A small science probe blazed through the salmon-colored skies of Mars on Sunday, touching down on a frozen desert at the planet’s north pole to search for water and assess conditions for sustaining life, Nasa officials said. It marked the first time that a spacecraft had successfully landed at one of the planet’s polar regions.
A United States space projectile early on Monday collided head-on with a comet hurtling through the solar system as part of an experiment to study its core. ”That’s awesome! That’s awesome!” shouted flight control officials after the impact was confirmed. ”We hit just exactly where we wanted to.”
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/ 27 January 2004
With their clocks set to follow the slightly longer Martian day, scientists back on Earth analysing images from two Nasa probes now on the Red Planet keep a tight schedule that includes several daily meetings.
The first of two Nasa rovers is safely on its way to Mars, but the riskiest part of its seven-month journey to the Red Planet lies ahead, as some humiliating failures have shown all too well.
Nasa lost contact with a -million spacecraft when the robotic probe was to have left Earth’s orbit on a years-long journey to explore several comets.