New Mars

Boost for life on Mars hunt - Britain’s medical charity, the Wellcome Trust, will be granting

Filed under: Meta on May 24th, 2002 | Comments Off

A new bill entitled the Space Exploration Act of 2002 has been introduced to set forth a strict timetable for NASA to accelerate reuseable space vehicle development and see a Man on Mars by 2022 (and no, it hasn’t been enacted yet).

Filed under: Meta on May 16th, 2002 | Comments Off

A video of a lecture given by Dr. Roger Gibbs, NASA Mars Odyssey Project Manager, is now online.

Filed under: Meta on May 14th, 2002 | Comments Off

There’s an interesting editorial at Spaceref entitled, Let’s Stop Going in Circles - And Go Somewhere, on the need for NASA to make humans to Mars a definite goal.

Filed under: Meta on May 13th, 2002 | Comments Off

The folks at New Mars won second place in the Kuro5hin haiku contest! See the reaction at our forums.

Filed under: Meta on May 11th, 2002 | Comments Off

Enter the Mars Haiku competition! Only 48 hours left…

Filed under: Meta on May 6th, 2002 | Comments Off

Chlorophyll on Mars? Spectral analysis of images taken by a Mars Pathfinder high-resolution camera has revealed two regions in the soil which the characteristic red-absorption signature of chlorophyll have been found. Chlorophyll is a complex biological molecule used for photosynthesis which, if found, would provide extremely strong evidence for life on Mars.

Filed under: Meta on April 6th, 2002 | Comments Off

New Scientist reports that following on from the success of their Shenzhou III man-rated spacecraft, China is now planning to construct a crewed space station. This is in addition to their long-range plan of putting a man on the Moon by 2010.

Filed under: Meta on April 5th, 2002 | Comments Off

It’s hard enough to get the Mars advocacy community to agree on issues such as sample return missions, but imagine trying to achieve a consensus for a new method of timekeeping and calendar for an entire world! With a day length of 24 hours and 37 minutes, and a year lasting 687 (Earth) days, many solutions for timekeeping have been proposed for Mars but none agreed on. Thomas Gangale and Marilyn Dudley-Rowley look into the issues of Martian Time that will become increasingly important as our exploration of the red planet continues.

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Filed under: Articles on April 4th, 2002 | 25 Comments »

Should aliens ever decide to land on Earth, they’d probably pick Contact to make their first appearance. Held in the Bay Area from March 1st-3rd, the 19th Contact Conference covered an ambitious array of topics including anthropology, astrobiology, planetary science and more, with speakers such as Apollo Astronaut Rusty Schweickart, Frank Drake and Robert Zubrin. Even though no extra-terrestrials were (visibly) in presence, they’d have been more than welcome as long as they could have survived an inevitable barrage of questions from the assembled scientists, authors and artists. New Mars staff writer Joel McKinnon reported from the first day of the conference.

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Filed under: Articles on March 23rd, 2002 | 3 Comments »