Meanwhile, there have also been concerns over Mars Polar Lander.
Thirteen images were beamed back to Earth, and Dr. Nicholas Thomas of the Max Planck Institute in Germany said Deimos would never be more than a "spot" passing over Mars.
" Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg calls manned missions "an incredible waste of money" and argues that "for the cost of putting a few people on a very limited set of locations on Mars we could have dozens of unmanned, robotic missions roving all over Mars.
The proposals are due April 1 of this year, and the Langley Research Center in partnership with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and with Lockheed Martin, with the Draper Lab and Aurora Flight Sciences, is proposing a robotic airplane to fly over the surface of Mars, about a mile above the surface.
That's a proposed mission that would send a robotic airplane to Mars to fly over the surface looking for the chemical signs of life.
It is in a so-called polar orbit: each turn around Mars takes it over the north and south poles while the planet revolves beneath it.
One could think of many reasons for considering a human base on Mars - such as over-population on Earth - but Darlene Lim is mainly motivated by the thrill of exploration.
Earlier this month, SpaceX CEO and Chief Designer Elon Musk unveiled his plans for Mars: a colony of over 80, 000 people.
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In addition to the myriad letters, fan sites and blogs, a group of Mars fans dispatched a plane towing a "Renew Veronica Mars" banner to fly over the CW offices.
Our mission, as it's planned, is to fly over some of the oldest terrain on Mars, very highly magnetized crustal material that dates back to the beginning of Mars, 4.6 billion years ago.
Once complete, the program is beamed back to Mars, and the cycle starts over.
The second reason we're interested in Mars is we believe that Mars has experienced catastrophic climate change over its history.
The Viking landers took over 7, 000 images of the surface of Mars.
This tiny error proved fatal, because Mars Climate Orbiter was supposed to pass over the planet's surface at an altitude of 140km.
Viking orbiters took over 50, 000 images of the surface of Mars.
But the southern half of Mars has warmed up slowly into spring and then summer over the last six months.
Passing over the landing site early Monday, the space agency's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured a dramatic image of Curiosity plunging toward the surface, dangling from its fully deployed, 51-foot-wide parachute.
The new images -- taken over several years -- reveal the channels which were carved out by flooding over an estimated 500 million year period -- a time when Mars was thought to be cold and arid.
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Many have impacted the Earth over its 4.5 billion-year history --as they have hit the moon, Mars and other planets -- leaving craters behind.
The Mars group has been developing the 1.5 metre (5 ft) long B4 hybrid engine for over three years.
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