[Monday, August 04, 2003] On 27 August, Mars will be at its closest to Earth for almost 60,000 years. On that date, the Red Planet will approach to within 34,646,418 miles (55,758,006 km) -- 145 times the distance of the Moon.

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[Monday, August 04, 2003] NASA today selected Phoenix, an innovative and relatively low cost mission, to study the red planet, as the first Mars Scout mission. The Phoenix lander mission is scheduled for launch in 2007.

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[Tuesday, August 05, 2003] Giant hollow towers of ice formed by steaming volcanic vents on Ross Island, Antarctica are providing clues about where to hunt for life on Mars.

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[Wednesday, August 06, 2003] The first in-flight checkouts of the science instruments and engineering cameras on NASA's twin Spirit and Opportunity spacecraft on their way to Mars have provided an assessment of the instruments' condition after the stressful vibrations of launch.

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[Monday, August 11, 2003] This Mars Global Surveyor Mars Orbiter Camera high resolution image shows part of the boulder-strewn surface of an ejecta deposit from a meteor impact crater in Noachis Terra at 49.7°S, 341.6°W.

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[Tuesday, August 12, 2003] SpaceRef is happy to announce that we have launched a new site called the Space Elevator Reference. To coincide with this occasion we offer you Sir Arthur C. Clarke's seminal paper on the Space Elevator. Enjoy!

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[Wednesday, August 13, 2003] Two weeks after the last humans departed from NASA Haughton Mars Project Base Camp on Devon Island, the Arthur Clarke Mars Greenhouse continues to operate with lettuce plants growing inside. Its operations are monitored and controlled via satellite.

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[Monday, August 18, 2003] The two webcam images shown above demonstrate the rate at which the lettuce crop is growing. Taken just 5 days apart, all plants show a signficant increase in size.

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[Monday, August 18, 2003] NASA's Hubble Space Telescope will make observations of the planet Mars on Aug. 26-27, when Earth and Mars will be closer together than they have been in the last 60,000 years.

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[Wednesday, August 20, 2003] The public has an unprecedented opportunity to suggest places on Mars that should be photographed from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft. Spacecraft operators are ready to take suggestions online for new places for images.

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[Thursday, August 21, 2003] The discovery of water-related carbonate minerals potentially contradicts what scientists had hoped to prove: the past existence of large bodies of liquid water on Mars, such as oceans and seas.

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[Friday, August 22, 2003] August 27 marks the closest that Mars and Earth have been since nearly 60,000 years ago, when the Neanderthals lived! Mars won't be this close again until 2287.

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[Monday, August 25, 2003] On 27 August 2003, Mars is less than 56 million kilometers away -- approaching closer to our planet than it has done in over 60,000 years. About the same time as this closest approach, Mars Express passes the halfway mark of its journey.

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[Wednesday, August 27, 2003] NASA's Hubble Space Telescope took this close-up of the red planet Mars when it was just 34,648,840 miles (55,760,220 km) away. The picture was taken just 11 hours before the planet made its closest approach to Earth in 60,000 years.

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[Wednesday, August 27, 2003] This image was made from a series of exposures taken between 5:35 a.m. and 6:20 a.m. EDT Aug. 27 with Hubble's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2. In this picture, the red planet is 34,647,420 miles (55,757,930 km) from Earth.

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[Thursday, August 28, 2003] As Mars makes its closest approach in almost 60,000 years, two Australian astronomers have used the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) in Hawaii to look for signs that the planet once had liquid water -- and so may have hosted life.

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[Thursday, August 28, 2003] First launched on August 28, 1996, the popular educational web site now contains more than 300 summaries and descriptions of documents from the history of planning for moon and Mars voyages.

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