Planets, Astronomy | featured news

David's time on Earth had come to a temporary end — and he was taking his family with him. As soon as the rover Curiosity dropped onto the Martian surface on Aug. 5, David and hundreds of his fellow scientists and engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory switched from Earth time to Mars time.

NASA's Curiosity rover on Wednesday left its first tracks on Mars, successfully completing a short test drive that showed it was ready to roll on longer treks for science investigations over the next two years.

Curiosity phoned home throughout its daring and unprecedented landing sequence that night, giving its nervous handlers step-by-step status and health updates. The European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter recorded some of this chatter, and now we can hear what Curiosity had to say.

Many skywatchers go through their entire lives without ever seeing the elusive planet of Mercury. Thursday morning, Aug. 16, is one of the rare opportunities when you can catch a glimpse of  it.

India plans to launch a space probe that will orbit Mars, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh confirmed on Wednesday after press reports that the mission was scheduled to begin late next year. The project would mark another step in the country's ambitious space programme, which placed a probe on the moon three years ago and envisages its first manned mission in 2016.

This week's arrival of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity set the stage for a potentially game-changing quest to learn whether the planet most like Earth ever had a shot at developing life, but follow-up missions exist only on drawing boards.

NASA's Curiosity rover has just sent back its first panoramic, color image of Mars' Gale Crater. It’s been on the surface of Mars for less than a week, but already the Curiosity rover is hard at work exploring the surface of Mars. The first part of that exploration, of course, is taking photos to send back to Earth so that the Mars rover team can study the surface. That may not sound like much, but consider this – the camera itself has spent nearly nine months in the cold and vacuum of space. By contrast, most of us get worried about getting our cameras wet even if it’s only sprinkling a little.

The first pictures from the best cameras on NASA's Curiosity rover document a Martian landscape so Earthlike it reminds scientists of home. "The first impression that you get is how Earthlike this seems, looking at that landscape," said Caltech's John Grotzinger, chief scientist for the $2.5 billion mission. "You would really be forgiven for thinking that NASA was trying to pull a fast one on you, and we actually put a rover out in the Mojave Desert and took a picture."

Only 20 people have qualified for the mentally grueling job of driving the fully loaded Curiosity while living essentially sequestered on Mars time. The San Gabriel Mountains rise over a rough patch of sun-baked volcanic boulders, dusty flagstones and earthen slopes.