The orbiting satelitte that sends images from the rovers back to earth went down briefly Monday. The stoppage was due to a reboot caused by a software glitch. The Rovers are continuing their descent into Victoria Crater.

People from NASA and UNAM University in Mexico are studying the feasibility of growing trees on Mars. Growing trees on Mars is currently considered one of the first steps towards terraforming the planet. By pumping a lot of heavy gases onto the planet, such as methane and nitrous oxide, it might be possible to heat the surface of Mars to around 41 °s; F. Certain tree species in Mexico are known to grow at that temperature on a mountain called Pico de Orizaba. Trees are considered to be the 'engine of the biosphere'. Once they start growing, it is believe that the process of terraforming will begin to take care of itself.

Lowell Wood, a physicist and recent retiree of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and a long-time visiting fellow of the Hoover Institution, presented his 'Mars Manifesto' at the Aspen Institute flight school last week. Mr Wood believes that there is a 50/50 probability that humanity could terraform Mars within the next century. Given enough selective pressure in our natural earth bound environment humanity may elect to pursue this option.

Wood said that Mars currently is "stuck" in a semi-permanent "thermal depression." But there is a multiplicity of design solutions, he foresees, such as engineering an artificial greenhouse effect at the planet that warms the world and makes it "a more preferred planet."

Infosthetics put up a little post about the 'Mars and Beyond' Mars space colonization documentary from Disney circa 1957. There are 6 videos in the series.

The remaining 5 videos are in the full text of this post.

The Mars Spirit Rover has been investigating the Gusev Crater on Mars. It recently found that the crater is 'unusually rich' in silica deposits. This concentration of silica is though to only form under the presence of water. Ergo, there must have been a great deal of surface water on Mars at some point. I think this contradicts a theory from earlier this year that Mars' water has always been under the surface - although I don't have the time to look it up this morning. I had to get a job last week, following the near collapse of my auto accessories business. You'll probably find some great deals on my stuff through Amazon, too (search by merchant name).

The Phoenix probe has been delivered to NASA by Lockheed Martin. The Phoenix probe is the next generation of scientific probe scheduled to study Mars. This particular Martian mission is dedicated to looking for, and possibly testing, water under the surface of the planet. The probe is set for launch in August.

The European Space Agency (ESA) will be conducting a 500 day isolation experiment to test the psychological effects of a manned mission to Mars. 6 people will sit and live in a space about 2,150 sq ft. for 500 days without outside interaction. The experiment is expected to take place in the spring of 2008. They will be looking for some information on the following, the influence of confinement on sleep, mood and mental health, and the effect of differences in personality, cultural background and motivation. But also on the medical side — physiological adaptation to an isolated envi

The Russians and Chinese have signed an agreement to launch a joint research project to Mars. The mission, planned for 2009 will feature a Russian rocket, called 'Phobos Explorer', carrying a Chinese satellite. The satelitte will detach from the rocket once it enters Martian orbit.

A new view of the geological history of Mars claims that processes currently active on Mars have been working for a long time. Water was recently seen spouting from under the planet's surface, only to quickly evaporate. This article claims that this process has been on going in the planet's history and accounts for many of the rock formations seen on the surface of Mars.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has sent back some images from the HiRISE [the High Resolution Science Experiment] camera that shows strong evidence of sedimentary rock formation on the planets surface. Sedimentary rock formation is a process that requires water (or some liquid) to erode rocks and cement them back together in a different mineral conglomeration. This stands as further evidence that some liquid (probably water) once flowed on the surface of Mars.

The uncertainty over the type of liquid gives me an interesting idea, however. Is it possible that different types of liquid, other than water, flowing over the surface of a planet can lead to different types of mineral deposits? For example, on earth clay and sandstone are sedimentary deposits, classified as Clastic, that do not involve organic matter in their formation. If a liquid other than water is used to break down rock and distribute the soil particles into a primarily homogeneous mixture, will the sedimentary deposits be significantly different from those of earth?

Questions and Prognostication aside, here is an image of the sedimentary rock formations on Mars (however NASA does not use the term sedimentary to describe these formations, I may be incorrect in my assumptions).

Before the Mars Global Surveyor was lost, it took captured some images of the nighttime cloud cover on Mars. These nighttime clouds have the effect of raising the surface temperature up to 35° F above areas of the surface that are not covered by clouds at night. Nighttime cloud cover on Mars is up to 5 times thicker than daytime cover, and flies very low against the planets surface, "like fog".

The clouds on Mars very similar to the cirrus clouds on earth, except they can be found as high as 62 miles above the planets surface.

There isn't much happening in the world of space travel today. Most of the news is just re-hashing old stories. None-the-less here's a quick run down of the more interesting stories of the day.

There is more blow back from the Chinese Anti-Satellite (ASAT) test from mid-January. MSNBC once again refers to the satellite as having been blown up by a ballistics missile. Early reports indicated a laser weapon. I would really like to know which is true.

People have high expectations of the building capabilities of the private space tourism industry. This article just runs down some of the more interesting players in the game and how the organizations are bureaucratizing themselves for the launch of private space travel. The Personal Spaceflight Federation, an industry association of companies involved in private space travel, is setting up to work with the FAA to develop manageable policies for people in space.

When I was a kid, people pointed to Mars and said -- "That's what will happen if we don't take care of the Earth's atmosphere. It will burn up and blow away from the planet." I suppose the idea came from a short story, the plot of which was the discovery of ancient civilization on Mars and their dying message about the destruction of their planet's ecology - a discovery made a little too late to save humanity from certain doom.

Wouldn't it be interesting if science discovers that Mars' atmosphere never blew away into space? MSNBC space reports that researchers using data from the European Space Agency believe that the Martian atmosphere may be under the surface of the planet.

Scientists from NASA have said that first attempts to find life on Mars may have been unsuccessful because they were looking for water based life. A new project, Phoenix, scheduled to launch later this year will examine the possibility of hydrogen peroxide based life forms on Mars.

I like this quote, '"Logical consistency is nice, but it's not enough anymore," McKay said.'

New software uploaded to mars. Really, I just think this is spiffy. The Mars Rovers had a software push to improve their ability to navigate terrain on their own.