But that doesn’t mean they’re expecting much. Even though NASA has spent half a year planning how to get the rover out of the loose sand it’s stuck in, every step will be dependent on what happens during the previous one. Right now NASA only has six forward rotations of Spirit’s wheels planned. They anticipate extreme slippage, and will have to re-evaluate the next steps once that first minuscule motion is completed.

If work continues at that pace, it’s easy to see why escape efforts are planned to last until 2010. Even if Spirit can’t get out of the sand trap that swallowed it, there’s still plenty of good the rover can do while stationary. Just know that, whatever happens, we’re all pulling for you little buddy. [Network World via Slashdot]

Islands From Space

Martian Landscapes

[Wired Science and Big Picture]

We’re able to see the lander in the images taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter despite the low-light conditions and the reflective effects of the carbon dioxide frost. The HiRISE team did have to play around with the contrast and angles to get the image we see, but how many pictures pass without some sort of processing anyway.

Photos like this one are intended to help us understand the winter patterns and transitions of Mars better, but all I understand at the moment is need to drink a cup of hot chocolate on behalf of the Phoenix lander. [HiRISE via NASA]

You see, while Opportunity continues to function nominally after nearly six years on planet, its companion Spirit, on the opposite side of the planet, is really showing signs of age.

As we all know, Spirit has been stuck in deep Martian sand for some time now. That hasn’t changed. What has changed is the rover’s memory. It’s going. NASA scientists are calling the issue “amnesia,” and it isn’t the first time this phenomenon has affected the rover.

Basically, what happens during an amnesia event is the rover fails to record any observations—scientific or otherwise—in its flash memory during power down time at night. Worse still, the cause is unknown. My uneducated guess is a Martian is playing with a magnet.

The events are a nuisance for now, but could become crippling if they increase in intensity. It’s troubling, yes, but we must remind ourselves these rovers were built for 90-missions. Spirit is currently going on five years, nine months. Even so, get well soon. [MSNBC]

These are Martian dust devils, running over the soil of the Red Planet. Taken by the HiRISE camera on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, they are responsible of marking its surface with strange, capricious shapes. According to NASA:

This portion of a recent high-resolution picture from the HiRISE camera on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows twisting dark trails criss-crossing light coloured terrain on the martian surface. Newly formed trails like these had presented researchers with a tantalising martian mystery but are now known to be the work of miniature wind vortices known to occur on the red planet – martian dust devils. Such spinning columns of rising air heated by the warm surface are also common in dry and desert areas on planet Earth.

In Mars, however, they can be up eight kilometres high. But why do they leave those marks? Easy: The wind picks up the red dust, leaving the dark sand beneath on its place. The Universe, my dear armchair cosmonauts, is a wondrous place. [NASA]

The committee outlines eight options. Three of those involve a “flexible path” to explore someplace other than the moon, eventually heading to a Mars landing far in the future. The flexible path suggests no-landing flights around the moon and Mars.

Landing on the moon and then launching back to Earth would require a lot of fuel because of the moon’s gravity. Hauling fuel from Earth to the moon and then back costs money.

It would take less fuel to land and return from asteroids or comets that swing by Earth or even the Martian moons, Phobos and Deimos, Augustine said.

Eventually, Augustine said NASA could return to the moon, but as a training stepping stone, not a major destination, as the Bush plan envisioned.

Really, we’ve been to the moon. It’s old news. We’re pretty positive there are no aliens there. Any possibility of life in our solar system exists further out, possibly on liquidy moons of the gaseous giants. So why waste time and money on the moon? Let’s go to where the real action is. [USA Today via Dvice]

There are plenty of necessary qualifications to meet including fluency in Russian, background in medicine, various engineering, and for whatever reason you may not be taller than 185cm. Interested? Apply on the ESA website. [ESA via PhysOrg]

Zoom in to enjoy the graphic in HD

Out of 42 missions, only 20 have succeeded. That’s less than 50 per cent chance of survival. And it gets worse: Of those, only eight were actually programmed to land on Mars, which is actually the theoretically difficult part.

While the success rate increased after 1971, I would be very nervous if I were a budding astronaut wanting to go up there — and still, I wish I was that astronaut. Better go in style while trying to reach the glory, than staying down here, slowly turning to dust. [Shnelll via Fastcompany]

Those big oval-shaped tanks store fuel for the test bed’s thrusters, one set of which guide its altitude/landing. For the tests here on Earth, an additional thruster offsets gravity so the others function as they would on the moon.

NASA is developing a flight mission to travel to the lunar poles, but also designing the landers to set down on the moon’s mid-regions. To build-out the program, Marshall partnered with John Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Lab, and the Von Braun centre for Science and Innovation.

Given the recent discovery of water molecules on the moon, I’m thinking they’re gonna keep getting funding. Very cool. [NASA via The Huntsville Times]