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| Curiosity is on Mars |
| Topic: Mars |
08/06/12 |
| Curiosity has successfully touched down on Mars. Several minutes later, amidst the cheers and high-fives at the Jet Propulsion Laboratories, the rover’s first image was received on Earth. |
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| The Least Crazy Option |
| Topic: Mars |
08/05/12 |
| Curiosity is scheduled to touch down on the martian surface at around 10:30 pm PDT on Sunday, August 5. Landing on Mars is an immense challenge, and in order to get to the surface, Curiosity will be using new technologies, like the "sky crane" system, for the first time. |
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| Curiosity’s Search for Organics |
| Topic: Mars |
08/02/12 |
| Soon the rover Curiosity will land on Mars. By design it won’t involve life-detection, but it was assembled to look for the carbon-based building blocks of Martian life and to explore the possible habitats where life might once have existed. |
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| Can Astronomers Detect Exoplanet Oceans? |
| Topic: Alien Life |
07/12/12 |
| Detecting water on the surface of exoplanets is becoming a high priority for researchers, as surface water is considered a requirement for habitability. New research examines whether or not the “glint” of light from a planet can be interpreted as evidence for surface oceans. |
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| Getting a Feel for the Terrain |
| Topic: Robotics & A.I. |
06/28/12 |
| A team is developing a rover-based computer system that can identify geologically relevant elements in a camera scene. |
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| SETI on the SKA |
| Topic: Alien Life |
06/25/12 |
| Can the Square Kilometer Array – a network of thousands of radio antennas to be based in South Africa and Australia -- be used to hunt for extraterrestrial signals? |
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| Channeling our Ion Past |
| Topic: Origin & Evolution of Life |
06/07/12 |
| To understand how the first cells transported ions across their membranes, researchers are studying simple channels used by fungi to kill off bacteria. |
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| Exploring Mars in the Austrian Alps |
| Topic: Mars |
05/31/12 |
| In the largest ice caves on Earth, spacesuits and remote-controlled planetary rovers were recently tested in a five-day odyssey in the Alps designed to mimic potential future missions on Mars. |
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| Did Ancient Mars Have a Runaway Greenhouse? |
| Topic: Mars |
05/24/12 |
| Cosmic impacts on Mars might have sent temperatures skyrocketing upward on the Red Planet in ancient times, enough to trigger a runaway greenhouse effect. |
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