NASA invites public to vote for a name for its Mars rover

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.

July 21st, 2009 New NASA boss: Astronauts on Mars in his lifetimeWASHINGTON — NASA's new boss said Tuesday he will be "incredibly disappointed" if people aren't on Mars — or venturing somewhere beyond it — in his lifetime. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden Jr., who's 62, said his ultimate goal isn't just Mars — it's anywhere far from Earth.

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.

June 26th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A new research has indicated that living microorganisms and the food that sustained them can be detected in shallow ice layers, which will help find life on icy worlds. The research is a part of the Project SLIce, which means, Signatures of Life in Ice.

June 9th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Scientists have developed a new cleaning protocol for space hardware, such as the scoops of Mars rovers, which could be used on future "Search for Life" missions on other planets. The new protocol was developed as part of a project to investigate life that exists in extreme Arctic environments, which are the closest analogue we have on Earth to the surface of Mars.

May 28th, 2009 WASHINGTON - NASA has selected 'Curiosity', the name given by a sixth-grade student from Kansas, US, for its Mars Science Laboratory rover, scheduled for launch in 2011. Twelve-year-old Clara Ma from the Sunflower Elementary school in Lenexa submitted the winning entry, "Curiosity." As her prize, Ma wins a trip to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, where she will be invited to sign her name directly onto the rover as it is being assembled.

May 12th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Reports indicate that the five wheels that still rotate on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit have been slipping severely in soft soil during recent attempts to drive, sinking the wheels about halfway into the ground on the Red Planet. The rover team of engineers and scientists has suspended driving Spirit temporarily while studying the ground around the rover and planning simulation tests of driving options with a test rover at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.

May 8th, 2009 WASHINGTON - NASA has released an interactive, 3-D photographic collection of internal and external views of the International Space Station (ISS) and a model of the next Mars rover. NASA and Microsoft's Virtual Earth team developed the online experience with hundreds of photographs and Microsoft's photo imaging technology called Photosynth.

April 25th, 2009 WASHINGTON - For the first time since April 8, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit went on a drive on April 23. The drive took Spirit about 1.7 meters (5.6 feet) toward destinationsbout 150 meters (about 500 feet) away.

April 17th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Scientists at Arizona State University's Mars Space Flight Facility are using the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter to monitor a new dust storm that has erupted on the Red Planet. The dust storm began in mid-March 2009, in the large Southern Hemisphere impact basin named Hellas.

April 14th, 2009 WASHINGTON - The team operating NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit has determined that barring computer reboots, the vehicle is doing fine. The researchers are studying are diagnosing why the rover apparently rebooted its computer at least twice over the April 11-12 weekend.

March 20th, 2009 WASHINGTON - The panoramic camera on NASA's Mars rover Opportunity has caught a first glimpse on the horizon of the uplifted rim of the big crater that has been Opportunity's long-term destination for six months. Opportunity's twin, Spirit, also has a challenging destination, and last week switched to a different route for making progress.

January 15th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A team of NASA scientists has found proof of the existence of methane gas on Mars, raising questions about the possibility of life on the red planet, the US space agency said Thursday. In an article published in the journal Science, researchers said they found seasonal variations in methane in the planet's atmosphere that could be evidence of geological or biological processes.

January 2nd, 2009 WASHINGTON - When the Spirit rover landed on Mars five years ago, no one expected it or its sister rover Opportunity to make it to their first birthdays, let alone their fifth. The rovers had predicted life spans of just 90 days, but instead US space agency NASA this month marks the fifth anniversary of the mission that is still going strong.