03.11.09:A Mars Rock in 3-D!

Break out those cheesy 3-D glasses… a few weeks back we reported on a new meteorite discovered on the surface of Mars. Opportunity spotted the out-of-place stone on July 18th of this year, and NASA engineers rerouted the rover for a closer look. Named Block Island, it isn’t the first extraterrestrial rock discovered on Mars, [...]

20.10.09: Free Spirit!

The Mars spirit rover is in dire need of a tow truck. Like a recent episode of The Big Bang Theory, the tiny rover has found itself stuck since earlier this year,  about two miles southeast of its original Home-plate landing site. (Was Wollowitz to blame?) Bouncing to rest in January 2004, the twin rovers [...]

06.10.09: A Martian Meteorite: The Sequel?

Less than two months after its first record breaking find, NASA’s Mars rover Opportunity has discovered what appears to be a second true rarity; another meteorite on Mars. Far surpassing their original 3 month primary missions, the twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity have exceeded all expectations and are now in their fifth year of operations [...]

February 2009: News & Notes.

Martian Methane: The Movie.
Martian Methane: Of course, the hot topic everyone’s talking about in the past month was the detection of methane on Mars. First detected in 2003 by ground based observers, scientists at the Goddard Space Center have reanalyzed this tantalizing data and located possible source regions; areas that are also thought to have [...]

January 2009: News & Notes.

(What we didn’t get for Xmas… the Largon Hadron Collider. (Credit: CERN/LHC Consortium)
Resuming the LHC: The Large Hadron Collider is set to resume start up tests early in the spring of 2009. This will come after its winter maintenance cycle, as well as investigation into a helium leak believed to have been caused [...]