Space News Headlines for November 12, 2004

Mars Rovers Get Ready to Move On

Opportunity, one of two NASA robotic Mars rover has spent the last four months exploraing a crater, but has now reached terrain that appears too treacherous to tread. MSNBC reports that it will now back out of this crater and move on to other areas.

"Sitting at an incline inside Endurance Crater in Meridiani Planum, Opportunity has apparently reached in impasse. To the rover's right, slopes are too steep to pass, while on the left the terrain appears to contain sandy patches where Opportunity could bog down.

"A move in either direction could prove mission-ending for a rover that has kept going well beyond its originally planned 90-day mission. With other science targets still remaining outside Endurance, flight controllers have decided to leave the crater after looking - but not touching - an area dubbed "Burns Cliff," a 33-foot-high (10-meter-high) scarp that has tantalized researchers since Opportunity first entered the crater on June 8."

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Telescope Peeks Into Secret Stellar Cradles

MSNBC also reports that NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has turned its infrared eyes to the beginnings of both stars and planets and has uncovered the "warm glow from a possible stellar infant and an icy disk where planets may one day form."

"These processes are hidden behind clouds of dust," said Neal Evans of the University of Texas. "But longer-wavelength infrared light penetrates the dust better."

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Mars Moon Emerges From the Dark


The Red Planet's moon, Phobos, has begun revealing itself to the ESA's Mars Express. The BBC reports the spacecraft recently has taken its most detailed image yet of Phobos, from a distance of about 200km (124 miles).

"Scientists hope to explain the origin of a network of grooves that extend from the equator to the north pole. hobos is slowly falling down to Mars and is expected to crash into the planet in the next few million years."

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Firms Look to Shuttle Successor

Boeing and Northrop Grumman are in discussions to form a team that will compete to construct spacecraft able to take humans to the Moon, Mars and possibly beyond. According to the BBC NEWS, they plan to bid to build Nasa's Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV).

The CEV was announced by President Bush in his "[link url=http://space.about.com/cs/nasanews/a/bushspaceplan.htm]Moon to Mars[/link]" speech this year.

"It is likely to be based on the module and capsule concept used by the US space agency Apollo and Gemini missions."

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NASA Experimental 'Scramjet' Prepares for Mach 10 Attempt

Finally, USATODAY reports on the future of hypersonic flight. They say that next week a tiny unmanned NASA jet will try to travel 10 times the speed of sound.

"If successful, NASA's third and last X-43A "scramjet" will fly at 7,000 mph for 10 or 11 seconds high over the Pacific Ocean off California and then, like the two other X-43As, plunge into a watery grave."