The first attempt of a space craft to connect with Mars was  the Japanese orbiter "Nozomi". Launched on  04 July 1998, Nozomi was to go into an elliptical orbit around the planet Mars to study the Martian Atmosphere and ionosphere.  Nozomi used up too much fuel trying to make trajectory corrections to really have a chance at fulfilling its mission. Nozomi's many times revised time table had the space craft entering into orbit in early to mid December 2003. It is not known if Nozomi kept traveling farther into space after passing Mars or if the space craft crashed into the Red Planet.

The Next attempt to connect with Mars came from the European Space Agency (ESA) Mars Explorer. The Mars Explorer was made up of two space crafts, One space craft , an orbiter, kept the name "Mars Explorer" and entered in to its orbit around Mars as expected. Another module of the original Mars Explorer was designed to be a landing rover. The Landing Rover, Beagle 2" detached itself from the rest of the space ship on 19 Dec. On 25 Dec, Beagle 2 spread its wings and attempted to parachute down to the Martian surface, Many attempts to contact Beagle 2 have been made. Beagle 2 was even forced into  beacon status. While efforts to find Beagle 2 continue, chances of finding the space craft are very dim indeed.

NASA's Mars Lander / Rover, named the "Spirit" successfully landed in the Gusev Crater as planned on 04 Jan 2004. Up to this point, Spirit has not gotten off of its As  Lander. A protective bag has prevented Spirit from getting on with its 3-month series of explorations and experiments.

The Fourth vehicle bound for Mars is NASA's Rover, "Opportunity". Opportunity is programmed to land on the opposite side of Mars from Spirit. Landing of Opportunity is scheduled for 25 January 2004, at 05:05 UTC.

07 Jan 2004,  02:05 UTC:  The second NASA Mars Rover is named " Opportunity" Space rover "Opportunity" is due to land on Mar's surface  on  25 January 2004, at 05:05 UTC  NASA              ( Date and Time Converted to Universal Coordinated Time from Pacific Standard Time)

NASA's first Mars Rover, "Spirit" landed on Mar's surface 04 Jan 2004, at 04:36 UTC

05 Jan 2004 : NOTE:  We were asked by a reader earlier today how the European Space Agency (ESA) chose the name "Beagle 2" for the ESA's Mars Lander.  The name was chosen by the ESA because the lander was named after an earlier ship used for exploring.  The earlier ship was the "Beagle", used by Charles Darwin.

11 Dec 2003,  04:54 UTC: The last of the Great Observatories makes a splash with quality of images transmitted back to Earth. New images taken by Galex, have been released. Galex is the last of the Great Observatories launched in NASA's Great Observatories program.

The Andromeda Galaxy was chosen to be in the first group of images released to the public. Images taken by Galex cover a wide range of frequencies in the ultraviolet electromagnetic band. Galex was launched last spring with the purpose of observing the universe using ultra sensitive ultraviolet equipment. Images of  the Andromeda Galaxy were chosen for several reasons. Not the least of them being that the Andromeda Galaxy is the nearest neighbor to our own galaxy. Combination images were taken by Galex using one near ultraviolet (red) and one far ultraviolet (blue).

The Web Site contains a number of pages on the history of the Great Observatories Program, expectations of the program, communication between Earth and the Observatories, and the mechanics of the Great Observatory elements. Please use the Web Site's search engine to help locate information. Searching with the word "galex"  or "great observatories" hopefully will help the reader find the information wanted.

29 Nov 2003,  06:22 UTC :  This Day in History > 29 Nov  1961 > Enos, a chimpanzee, was launched into an  orbit circling the Earth. Enos was the first animal sent into orbit by the United Space. We remember this being a very "hot" topic in the news and on the street.

06 Nov 2003,  22:54 UTC: The largest explosion to ever be witnessed in our solar system. You were there to see it, and to be exposed to it. On 04 Nov 2003, Solar Region # 486 produced a X 28 Solar Flare.

	This flare has received a number of classifications all the way up to X 40. The official word from the SEC on this date, is that the flare originally classified as an X 17.1 flare now has the official classification of X 28. BELOW: Solar Flare. Largest ever recorded : X 28; Flare occurred 04 Nov 2003. Image : Steve Rismiller of Milford, Ohio, captured this image of the flare in progress at 20:40 UT on Nov. 4th. It is the brighter of the two plumes rising above the sun's limb. Courtesy spaceweather.com published 06 Nov
	Sound clips of the X 28 Solar Flare can be heard at http://www-pw.physics.uiowa.edu/space-audio/. They have been made available to the public through NASA.
	An Image of the X 28 solar flare was captured by NASA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft. Due to the courtesy of NASA, we were able to obtain a copy of the image - and have republished the SOHO image on the Daily Photo 2 page.

22 Oct 2003,  20:40 UTC: Mars Scout Missions. It is difficult to keep up with all of the present day Mars missions. In the not too distant future, many "Scout" missions, with a single mission or a small group of related missions will be launched  toward Mars. Keeping up with all of the on-going Mars missions will be daunting. The Mars Scout Mission program will use smaller,  lesser complicated space craft, that will only have to support one objective. Cutting cost and decreasing the time from the start of experimental design to analysis of data will make the Scout Missions attractive.

	13 June 2001 : NASA issued a call for proposals for Mars study missions. "Perspective investigators were encouraged to propose diverse spacecraft platforms for their science, including orbiters, landers, rovers, airplanes and aerobots." NASA was to select 10 of the most promising concepts. Launch date was scheduled for the year 2007.
	NASA has not forgotten the "Scout" project. We quit counting NASA's news releases, conferences and internal selection process papers at 33 "Papers" for the year 2003 only. There have been many more during the past ten months. Additional details have been published on the NASA News page.

15 Oct 2003,  05:47 UTC:  NASA's Four Great Observatories. Quick facts on NASA's program of orbiting four "Great Observatories" - starting with the Hubble Telescope through the newest high tech observatory the " Infrared Telescope Facility" . For additional information on this innovative program go to Infrared Telescope Facility

10 Sep 2003,  04:49 UTC:  Noise coming from super massive black hole.  Chandra X-ray Observatory have detected, "a noise about 57 octaves lower than middle-C, is the deepest ever detected from an object in our Universe".  NASA  The black hole that sings base.  We are still researching some previously released data. Further details and drawing will be added to the edited article.

31 Aug 2003,  05:38 UTC : What's your geomagnetic latitude? Check out these NOAA maps: North America, Eurasia, South Africa & Australia, South America

31 Aug 2003,  01:24 UTC:  The season for auroras. Autumn is almost synonymous with "aurora season" in the northern latitudes. It is strange how the Earth can effect solar activity. But, truth is stranger than fiction. According to NASA, there are twice as many geomagnetic storms in the fall and spring as there are during summer and winter. Interested in knowing more? Check out the information published on  Auroral Activity page 3.  Could care less? Then please  take a look around. It is not our policy to publish "pages under construction". A major system crash caused several hundred pages to end up scrambled and over 25,000 links to be broken. You always count how many still need to be fixed.

29 Aug 2003,  00:02 UTC: The Columbia Accident Investigation Board released their final report  on the 01 Feb 2003 disaster.  The blame was placed equally on a piece of foam hitting and breaking a reinforced carbon carbon shield - letting hot plasma to enter the space craft.  The remainder of the blame was attributed to "NASA's organizational culture".  Links to the various Columbia Accident Investigation are on this web site's Shuttle Press Release page.

Experiments involving The Low Power Transceiver (LPT for the non-ham readers - QRP for the rest of us) was completed. The purpose of this experiment was to demonstrate that a single, relatively small and light weight module could be used for multi-mode simultaneous communications and navigation in space. A true multi-use and multi-tasking module. The article begins on the  NASA_QRP page (11,839 bytes). 

As promised some time ago, we are publishing results of some of the experiments carried out by the Crew of the Space Shuttle Columbia, during her final mission (STS-107). Generally, the results will be published on the STS-107 Science page.