Reported and Edited by Linda Moulton Howe
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February 14, 2004 Tempe, Arizona - The NASA/JPL rover called Opportunity has been rolling along the light-colored bedrock in the Meridiani Planum taking spectrometer measurements of the rocks and stopping here and there to examine closely the soil through its microscopic imager (MI).
"Such a high percentage of sulfur is unusual and this is what leads some folks to consider the volcanic origin (at the Martian bedrock). There are some minerals that have been identified in the infrared that would suggest the presence of water since they form in water. In particular, if this is a volcanic terrain that we are looking at, the presence of these minerals might suggest this was a hydrothermal area and sulfur is a component of such environments."
- February 11, 2004, Ronald Greeley, Ph.D., Arizona State University
"There is some interesting data from the bedrock!"
- Astrophysicist at JPL
February 10, 2004 Pasadena, California - NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory:
Update on Spirit
Today, NASA/JPL reports that the Spirit rover in Gusev crater on Mars "broke the record for the farthest distance driven in one day on the red planet, traveling 21.2 meters (69.6 feet). Today's distance traveled shattered the Sojourner rover's previous record of 7 meters (23 feet) in one Martian day. Right now, Spirit is driving towards the crater-inside-the-Gusev-crater nicknamed Bonneville."
February 6, 2004 Livermore, California - Back in 1989-1990, I had several phone conversations and a meeting with an electrical engineer named Robert Lazar to talk about his alleged firsthand knowledge of non-terrestrial technology. Bob had previously worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory and from the end of 1988 until March 1989 was doing part time work at a highly classified place called "S-4" built inside the Papoose Mountains near Groom Lake, Area 51, at Nellis AFB north of Las Vegas.
"For the first time in history, two mobile robots are exploring the surface of another planet at the same time."
- January 31, 2004, NASA/JPL
January 31, 2004 Pasadena, California - Early this morning, NASA got the Mars Opportunity lander moving a few days before schedule and out onto the soil of the Meridiani Planum shallow crater it landed in. Controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory received confirmation of the successful drive at 3:01 a.m. Pacific Standard Time via a relay from the Mars Odyssey orbiter and Earth reception by the Deep Space Network. Cheers erupted a minute later when Opportunity sent a picture looking back at the now-empty lander and showing wheel tracks in the Martian soil. Opportunity drove down a reinforced fabric ramp at the front of its lander platform.
"Certainly like the green in the Gusev crater picture or by looking at the development of darker spots toward the South Pole which are tied to seasonal variations, it certainly gives rise to the speculation that there could be algae."
- Michael McKay, European Space Agency
January 31, 2004 Darmstadt, Germany - The European Space Agency's Mars Express Orbiter has been exploring the red planet from 186 miles (300 kilometers) altitude. Its high resolution stereo camera has been sending back extraordinary color images. Some, like the Gusev crater image above, show green areas. Some like the Reull Vallis ancient river channel below show blue and blue-green regions.
"I will attempt no science analysis, because it looks like nothing I've ever seen before. I've got no words for this. I am flabbergasted. I am astonished. I am blown away. Opportunity has touched down in a bizarre alien landscape."
- Steven Squyres, Principal Investigator, Cornell University
January 25, 2004 Pasadena, California - Opportunity, NASA's second rover, landed on Mars five minutes after 9 p.m. in California and after midnight on the East Coast as expected. Opportunity bounced down in its airbag-covered lander on to a smooth plane called Meridiani Planum near the equator half way around Mars from the Gusev crater where the first damaged rover, Spirit, landed on January 3, 2004. Opportunity's mission is to search for signs of water and its landing marks and the soil look even muddier than the Gusev crater's.