Wednesday, 22 May, 2013

New pix from Mars show sand dunes on the move. Mars has been dry for 1.5 billion years; could massive erosion be due to wind? Yes, says a new report that tracked dunes with precise new images. Surprise: dunes move as fast on Mars as on Earth!

It’s a boom time for studying Mars, and the perfect time for the be-all, end-all summer vacation. Ride a robot rover. Dune-buggy an unearthly dune field. Even meet-and-greet a real live Martian! All aboard for Mars!

Bush proposes mission to moon and Mars, but how great are the scientific payoffs of this expensive, risky adventure? Would it be smarter – and cheaper – to send robots?

An international team of scientists selected the Homestake goldmine to be the world’s deepest underground lab, but the project may sink.

Space shuttle Columbia has crashed, raising questions about research on the space shuttle and the International Space Station. Should we do space science by robots or manned vehicles?

Scientists have found ice on Mars. The frozen water, whose quantity may equal Lake Michigan, is within a meter of the surface.

Mars Polar Orbiter: Lost in space. What else goes wrong in the great blue yonder, and what could we do to prevent more problems?

Okay, maybe it’s not an invasion, but there are robots on Mars, in cars, and down in the deep blue sea. How do robots know what to do?

Mars meteorite gets us thinking about weird forms of life in Earth’s extreme environments: Hot, cold, or high in the atmosphere…