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NASA's most advanced Mars rover Curiosity has landed on the Red Planet. The one-ton rover, hanging by ropes from a rocket backpack, touched down onto Mars Sunday to end a 36-week flight and begin a two-year investigation. The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) spacecraft that carried Curiosity succeeded in every step of the most complex landing ever attempted on Mars, including the final severing of the bridle cords and flyaway maneuver of the rocket backpack.

NASA announced today that their next flagship mission, the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover, will not be ready to launch in the October 2009 launch window. Because Mars launch opportunities only occur once every 26 months, any delay beyond October 2009 means that the mission must wait until late in 2011 for its next chance to launch to Mars. The delay will add a further $300 to 400 million to the price tag for the mission, which now stands at $2.2 to 2.3 billion. That represents an approximately 40% cost increase over the$1.63 billion figure given at MSL's August 2006...

Finding could influence choice of landing site for Mars Science Laboratory. Ithaca, New YorkMore than four years after researchers first said they had found methane gas on Mars, a scientist claims that he has "nailed" the controversial detection and identified key sources of the gas.Nili Fossae is a hotspot for martian methane, says Michael Mumma (below).JPL-Caltech/Univ. Arizona/NASA On Earth, methane is mostly biological in origin; on Mars, it could signal microbes living deep underground. The latest work suggests that martian methane is concentrated in both space and time - at a handful of hotspots hundreds of kilometres across, plumes of...