Extensive radar mapping of the middle-latitude region of northern Mars shows that thick masses of buried ice are quite common beneath protective coverings of rubble.
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NASA's newest Mars orbiter, completing its fourth year at the Red Planet next week, has just passed a data-volume milestone unimaginable a generation ago and still difficult to fathom: 100 terabits.
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NASA will highlight the educational activities planned on the next space shuttle mission during a news briefing at 12 p.m. CDT, Tuesday, March 9.
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Mars Express encountered Phobos March 3, smoothly skimming past at just 67 km, the closest any artificial object has ever approached Mars' enigmatic moon. The data collected could help unlock the origin of not just Phobos but other "second generation" moons.
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Remember the people who said the moon landing was a hoax?
A New Port Richey company hopes to create a simulated trip to Mars that everyone will know is fake but will appear as realistic as possible.
"This is not Disney World or Universal Studios," said Mark Homnick, 52, one of the managers of NewSpace Center LLC.
The company has submitted site plans for a 75-acre lot in Titusville on Florida's Space Coast to build Interspace, a space-themed entertainment and research facility that would include the simulated Martian environment. The men estimated the project will cost about $30-million and said their plans began in 2005. Homnick and his vice president, Joseph Palaia, run the company and its parent,
4Frontiers, out of Homnick's waterfront stilt home.
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Vast glaciers of ice are common on Mars, but you have to dig below the surface to find them, new radar views from a NASA spacecraft show.
These hidden deposits of buried Martian ice were first confirmed two years ago, but recent scans of the red planet by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter are revealing new clues about how the ice may have gotten there.
Scientists think the Mars glaciers may have been left as remnants when regional ice sheets retreated.
"The hypothesis is the whole area was covered with an ice sheet during a different climate period, and when the climate dried out, these deposits remained only where they had been covered by a layer of debris protecting the ice from the atmosphere," said Jeffrey Plaut of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
The ice extends for hundreds of miles, or kilometers, in a mid-latitude region of Mars called Deuteronilus Mensae.
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The European Mars Express (Mex) probe has made its closest flyby of the Martian moon Phobos, passing just 67km (42 miles) from its surface.
No manmade object has ever been so near to the natural satellite.
The approach is one of a series being made by Mex as it seeks to understand the origin of the moon.
Previous flybys have indicated that Phobos has an extremely low density, suggesting that its surface probably hides many large interior voids.
Scientists suspect the moon is simply a collection of planetary rubble that coalesced around the Red Planet sometime after its formation.
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