Mars, a seething cauldron for 100 million years

August 31st, 2009 PANAJI - India will undertake Mission Mars between 2013 to 2015, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chief G. Madhavan Nair said here Monday.

August 27th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Astronomers have confirmed that an email promising a "Mars spectacular" event on August 27, when the Red Planet will look as large as the full moon, is nothing but a hoax. According to a report in National Geographic News, the anonymous message from an unknown part of the globe says that the red planet "will look as large as the full moon" in the night sky, and that "no one alive today will ever see this again." The claim has been bombarding people's inboxes worldwide every summer for five years.

August 13th, 2009 WASHINGTON - The high-resolution camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has returned a dramatic oblique view of the Martian crater that a rover explored for two years. The new view of Victoria Crater shows layers on steep crater walls, difficult to see from straight overhead, plus wheel tracks left by NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity between September 2005 and August 2007.

August 12th, 2009 LONDON - A committee appointed by the White House to review NASA's aims has put forward the idea to send astronauts on progressively longer space trips to asteroids, in order to prepare them for a landing on Mars. According to a report in New Scientist, committee member Edward Crawley of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said that the first mission would fly by the moon.

August 9th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A team of scientists, using images from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on board NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, have reported direct evidence of lake shorelines in the Shalbatana Vallis in Mars. Scientists generally believe that warm, wet conditions existed on Mars until only about 3.7 billion years ago.

July 20th, 2009 WASHINGTON - It's been decades since they set foot on the moon, but the pioneers of the Apollo programme remain committed to exploring space with the goal of sending a human to Mars. Seven astronauts from the Apollo programme talked with journalists Monday to mark the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the moon.

July 19th, 2009 Aldrin: NASA should work to put people on MarsWASHINGTON — Former Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin says NASA should set its sights on a bigger target in the future: Mars. Aldrin made the comments on the eve of the 40th anniversary of his landing on the moon on the Apollo 11 mission.

July 4th, 2009 LONDON - The NASA astronaut Buzz Aldrin has said that humans should create a settlement on Mars to provide much-needed objectives to the younger generation. Aldrin, the second man to set his foot on the Moon, has claimed that setting up habitation on the surface of the red planet is a "wonderful objective" for humanity.

July 3rd, 2009 WASHINGTON - A new research has determined that many characteristics of Mars are quite similar to planet Earth, including its landscape, history of water, soil and even its weather. The research, by Mark Lemmon, a professor of atmospheric sciences, Texas A and M University, US, points out that last year's Phoenix Mars Lander mission keeps revealing secrets about the planet, answering some questions but raising other big ones.

July 3rd, 2009 WASHINGTON - Parts of Mars resemble places on Earth, including its landscape, history of water, soil and even its weather, says a study. Mark Lemmon, professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University, long involved with Mars missions, says last year's Phoenix Mars Lander mission keeps revealing secrets about the planet, answering some questions but raising other big ones.

June 30th, 2009 LONDON - A new research led by a UK scientist has indicated that Mars had significantly warmer weather in its recent past than previously thought. Dr. Matthew Balme, from The Open University, made the new discovery by studying detailed images of equatorial landforms that formed by melting of ice-rich soils.

June 18th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A University of Colorado (CU) at Boulder research team has discovered the first definitive evidence of shorelines on Mars, an indication of a deep, ancient lake there and a finding with implications for the discovery of past life on the Red Planet. Estimated to be more than 3 billion years old, the lake appears to have covered as much as 80 square miles and was up to 1,500 feet deep, according to CU-Boulder Research Associate Gaetano Di Achille, who led the study.

June 5th, 2009 Mars orbiter enters safe mode after disturbancePASADENA, Calif. — NASA says its powerful Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is in safe mode after being hit by a cosmic ray or solar particle.

May 29th, 2009 NEW DELHI - China's first Mars probe, Yinghuo-1, is expected to be launched in the second half of this year, according to an official of the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology (SAST). The probe had passed test of the research phase, Zhang Weiqiang, deputy secretary of SAST Committee of the Communist Party of China, told the third Shanghai International Aerospace Technology and Equipment Exhibition.

May 28th, 2009 SHANGHAI - China's first Mars probe, Yinghuo-1, is expected to be launched in the second half of this year, an official of the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology (SAST) said Thursday. The probe had passed test of the research phase, Zhang Weiqiang, deputy secretary of SAST, told the third Shanghai International Aerospace Technology and Equipment Exhibition that began here Thursday.