surface of the Red Planet, as an incoming dust storm continues to significantly reduce the amount of electricity the exploration robot is receiving. The average amount of sunlight Spirit was getting has now been blocked and, as a response, mis... |
27 August 2009
01:25 GMT |
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The Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) mission managers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), in Pasadena, California, are celebrating Spirit's record-setting anniversary of Martian presence. Originally designed to roam the sands of the Red Planet for just 90 sols (a mean Martian day has 24 hours, 39 minutes, and 3... |
19 August 2009
05:57 GMT |
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In the specially designed sandbox at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), in Pasadena, California, Mars Exploration Rovers engineers are looking at all possible rover movement options, in order to determine the most appropriate sequence of getting Spirit out of Troy. Yesterday, the experts analyzed if modifying the s... |
22 July 2009
16:41 GMT |
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The ambitious design of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) has sparked, since it first appeared, criticism as to the number of instruments it includes, and also on account of its size. Quite simply put, the MSL, which has recently been appropriately named Curiosity, is the largest rover ever to be sent to the Red Plan... |
16 June 2009
04:47 GMT |
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With Spirit trapped in loose Martian soil since May 6th, engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, California, are working around the clock to mimic the conditions of the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) in their test facilities. Spirit and Opportunity are not the only MER components, as mission pl... |
10 June 2009
13:21 GMT |
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The Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) program began in 2004, with the landing on Mars of the twin robots Spirit and Opportunity. Originally scheduled to roam the surface of the planet for little more than three months, both of them proved to be extremely resilient, and, against all odds, survived the harsh Martian winter... |
27 May 2009
15:41 GMT |
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The resilient tiny Martian rover Spirit is currently facing some of the gravest challenges it has had to bear since arriving on the Red Planet, in 2004. With one wheel jammed since three years ago, it now runs the risk of becoming permanently stuck in the loose and very plastic soil its driving over. Recent attempts ... |
12 May 2009
09:53 GMT |
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On Thursday, the Spirit Mars rover took its first drive since April 8th, when it started exhibiting “memory problems.” Confronted with bouts of amnesia, as in problems with its flash drive, the tiny robot was unresponsive to commands for a while, and rebooted its onboard computers a few times. On April 23... |
25 April 2009
04:40 GMT |
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According to officials at the American space agency, the Spirit robot, part of the Mars Exploration Rovers mission, is currently suffering from what humans would call amnesia. In other words, it fails to “remember” data that have been previously recorded. At the same time, it seems reluctant to provide it... |
21 April 2009
08:10 GMT |
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Man's presence on Mars these days is absolutely amazing – two rovers that operate since 2004, a lander that was able to conclude without a doubt that water existed on mars, and an orbiter capable of surveying and analyzing the surface of the planet with the same accuracy as Earth-orbit observation satellit... |
16 April 2009
09:20 GMT |
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According to new data released by NASA and JPL-Caltech, the Spirit exploration rover received a larger input of electricity on February 6th, which seems to indicate the fact that Martian winds managed to blew a significant quantity of the dust that covered the robot's solar panels. This is nothing but good news ... |
13 February 2009
15:01 GMT |
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