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Stories, updates, insights, and original analysis from The Planetary Society.
The Mars Exploration Rovers Update: Spirit Powers into Winter, Opportunity "Shoulders" Injury
With winter settling in on the southern hemisphere of the Red Planet, the Mars Exploration Rovers (MERs) spent April working on their respective science campaigns and hunkering down in brutally chilly nights that are seeing temperatures drop to around -95 degree Celsius. As the month comes to an end at Gusev Crater and Meridiani Planum, there is good news and there is bad news.
What's up in the solar system for the week of April 28
I thought it would be fun to start the week by taking stock of what's going on with all the active planetary missions out there.
Dawn Journal: Software Updates
Dawn continues its powered flight, having accumulated more than 100 days of ion thrusting since its launch nearly seven months ago. All systems are healthy as the probe patiently and persistently propels itself through the solar system.
Dawn Journal: One AU from Earth
Dawn is as far from Earth as the Sun.
The Mars Exploration Rovers Update: Spirit Takes in Home Surroundings, Opportunity Roves to Cape Verde
Brandishing the trademark resilience that has endeared them to millions of people around the world, the Mars Exploration Rovers kept their robotic noses to the grindstone through March, soldiering on into their third Martian winter with slightly more power than predictions anticipated and enough proven mettle to dodge a budgetary pothole on Earth that might have taken one of them out of action. Now, 50 months after Spirit defied the odds and bounced safely to an upright landing and Opportunity followed with the impossible scoring of a 300-million-mile hole-in-one, the twin robot field geologists are driving the MER mission into new territory once again.
Mars Budget Cuts
Exploring another planet is an expensive business. We all know this, but sometimes it hits home harder than others. Today was one of those times.
Dawn Journal: Backup Camera Checks Out
Treating intercalary days just as it does most other days in its interplanetary cruise, today Dawn continues patiently and ever-so-gently reshaping its orbit around the Sun with the delicate yet persistent push from its ion propulsion system.
The Mars Exploration Rovers Update: Spirit Settles into Winter Spot, Opportunity Descends Deeper into Victoria Crater
With fall slowly passing in the southern hemisphere of Mars and winter looming on the horizon, the Mars Exploration Rovers carried on with business as usual in February, working as much as possible before the reduced sunlight and beyond-frigid temperatures of the dreaded season set in.
Opportunity watches the clouds drift by
Opportunity is now following a rather leisurely autumn schedule, according to the latest update on the mission website. Some of the work Opportunity is doing involves staring skyward, looking for patterns in the clouds that pass overhead at this time of year. One of the guys at unmannedspaceflight.com has put together some nifty animations of the wispy cloud patterns.
Dawn Journal: Safely Cruising
Now in interplanetary cruise, the Dawn spacecraft is following a much more leisurely pace than the one it maintained during the initial checkout phase of the mission.
The Mars Exploration Rovers Update: Spirit and Opportunity Begin Fifth Year of Exploration in Shadow of "Little Sasquatch "
The Mars Exploration Rovers celebrated their fourth birthdays and began their fifth year of exploring this month -- and for the first time since the big dust storm hit the headlines last summer, Spirit and Opportunity made the news. It wasn't for the notable exploration or engineering milestone they had just achieved or the discoveries they've helped scientists make about a once very different Mars. It was because of an alleged
MESSENGER's First Mercury Flyby Reveals a "Whole New Planet"
Just two weeks after MESSENGER's first flyby of Mercury, the mission's science team presented their first impressions from the long-awaited second look at the innermost planet.
MESSENGER's First Mercury Flyby Highly Successful
On the evening of Tuesday, January 15, the MESSENGER science team crowded around a computer screen, anxiously awaiting their first view of the previously unseen hemisphere of Mercury.
MESSENGER Set for First Spacecraft Swing Past Mercury in 33 Years
Mercury scientists' very long wait for new data from a spacecraft at Mercury will finally come to an end on Monday, when MESSENGER makes its first close approach to the innermost planet.
Mars Exploration Rovers Update: Spirit and Opportunity Wrap Year 4, Ready to Rove into 2008
The mission was only supposed to last three months, maybe six months if all went well, but the Mars Exploration Rovers surprised everyone. Demonstrating an uncanny kind of
Dawn Journal: Checkout Complete, Interplanetary Cruise Underway
After the remarkably successful initial checkout phase, Dawn is now in the interplanetary cruise phase.
A dusty start to Spirit's winter
Dust from the sky has settled on both the rover deck and the surrounding landscape. The dust-covered solar cells will not be able to generate as much power as when they were clean. Unless a puff of wind dusts off the solar panels, Spirit may have difficulty surviving the approaching Martian winter.
Mars Exploration Rovers Update: Spirit Thrashes with Tartarus, Opportunity Wrestles RAT at Victoria's Ring
Nail-biting drama and the inevitable signs of aging marked the month of November for the Mars Exploration Rovers, with Spirit accidentally encountering Tartarus, a dust-filled crater, on its way to its winter haven and having to thrash for its life, and Opportunity spending a lot of its time conducting tests on its RAT (rock abrasion tool), which lost another encoder.
ExoMars landing site downselections
It hasn't been that long since the Mars Science Laboratory landing site downselection meeting; it was quickly followed by a meeting in Europe on ExoMars, which is currently planned for a 2011 launch.
No descent images or sounds from Phoenix
A couple of days ago Malin Space Science Systems (MSSS) issued a news notice that explains some of the horse-trading that went on behind the scenes to rescue MARDI, the descent imaging camera that they are building for the Mars Science Laboratory rover.