Anxiety over rover's Hollywood-style Mars landing

Seven minutes of terror. It sounds like a Hollywood thriller, but the phrase describes the anxiety NASA is expecting as its car-sized robotic rover tries a tricky landing on Mars late Sunday.

Mars Rover Yielding New Clues While Lodged in Martian Soil

(PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Mars rover Spirit, lodged in Martian soil that is causing traction trouble, is taking advantage of the situation by learning more about the Red Planet's environmental history.

Rover Confirms Meteorite on Mars

(PhysOrg.com) -- Composition measurements by NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity confirm that this rock on the Martian surface is an iron-nickel meteorite.

ESA fully cuts Mars mission ties with Russia, angering Moscow

The European Space Agency has officially terminated cooperation with Russia on a mission to put a rover on Mars, with Russia's space chief furiously responding by banning cosmonauts on the ISS from using a Europe-made robotic ...

NASA Instrument Will Identify Clues to Martian Past

(PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Curiosity rover, coming together for a late 2011 launch to Mars, has a newly installed component: a key onboard X-ray instrument for helping the mission achieve its goals. Researchers will use Curiosity ...

Robotic rock climbers could uncover clues to Mars' past

A robot that can scale the faces of steep cliffs might one day help explore Mars and find signs of life. The latest experiments with this "Cliffbot" showed it could help examine places otherwise difficult or impossible for ...

NASA's curiosity continues mobility checkouts

(PhysOrg.com) -- Spacecraft specialists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., have been putting the Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity, through various tests in preparation for shipment to NASA's Kennedy ...

Mars rover self-portrait shoot uses arm choreography

(Phys.org)—The robotic arm on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity held the rover's Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera in more than 50 positions in one day to generate a single scene combining all the images, creating a high-resolution, ...

Curiosity's sundial carries a message of hope

While Curiosity is definitely loaded up with some of the most high-tech instruments ever made to investigate the surface of Mars, it also carries a very low-tech instrument: a sundial, which can be used to determine the position ...

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