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Hot Topic
Solar System
Mars
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| Flying a Science Lab to Mars |
| Topic: Mars |
04/13/05 |
| How do you follow a flat-out success like the Mars Exploration Rovers, still cruising Mars after all these months? By thinking "bigger and better." The Mars Science Laboratory, currently scheduled for launch in 2009, will land a rover three times as massive as Spirit or Opportunity and with ten scientific instruments. |
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| Warming Up to a Martian Carcass |
| Topic: Mars |
03/16/05 |
| The detection of methane on Mars has generated a lot of speculation about what could possibly be producing it. Is it coming out of active volcanoes? Maybe the methane results from some geologic or chemical process we don't yet understand. |
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| Mars: The Other Time-of-Flight |
| Topic: Mars |
03/08/05 |
| Recent discoveries on Mars such as methane in the atmosphere, a subterranean ice pack near the equator, and evidence of flowing water in the planet's past brings new speculation to the most frequently asked questions about the Red Planet: Is there, or was there ever life on Mars? |
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| High Voltage Mars |
| Topic: Mars |
02/07/05 |
| Meteorites and comets should have delivered vast amounts of organic chemicals to Mars, yet the Viking mission found no organics in the red soil. A new hypothesis by Sushil Atreya suggests how dust storms may zap away any chances for life on the martian surface. |
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| Clockwork Orange Planet |
| Topic: Mars |
01/24/05 |
| As the MER rovers blow out the candle on their one-year anniversary, they continue to make new discoveries on the Red Planet. How long they'll keep running is an open question, but NASA has several programs in the works for an encore. |
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| Modern Martian Marvels: Volcanoes? |
| Topic: Mars |
12/23/04 |
| The European Mars Express orbiter continues to take overhead and perspective shots of landmarks on the red planet. The remarkable clarity at first glance appears to be a simulation. Scientists have pursued their mapping tour around Olympus Mons, the solar system's largest volcano, as one of the mission's goals. |
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| Jack Frost Hits Mars |
| Topic: Mars |
12/18/04 |
| As the evidence for past martian water becomes stronger, what can be said about the hydrology today on the red planet? Looking for images showing weather on Mars requires some patience, but one may have to look no further than the rovers themselves to see what a cold, martian morning might bring. |
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| Mars Life: Trouble Without the Rubble? |
| Topic: Mars |
12/10/04 |
| The Mars Opportunity site has continued to intrigue mission scientists and astrobiologists who study the prospects for life elsewhere in the universe. Finding evidence of water is a ways from finding evidence of life, but the absence of rocky rubble has contributed uniquely to what has been found so far at Meridiani Planum. |
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| Emoticons Invade Mars |
| Topic: Mars |
10/15/04 |
| The Mars Global Surveyor released the latest glyph image that appears to evoke the kinds of communication in rock formations that has become famous among Mars' watchers on the internet. But there is a serious side to interpreting remote sensing data, and shadow is not always one's ally. |
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| The Other Mars Meteorite |
| Topic: Mars |
09/15/04 |
| The most famous Mars meteorite, the Allen Hills rock with its strange, cylindrical rock segments, may not be the most intriguing. Consider a rock launched from Mars only 700 million years ago called Lafayette. |
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