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Mars Rover: Stuck in the Mud

Spirit, the Mars rover that landed in Gusev Crater on Mars in January 2004 and is still working, just isn't going forward or backward. Back in April its wheels broke through some crusty ground into thick, soft dust, and engineers back at the Jet Propulsion Lab in California haven't been able to get it out. "This lonely spot on the edge of a crater may be where Spirit ends its adventure on Mars," said Doug McCuistion, director of NASA's Mars Exploration Program...

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November 12, 2009 in Current Affairs, Science, Space | Permalink | User Comments (10)

Tranquility Base

Forty years after Neil Armstrong keyed his microphone and said, "Houston, Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed," a NASA probe in lunar orbit has returned this image of Apollo 11's landing site. Take a look.

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November 12, 2009 in Current Affairs, Science, Space | Permalink | User Comments (68)

NASA's Ares 1-X Test: The View From Above

Cool video of NASA's Ares 1-X rocket test -- seen from above.

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November 5, 2009 in Adventure, Current Affairs, economy, Politics, Space | Permalink | User Comments (4)

Moon Crash Kicked Up Plume After All

Turns out the LCROSS lunar impact mission did kick up a plume of debris after all.

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October 19, 2009 in Science, Space | Permalink | User Comments (10)

Moon Crash: Where's the Water?

The lesson, perhaps, of Friday's lunar impact by NASA's LCROSS mission was to be careful what you wish for.

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October 13, 2009 in Science, Space | Permalink | User Comments (74)

Ice on Mars: More Than They Ever Thought

Note to self: whenever you make a cool scientific finding, try not to do it on a day when there's an even cooler finding. Yesterday, while NASA was talking about those intriguing traces of water in the moon's soil, other...

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September 25, 2009 in Science, Space | Permalink | User Comments (12)

Red Mars, Black Mars

Why is Mars such a rusty red? For decades, scientists have assumed the answer was as simple as rust on Earth. The Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, established that the planet once was probably warm and wet, with standing pools...

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September 21, 2009 in Science, Space | Permalink | User Comments (15)

A Rocky World, Far, Far Away

500 light-years away, in the constellation of Monoceros the Unicorn, European scientists say there is an unremarkable star called CoRoT-7. Last year they deduced that there was at least one planet orbiting it. And today, they report, it is one...

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September 16, 2009 in Science, Space | Permalink | User Comments (16)

Space Shuttle Dodges a (Big) Bullet

The astronauts of the space shuttle Discovery woke up a little while ago, and Houston told them to go on with their lives as if nothing was happening. A piece of a European Ariane 5 rocket, launched three years ago...

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September 3, 2009 in Science, Space | Permalink | User Comments (5)

California Burning

If you live outside southern California, and you want an idea of why the wildfires there are such news, take a look from above. This image, shot by NASA's Aqua satellite, shows a plume of smoke that extends diagonally northeast...

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September 1, 2009 in Science, Space | Permalink | User Comments (4)