While the walls of the Inspiration Mars spacecraft will initially be lined with water-filled bags to guard against cosmic rays, their contents will be gradually replaced with er, byproduct that will be dehydrated through the bag (possibly using polyethylene) to reclaim and purify water for drinking.
Curiosity has "ears" to hear commands relayed from NASA's Deep Space Network via the Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance spacecraft orbiting Mars.
Some are asking why the MPL did not bounce onto the surface like the highly successful Mars Pathfinder spacecraft of two years ago.
The instruments on board Venus Express had been developed as back-ups for either Esa's Mars Express spacecraft or Esa's comet-chaser mission, Rosetta, due for launch in January.
The Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft delivered Curiosity to its target area on Mars at 10:31:45 p.m.
ENGADGET: NASA's Curiosity rover receives long-distance OTA update, 'brain transplant' on Mars
Images taken by the orbiting NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft enabled scientists to detect changes in the walls of two craters in the southern hemisphere of Mars, apparently caused by the downhill flow of water in the past few years.
The Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on November 26, 2011.
This software for Mars surface operations was uploaded to the rover's memory during the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft's flight from Earth.
ENGADGET: NASA's Curiosity rover receives long-distance OTA update, 'brain transplant' on Mars
The elevation measurements were collected by the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA), an instrument aboard NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, during the spring and summer of 1998.
This means that astronauts might be forced to attempt a landing on Mars even if their spacecraft became crippled in an accident on the way to Mars.
Last summer, when I first met Prof Siegert, I was too polite to remind him of what had happened to another British science project, the Beagle 2 mission to Mars, the spacecraft named after the ship that had carried Charles Darwin.
On December 3rd 1999, a spacecraft called Mars Polar Lander (MPL) was supposed to touch down near the red planet's southern pole.
Getting a spacecraft to Mars is an amazing technological feat.
When the two spacecraft arrived at Mars, in the winter of 2004, their landers dropped down on parachutes, then dropped the rovers like beach balls onto the surface.
Other spacecraft sailed blindly past Mars or burned up in the planet's atmosphere during landing attempts.
Telescopes and spacecraft have revealed that Mars is a dead, dry, cold planet, of interest only to collectors of pinkish-brown rocks.
The image from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter represents the first time a Mars landing has been captured by another spacecraft.
Evidence from the spacecraft NASA has sent to Mars so far suggests that the "warm and wet" period on Mars lasted for the first billion years of the planet's history.
That would provide the additional thrust necessary to put the spacecraft into a trajectory to reach Mars.
The gravitational field around Mars would have a slingshot effect on a spacecraft, hurling it back toward earth with additional velocity.
Mars Express hopes to answer that question with two spacecraft that will work in tandem.
"We will get a perspective that no one has seen before, of a spacecraft doing its final descent onto the Mars surface, " said deputy project scientist Ashwin Vasavada.
The company is developing a heavy-lift rocket with twice the cargo capability of the space shuttle, and also dreams of building a spacecraft that could carry a crew to Mars.
Like surfers who have been waiting for the big wave, the spacecraft are riding to the red planet as Mars and Earth make their nearest pass to each other since prehistoric times.
They are busy flying the Cassini spacecraft around Saturn and building the next generation of Mars Rovers.
Japan got in on the Mars action in 1998 with the Nozomi orbiter, but the spacecraft failed to communicate.
That looks a fair summary of the state of the flotilla of spacecraft that sailed boldly forth from Earth last summer to study Mars.
ECONOMIST: The current crop of Mars missions has got off to a bad start
The mission is also notable because China's first Mars satellite, Yinghuo-1, has been launched piggy-back on the main Russian spacecraft.
Before Curiosity, humans have landed spacecraft on the equivalent of parking lots -- relatively safe, flat places on Mars, he said.
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