* Astronomy

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RE: Mars Science Laboratory mission

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NASA will post online nine names that are finalists for the agency's Mars Science Laboratory mission and invite the public to vote for its favourite. The non-binding poll to help NASA select a name opens online Monday, March 23, and will accept votes through March 29.
More than 9,000 students in kindergarten through 12th grades submitted essays proposing names for the rover in a nationwide contest that ended Jan. 25. Entries came from all 50 states, Puerto Rico and the families of American service personnel overseas. NASA will select the winning name, based on a student's essay and the public poll, and announce the name in April.

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In a "clean room" in Building 150 of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is something that looks very much like a flying saucer. It's a capsule containing a huge, brawny Mars rover, a Hummer compared with the Mini Coopers that have previously rolled across the Red Planet.
This is the Mars Science Laboratory, the space agency's next big mission to the most Earth-like planet in the solar system. But it's been a magnet for controversy, and a reminder that the robotic exploration of other worlds is never a snap, especially when engineers decide to get ambitious.

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Mars Science Laboratory will use a radioisotope power system to generate electricity needed to operate the rover and its instruments. Radioisotope electrical power and heating systems enable science missions that require greater longevity, more diverse landing locations or more power or heat than missions limited to solar power systems.
Radioisotope power systems are generators that produce electricity from the natural decay of plutonium-238, which is a non-weapons-grade form of that radioisotope used in power systems for NASA spacecraft. Heat given off by the natural decay of this isotope is converted into electricity, providing constant power during all seasons and through the day and night.

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Life On Mars: The Mars Science Laboratory

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Is Earth unique in the solar system?
The only place where life could have taken hold? Or could such an environment have existed at one point on Mars? Where water and key chemical building blocks could have come together in a way that could support the smallest, most basic forms of life.
The Mars Science Laboratory Rover, NASA's new robotic vehicle for exploring Mars is heading for the Red Planet to find the answer: Did Mars once have an environment capable of supporting life? NASA's next rover will further unravel that mystery.

Blobrana · L

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory will launch two years later than previously planned in the fall of 2011.

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A NASA insider says the space agency is delaying launch of a giant Mars robotic mission.
The Mars Science Laboratory was scheduled to fly next year. But the project has been dogged by cost increases and technical challenges. The launch has been postponed until 2011.
The delay was announced Thursday to mission scientists and engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. That's according to a person who attended the meeting who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because the information has not been made public.

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NASA will hold a briefing at noon EST, Thursday, Dec. 4, about the agency's Mars Science Laboratory, or MSL. The briefing will take place in the James E. Webb Memorial Auditorium at NASA Headquarters, 300 E Street, S.W., Washington.

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NASA is looking for the right stuff, or in this case, the right name for the next Mars rover. NASA, in cooperation with Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures' movie WALL-E from Pixar Animation Studios, will conduct a naming contest for its car-sized Mars Science Laboratory rover that is scheduled for launch in 2009.
The contest begins Tuesday, Nov. 18, and is open to students 5 to 18 years old who attend a U.S. school and are enrolled in the current academic year. To enter the contest, students will submit essays explaining why their suggested name for the rover should be chosen. Essays must be received by Jan. 25, 2009. In March 2009, the public will have an opportunity to rank nine finalist names via the Internet as additional input for judges to consider during the selection process. NASA will announce the winning rover name in April 2009.

Information about the contest is available at http://marsrovername.jpl.nasa.gov

Source

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Methane site ruled out on Mars
Safety considerations have caused engineers planning the next NASA Mars rover to discard the Nili Fossae Trough, a potential landing site, where a scientist has claimed to have detected methane, a gas that on Earth is mostly biological in origin.

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