So this information changed our thinking about the chances of life developing on the planet and Mars stories from before 1965 would most likely have significant inaccuracies.
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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.
Mr. McCuistion noted that since efforts world-wide to explore Mars planet began in 1960, only 40% of the missions launched from Earth have succeeded.
It has also scanned the surface of the planet using Mola (Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter), which beams an infrared laser pulse towards the surface of the Red Planet 10 times a second.
It's not even a pluton but a real honest to goodness planet-planet, sitting right between Mars and Jupiter.
Liquid water is not something scientists expect to be apparent on Mars because the planet is so cold and dry, Squyres said.
T. and an expert on the Main Asteroid Belt, points out, the belt could have never hosted a planet large enough to claim Mars as a satellite.
And in case you missed the latest robotic resident arriving on Mars you can watch the action replay and view the very first pictures beamed back from the surface of the Red Planet on Nasa's Mars Science Laboratory mission homepage.
Its abundance on Mars suggests that the planet has been cold and dry throughout most of its history.
And, for those space-cadets who still dream of a manned mission to the planet, there is also the Mars radiation environment experiment.
And this could play a crucial role in evaluating the still-controversial evidence for the existence of life on Mars a planet that, in astronomical terms, is a mere stone's throw away.
"The results suggest that water was incorporated during the formation of Mars and that the planet was able to store water in its interior during the planet's differentiation, " Hauri said.
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And the nuclear-winter hypothesis (that the smoke from fires caused by a global nuclear war would blot out the sun's rays and thus cool the earth catastrophically) owes its origin, at least in part, to observations of a planet-wide dust storm on Mars.
At NASA, Hubbard's goals included understanding Mars as a system, looking for potentially habitable environments, examining whether the planet was habitable in the past and preparing to return samples from Mars to Earth.
Before Mars Global Surveyor, red planet researchers relied on Viking data from the 1970s, which yielded much lower resolution images.
Nasa's efforts to locate MPL are continuing with cameras on board the orbiting probe Mars Global Surveyor scanning the planet's surface.
It includes a science lab that will collect mineral samples from the Red Planet, and try to determine if Mars is habitable.
In 1877, when the Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli drew the first detailed map of Mars, he imagined the planet as an earthly paradise.
When Dr Koechlin and his team pointed it at Mars they could distinguish that planet's two tiny moons a task which would require a Newtonian telescope with a mirror at least 30cm across.
Just as Mars -- a desert planet -- gives us insights into global climate change on Earth, the promise awaits for bringing back to life portions of the Red Planet through the application of Earth Science to its similar chemistry, possibly reawakening its life-bearing potential.
Other spacecraft sailed blindly past Mars or burned up in the planet's atmosphere during landing attempts.
The half-billion-dollar Phoenix Mars Lander touched down on the planet Sunday night to begin at least three months of experiments.
Mars Express will map the Red Planet in unprecedented detail - its best images will see objects down to two metres.
This is the kind of subtle detail the scientists are looking for as they build a picture of what conditions were like on early Mars and the possibility that the planet could once have harboured simple lifeforms.
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He has reported as the space vehicle Pathfinder arrived on Mars and beamed live video of the planet's surface back to earth.
Although conclusive evidence for life on Mars (or on any other foreign planet) has yet to turn up, humans are an impatient species.
They've provided scientists with data to back up their theories about whether Mars was once a wetter, warmer planet, one that could have harbored life.
Kepler is searching for Earth-like planets around far-flung stars, and the Mars Science Laboratory will sample the Red Planet's geology looking for the building blocks of life - though it will not explicitly look for life itself.
The Sun enters Scorpio and aspects every slower planet except Pluto, and there's an intense Mars-Jupiter opposition.
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Telescopes and spacecraft have revealed that Mars is a dead, dry, cold planet, of interest only to collectors of pinkish-brown rocks.
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