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Either some little Martians came by and gave the Opportunity rover a quick once-over cleaning, or a recent gust of wind blew layers of dust off her solar panels. The image above (supplied by our favorite photo- whiz Stu Atkinson), shows Oppy's solar panels on sol 2274 and 2299 (approximately June 18 and July 12 here on Earth) with a marked difference in the amount of dust on the panels. Yesterday, the Twitter account for the rovers, @marsrovers Tweeted: "Love those Martian dust busters! A recent wind gust cleaned Oppy’s solar panels giving her a little power boost for the...

The team operating NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has chosen southeast as the direction for the rover's next extended journey, toward a crater more than 20 times wider than "Victoria Crater." Image credit: NASA/JPL/ASU Click here to enlarge image (PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Mars Rover Opportunity is setting its sights on a crater more than 20 times larger than its home for the past two years. To reach the crater the rover team calls Endeavour, Opportunity would need to drive approximately 7 miles to the southeast, matching the total distance it has traveled since landing on Mars in early 2004....

LOS ANGELES - They're old and dirty, but NASA's Mars rovers are back in the exploration business after enduring a lengthy Red Planet dust bowl that blocked most of the sunlight they need for power. With skies gradually brightening, the solar-powered rovers Spirit and Opportunity recently resumed driving and other operations that had been suspended during the dust storm. "The rovers are in good health and in good shape," said John Callas, the rover project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. "Things have improved from the more dire conditions that were existing previously due to the dust storm...

Two 1970s-era Martian rovers may have discovered microbes but killed them by accident, U.S. and German researchers said. Two scientists said the failure of NASA`s Viking probes to find life on Mars could have been based on how life was defined, the Seattle Post Intelligencer reported Monday. Life was defined as being based on water in the mid 1970s. 'It`s a plausible hypothesis that explains the Viking results quite well,' said Dirk Schulze-Makuch, an astrobiologist at Washington State University at Pullman, Wash. He and his German colleague, Joop Houtkooper of Justus Liebig University presented this theory during the American Astronomical...

Far outliving NASA's expectations, Mars rovers still rolling across the red planet. Their 90-day warranties expired long ago. But NASA's six-wheeled Martian rovers still are going strong. After a bleak winter on the fourth rock from the sun, Spirit and Opportunity are rolling again. Three years ago, when the first of the two rovers bounced to a landing in Mars' Gusev Crater, scientists hoped one of them might last long enough to transmit a few hundred pictures from the surface and help them decide where the arid planet's water went. Few dared dream that, come Wednesday, NASA would be celebrating...

NASA's twin Mars rovers, nearing the third anniversary of their landings, are getting smarter as they get older. The unexpected longevity of Spirit and Opportunity is giving the space agency a chance to field-test on Mars some new capabilities useful both to these missions and future rovers. Spirit will begin its fourth year on Mars on Jan. 3 (PST); Opportunity on Jan. 24. In addition to their continuing scientific observations, they are now testing four new skills included in revised flight software uploaded to their onboard computers. One of the new capabilities enables spacecraft to examine images and recognize certain...

A new generation of robots will be able to take more risks exploring other worlds by changing their shape to suit the terrain. An innovative rover robot designed to explore planets and moons is undergoing final assembly this week in a lab at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. The robot may also be useful in hazardous environments on Earth, its creators say. Instead of driving, walking, or rolling around like other vehicles designed to traverse distant, rugged landscapes, the new rover changes its shape and topples along, veering a bit from side to side as it moves ahead. "We call...

One of the Mars rover Spirit's wheels has stopped working and the solar-powered robot must use its five other wheels to drag itself up a slope to catch enough sunshine to keep operating in the descending Martian winter, NASA said Friday. The right front wheel previously had an episode of balkiness but this week the motor that turns the wheel stopped working, the space agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a statement. "It is not drawing any current at all," Jacob Matijevic, rover engineering team chief, said in the statement. Spirit and its twin, Opportunity, landed on opposite sides of...

When the Mars rovers blasted into space to begin a 60-million mile journey to the Red Planet, Linux was there to help NASA get them off the ground. In fact, some form of Linux has been present at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., for years, assisting researchers with projects that range from unmanned space flight to deep space exploration. Even more amazing perhaps than multimillion-mile journeys through space is that on many of the desktops within the lab, Linux is the preferred operating system. At the JPL, it is common to see Red Hat Inc., SuSE...

SAN FRANCISCO - Nearly two years after NASA's twin rovers parachuted to Mars, a Jekyll-and-Hyde picture is emerging about the planet's past and whether it could have supported life. Both Spirit and Opportunity uncovered geologic evidence of a wet past, a sign that ancient Mars may have been hospitable to life. But new findings reveal the Red Planet was also once such a hostile place that the environment may have prevented life from developing. "For much of its history, it was a very forbidding place," said mission principal investigator Steven Squyres of Cornell University. Scientists stressed that the rovers were...

A mixed (and beautiful) bag this week. If you go to the articles linked above the pictures, you can access a bigger (in the case of Katmai, much bigger) image. Bungle Bungle Range Katmai National Park and Preserve, Alaska For fun, two historical pictures of Novarupta and the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes soon after the eruption: AND finally, go to this Space Daily article to see a large version of the view that the Mars Rover Spirit had yesterday: Robot from Earth Climbs Mountain on Mars

PASADENA, Calif. - The Mars rover Opportunity has freed itself after nearly five weeks of being mired in a sandy dune, NASA confirmed Saturday. Engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the mission, cheered when images beamed back to Earth Saturday morning showed the wheels of the robotic explorer were free, project manager Jim Erickson said. Some engineers planned to celebrate with a barbecue. "I do plan on bringing a few bottles of champagne," Erickson said. "We've got a working rover on Mars that cost $400 million to build and ... keep working," he added. "I'd like to wear...

LONDON - An unexplained phenomenon akin to a space-borne car wash has boosted the performance of one of the two U.S. rovers probing the surface of Mars, New Scientist magazine said on Tuesday.

PASADENA, Calif. - The Mars rover Spirit found a mineral linked to water during its exploration of the Red Planet, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said Monday. Scientists identified the mineral goethite in bedrock studied in the West Spur area of the Columbia Hills. Spirit and its twin, Opportunity, were sent to Mars to look for geologic evidence of a watery past. Both rovers, especially Opportunity, have found such evidence in their nearly year-long treks over the martian surface, but the goethite find is particularly important, a mission scientist said in a JPL statement. "Goethite, like the jarosite that Opportunity found...

Winter on Mars is a cruel season. Nights are long. The sun is a shrunken orb, appearing half its size from Earth. With temperatures plunging to a heart-stopping minus 175 degrees, there is little relief from the alien chill. What lies ahead is even worse: dust storm season, when howling, planet-wide siroccos can claw at the surface and choke the atmosphere. NASA's twin rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, have been operating in this brutal environment since they landed on Mars in January. And it shows. Solar panels are covered with dust, cutting power by a quarter. Spirit's right front wheel turned...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - The twin Mars rovers, one suffering from a balky wheel, have found a wonderland of weird rocks and enticing dunes along with more evidence that the Red Planet once had water, NASA scientists said Wednesday. The robotic vehicles landed in January and first found signs in March that Mars had water eons ago. The Spirit rover has now rolled nearly two miles across the plains of its Gusev Crater landing site and into an area dubbed the Columbia Hills. Perched about 30 feet above a plain, it recently found indications that water had altered an outcropping...

PASADENA, Calif. - Both of NASA (news - web sites)'s aging Mars rovers have been experiencing problems but continue to explore opposite sides of the Red Planet, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory said Wednesday. A semiconductor component aboard the Spirit rover did not power up while commands were being executed on Aug. 1, affecting the ability to use its three spectrometer instruments. Engineers believe the problem likely involves the timing of instruction signals reaching the component, called a gate array, within microseconds of each other. If that is confirmed, the likely solution would be to insert a delay between the signals,...

Mineral In Mars 'Berries' Adds To Water Story CAPTION This microscopic image, taken at the outcrop region dubbed "Berry Bowl" near the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity's landing site, shows the sphere-like grains or "blueberries" that fill Berry Bowl. Of particular interest is the blueberry triplet, which indicates that these geologic features grew in pre-existing wet sediments. Other sphere-like grains that form in the air, such as impact spherules or ejected volcanic material called lapilli, are unlikely to fuse along a line and form triplets. This image was taken by the rover's microscopic imager on the 46th martian day, or sol,...

LOS ANGELES - The Mars rovers moved toward new rocks to drill on Saturday, a day after the Spirit rover found geological evidence that the dusty Red Planet had a wet past. The Opportunity rover prepared for another drilling job as Spirit — positioned halfway around the planet — rolled slowly toward the rim of a crater called "Bonneville." The six-wheeled Spirit moved 94 feet northeast toward the crater after snapping the final photographs that scientists will use to assemble a full-circle, full-color panorama of the region dubbed "Middle Ground." Meanwhile, Opportunity used its tool-laden robotic arm to inspect a...