New Mars

After another prolonged absence, Ares Express is finally back, and is now being written by Graeme Skinner, a regular contributor to the forums. Graeme has provided a great summary of the popular topics being discussed at New Mars and also enlightens us about how Kepler has helped us go to Mars.

I’m very happy to announced that this issue of Ares Express (and hopefully future issues) was written by Graeme Skinner, a regular contributor to the New Mars forums. Graeme is currently studying with the Open University as an undergraduate, works full time in and around the scenic North of England, and in his spare time an active amateur astronomer.

– Adrian Hon, Editor

Since Ares Express 5, New Mars has seen its membership break through the 1000 mark, its number of posts cleared the 58000 mark, and of course the tenacious rovers Spirit and Opportunity have managed a whopping 640 days between them.

You could say 2004 has been a good year for people with an interest not only in Mars but space in general; two out the three Mars rovers sent have been producing amazing images virtually all year, and if that was not enough they’ve helped show a somewhat damper history for the Martian surface than many had expected. We’ve seen Cassini-Huygens safely reach Saturn and start sending back images that leave anyone with an inkling of interest in space spellbound. And if that was not enough since the last issue of Ares Express the Ansari Xprize was won by SpaceShipOne.

Spirit & Opportunity

Although the number of posts made to the Spirit and Opportunity threads have slowed down of late the two rovers are still (unsurprisingly) a source of interest to the members and visitors to New Mars, with the eight S&O threads are amongst the most viewed subjects in the unmanned probes section. Currently (7th December 04) Spirit is moving towards Machu Picchu in the Columbia Hills. Opportunity is taking the time to take high resolution images of Burns Cliff along with spectrometer observations before leaving Endurance. Despite a problem with the brakes on Spirit, which has been hopefully resolved the main problem for the two rovers at the moment is the position of the Sun for charging the solar panels. Find current mission status at and other information at the current Spirit & Opportunity thread.

On the Forums

The need for a Moon Direct is one of the week’s most active threads in the Human Mission section.

In the Unmanned Probes section Interesting MOC pictures looks to be another of the week’s hot threads with currently 155 posts on the subject, it also contains a great collection of links to keep your desktop images varied for weeks to come! Other Unmanned Probes threads to keep an eye on apart from Spirit & Opportunity is the Cassini-Huygens thread with the descent of Huygens probe to Titan in little over a month the thread could see a distinct rise in activity.

In Planetary Transportation, the hot thread of the week is Running on compressed air? The title says it all really, the thread started off discussing the use of compressed air to power rovers on the Martian surface. In a close second to this thread is Simple Mars vehicle.

In Science and Technology, the ever popular New Discoveries thread is now onto its fourth thread, but the hot thread is still Heliopolis with (153 posts and 1798 views) with all things solar being discussed.

A bet in Free Chat to my knowledge has not yet had a proven winner though its hard to tell :-)

Other Forum News

Since the last issue of AE we have a new collection of moderators in the form of Bill White and Cobra Commander to help keep the forum running smoothly.

And Finally…

A pointless piece of information about Mars. Johannes Kepler (1571 - 1630) used observations of the orbit of Mars to deduce that celestial bodies did not always have to follow a circular orbit, this led him to formulate three laws of planetary motion which are still in use 375 years after his death. In fact you could say thanks to the observation of Mars all those years ago we now have the maths to be able to plan the route to go there!

Filed under: Editorials on December 11th, 2004