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Sad news for the Mars Science Lab (MSL) mega-rover, big sister to the little rovers who've been roaming Mars for the past few years. The robot was supposed to launch next year, and start exploring Mars with a lot more scientific equipment (including a laser) than the current rovers, Spirit and Opportunity. It would have arrived just in the nick of time, since no one is sure if Spirit and Opportunity will last another Martian winter. But now word has come down that the MSL launch won't happen until 2011. More »
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Definitely one of the coolest symposia at AAAS was the one this afternoon devoted to the Martian rovers — past, present, and future. On the panel were NASA's Richard Cook, who helped design Spirit and Opportunity as well as the next Martian rover; Steven Squyres, a Cornell geologist who has been working with Spirit and Opportunity to get as many geological samples as he can while the rovers survive; and Andrew Knoll, a Harvard planetologist who has studied the evidence for Martian water extensively (including whether it could support life as we know it). I've got highlights from the panel below, plus a giant gallery of pictures of a life-sized model of the new rover, the Mars Science Lab Rover (MSL), which will be blasting off late next year and landing on the red planet in 2010. More »
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