[Monday, February 02, 2004] NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit is healthy again, the result of recovery work by mission engineers since the robot developed computer-memory and communications problems 10 days ago.

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[Monday, February 02, 2004] NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe today announced the martian hills, located east of the Spirit Mars Exploration Rover's landing site, would be dedicated to the Space Shuttle Columbia STS-107 crew.

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[Monday, February 02, 2004] Each of NASA's two Mars Exploration Rovers is using its versatile robotic arm for positioning tools at selected targets on the red planet.

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[Wednesday, February 04, 2004] Even if one assumed that the constant growth in earmarks in past years were to remain stable, this could be problematical for NASA inasmuch as it is relying upon reprogramming and a modest budget increase to mount its new exploration agenda.

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[Wednesday, February 04, 2004] "The identification of options to provide human transportation capability to the ISS within its lifetime and with potential for expanding the flight envelope to missions beyond LEO is proposed here."

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[Wednesday, February 04, 2004] NASA's Opportunity has examined its first patch of soil in the small crater where the rover landed on Mars and found strikingly spherical pebbles among the mix of particles there.

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[Thursday, February 05, 2004] NASA's Opportunity rover drove about 3.5 meters (11 feet) late Wednesday toward a rock outcrop in the wall of a small crater on Mars, and mission controllers plan to send it the rest of the way to the outcrop late Thursday.

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[Thursday, February 05, 2004] Canada may soon have its own mission to the red planet SpaceRef has learned. An official announcement from Canadian Space Agency (CSA) President Dr. Marc Garneau for a feasibility study is expected soon.

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[Friday, February 06, 2004] Editor's note: It is one of the funniest things I have seen in a long time - much in the tradition of Roadrunner cartoons. Dan Maas, the creator of the official MER animation, also made this arm spin spoof.

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[Saturday, February 07, 2004] NASA's Spirit has returned to full health and resumed doing things never attempted on Mars before.

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[Saturday, February 07, 2004] The round, shallow depression in this image resulted from history's first grinding of a rock on Mars. The hole is 2.65 millimeters (0.1 inch) deep, exposing fresh interior material of the rock "Adirondack".

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[Monday, February 09, 2004] From its new location at the inner edge of the small crater surrounding it, the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity was able to look out to the plains where its back shell and parachute appear to have landed.

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[Monday, February 09, 2004] NASA's Spirit rover has begun making some of its own driving decisions while its twin, Opportunity, is presenting scientists with decisions to make about studying small spheres embedded in bedrock, like berries in a muffin.

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[Tuesday, February 10, 2004] This map shows the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity and its lander on the surface of Mars. The image was taken by a camera onboard the Mars Global Surveyor orbiter.

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[Tuesday, February 10, 2004] This image was aquired on 14 January 2003 from an altitude of 275 km. It shows a region north of Valles Marineris. The features in the picture indicate erosional processes possibly caused by water.

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[Thursday, February 12, 2004] A pioneering demonstration of communications between NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit and the European Space Agency (ESA) Mars Express orbiter succeeded.

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[Saturday, February 14, 2004] Mimi could have been subjected to pressure either through burial or impact, or may have once been a dune that was cemented into flaky layers, a process that sometimes involves the action of water.

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[Sunday, February 15, 2004] UK Science and Innovation Minister Lord Sainsbury and ESA have announced that an ESA/UK inquiry will be held to identify the potential reasons surrounding the inability to communicate with the British-led Beagle 2 lander.

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[Sunday, February 15, 2004] This hematite abundance index map helps geologists choose hematite-rich locations to visit around Opportunity's landing site. Blue dots equal areas low in hematite and red dots equal areas high in hematite.

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[Monday, February 16, 2004] ESA has released some stunning images of the solar system's largest volcano, Olympus Mons. These images were taken by Mars Express from a height of 273 km during orbit 37 on 21 January 2004.

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[Tuesday, February 17, 2004] NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has scooped a trench with one of its wheels to reveal what is below the surface of a selected patch of soil.

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[Thursday, February 19, 2004] By inspecting the sides and floor of a hole it dug on Mars, Opportunity is finding some things it did not see beforehand, including round pebbles that are shiny and soil so fine-grained that the rover's microscope can't make out individual particles.

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[Saturday, February 21, 2004] The part of the outflow channel seen in this image has most probably been carved by glaciers or gigantic water-related outflows from terrestrial subglacial lakes. The blackish-bluish color is related to sediments.

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[Sunday, February 22, 2004] This 3-D anaglyph was made from several images taken by Spirit's Panoramic Camera on Sol 45. If you'd like to make these 3-D images yourself, NASA has posted some simple how-to instructions.

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[Tuesday, February 24, 2004] Before humans can leave their boot prints on the dusty surface of Mars, many questions have to be answered and many problems solved. One of the most fundamental questions is whether life has ever existed on Mars.

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[Wednesday, February 25, 2004] When humans go to the Moon or Mars, they'll probably take plants with them. NASA-supported researchers are learning how greenhouses work on other planets.

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[Thursday, February 26, 2004] Even before Spirit set "foot" on martian soil, she was returning stunning images of her new surroundings. And, with her roll off the lander, she set out to accomplish lofty science goals. What she left in her wake makes for great bonus science too.

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[Saturday, February 28, 2004] Just past the halfway point of its three-month prime mission, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit has achieved several scientific firsts, but may still have its best "Eureka!" moments in front of it.

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[Saturday, February 28, 2004] Dust gradually obscures the Sun during a blue-sky martian sunset seen in a sequence of newly processed frames from NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity.

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[Sunday, February 29, 2004] The smallest grains visible in this image are only a few millimeters in size. The approximate true color image was acquired on Sol 20 of Opportunity's mission with panoramic camera filters red, green and blue.

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