Science

The PI’s Perspective: A Summer’s Work, Far From Home The work is fun, no doubt there; but it never ends on this mission of exploration — particularly in the summer, when we conduct our annual spacecraft checkouts.

The IAU recently approved a proposal from the MESSENGER Science Team to confer names on 16 impact craters on Mercury. The newly named craters were imaged during the mission’s first two flybys of Mercury in January and October last year.

A team of researchers from the CSIC-INTA Astrobiology Centre in Madrid has confirmed that the type of mineralogical composition on the surface of Mars influences the measuring of its temperature.

Venus Express has charted the first map of Venus’s southern hemisphere at infrared wavelengths. The new map hints that our neighbouring world may once have been more Earth-like, with both, a plate tectonics system and an ocean of water.

The outcome of the bilateral meeting was an agreement to create a Mars Exploration Joint Initiative (MEJI) that will provide a framework for the two agencies to define and implement their scientific, programmatic and technological goals at Mars.

According to findings from the Phoenix Mars Lander mission, snow and water-ice clouds play a crucial role in the exchange of water between the atmosphere and surface of Mars, which suggests that Mars is even more like Earth than previously thought.

Favorable chemistry and episodes with thin films of liquid water during ongoing, long-term climate cycles may sometimes make the area where NASA’s Phoenix Mars mission landed last year a favorable environment for microbes.

After being delayed for nine days the first support staff and crew have made it to the NASA Haughton-Mars Project and Mars Society base camp. The base camp is located right next to Haughton Crater on Devon Island in Canada’s high Arctic. Weather in the arctic is always an issue. This year the snow melt was a little latter than usual. Combine that with fog, …

On the heels of the Canadian Space Agency’s recent announcement of a major expansion of its space exploration program comes this new announcement of opportunity. Researchers have until June 28th to submit a letter of intent for their life science experiment. Successful proposals will be flown between 2004 and 2006 and have maximum annual funding of $100,000 for up to three years. Experiments must take …

While Canada’s robot arms do their work in orbit, Canadian researchers on the ground are developing cutting edge deep space life support systems. The University of Guelph in Ontario has opened a brand new Controlled Environment Systems (CES) research facility that will eventually contain 14 hypobaric (reduced pressure) chambers. The chambers – the first of which was opened last week – will allow researchers to …