Differences between Martian meteorites and rocks examined by a NASA rover can be explained if Mars had an oxygen-rich atmosphere 4000 million years ago—well before the rise of atmospheric oxygen on Earth 2500 million years ...
Space Exploration
Jun 19, 2013
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(PhysOrg.com) -- The ground where NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit became stuck last year holds evidence that water, perhaps as snow melt, trickled into the subsurface fairly recently and on a continuing basis.
Space Exploration
Oct 28, 2010
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Homer's Iliad tells the story of Troy, a city besieged by the Greeks in the Trojan War. Today, a lone robot sits besieged in the sands of Troy while engineers and scientists plot its escape.
Space Exploration
Dec 3, 2009
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(PhysOrg.com) -- In the past several weeks, scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory finished experimentation on methods to get the rover Spirit unstuck from its location near a plateau called Home Plate.
Space Exploration
Oct 13, 2009
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(PhysOrg.com) -- The five wheels that still rotate on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit have been slipping severely in soft soil during recent attempts to drive, sinking the wheels about halfway into the ground.
Space Exploration
May 12, 2009
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(PhysOrg.com) -- The team operating NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit plans diagnostic tests this week after Spirit did not report some of its weekend activities, including a request to determine its orientation after ...
Space Exploration
Jan 28, 2009
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Rocks on Mars are on the move, rolling into the wind and forming organized patterns, according to new research.
Space Exploration
Jan 8, 2009
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An elongated crater called "Spirit of St. Louis," with a rock spire in it, dominates a recent scene from the panoramic camera (Pancam) on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity.
Space Exploration
May 1, 2015
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(Phys.org) —In May 2009, the Mars rover Spirit cracked through a crusty layer of Martian topsoil, sinking into softer underlying sand. The unexpected sand trap permanently mired the vehicle, despite months of remote maneuvering ...
Space Exploration
Sep 4, 2013
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(PhysOrg.com) -- The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter recorded a scene on Jan. 29, 2012, that includes the first color image from orbit showing the three-petal ...
Space Exploration
Feb 9, 2012
10
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Spirit, mission designation MER-A (Mars Exploration Rover - A), is the first of the two rovers of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Mission. It landed successfully on Mars on 04:35 Ground UTC on January 4, 2004, three weeks before its twin Opportunity (MER-B) landed on the other side of the planet. Its name was chosen through a NASA-sponsored student essay competition.
The rover completed its planned 90-sol mission, then, aided by cleaning events which resulted in higher power from its solar panels, went on to function effectively over twenty times longer than NASA planners expected. This allowed it to perform more extensive geological analysis of Martian rocks and planetary surface features. Initial scientific results from the first phase of the mission (roughly, the 90-sol prime mission) were published in a special issue of the journal Science.
On May 1, 2009, Spirit was stuck in soft soil on Mars, one of the mission's embedding events. NASA is carefully analyzing the situation to get the rover back on track, but it will take weeks before a new attempt will be made to extricate the rover from its current position called "Troy".
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