The NASA-JPL Mars Exploration site overviews of all previous, current, and planned US missions to Mars, with links to project homepages and other information.   Phoenix Mars Lander NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander mission is being run by the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at Tucson. Phoenix was launched on Saturday, August 4, 2007, from Cape Canaveral atop a Delta II launch vehicle. It is due to arrive at Mars on May 25, 2008, and land in the northern polar region. Phoenix carries a robotic arm which will dig to an icy layer believed to lie just beneath the surface, and try to determine if the water might have once sustained microbial life before it was frozen. The mission will also monitor weather of the polar region.   Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter The NASA-JPL Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter was launched on August 12, 2005 at 7:43am EDT, on a Lockheed-Martin Atlas V-401 launch vehicle with a Centaur upper stage. The MRO was successfully decelerated into an elliptical Mars orbit on March 10, 2006. From March until November, the MRO was aerobraked, using friction with the atmosphere of Mars to slow down into a lower, circular orbit.     Since November, 2006, MRO has studied the history of water flows on Mars, and mapped the planet with HiRISE, the highest-resolution camera (1-meter) that has ever flown on a planetary mission. 2 other cameras, CTX and MARCI are also on board.     Science instruments MRO carries include CRISM, a spectrometer to identify surface minerals, MCS, a radiometer to examine the atmosphere, and SHARAD sounding radar to search for water ice over one meter below the surface, and more.     Timeline: MRO is scheduled to conduct its science ops until Nov., 2008. MRO will also be used to relay data from Mars surface probes until at least 2010, and possibly as late as 2015.   2003-2005 Mars Exploration Fleet The first of two NASA-JPL Mars Exploration Rovers, MER-A or Spirit, was launched on Tuesday, June 10, 2003, and landed safely on Mars on Jan. 3, 2004 at 8:35pm PST (Earth receive time). After it began roving, Spirit developed some computer/communications problems, but it is still functioning. The 2nd rover, MER-B or Opportunity, was launched on July 7, and landed successfully on Jan. 24 at about 9:15pm PST (in an area noticably less rock-strewn than most previous Mars lander sites), and by April, 2007, had traveled over 10 kilometers on the Martian surface. Both rovers are much more capable than the earlier Mars Pathfinder (July-Sept 1997) and have sent back a wealth of photos and data. Mars Express, was launched on June 6, 2003, by the European Space Agency (ESA). The Mars Express orbiter carried with it a 73-lb. British lander called Beagle 2. Beagle 2 separated from Mars Express on Dec. 19, 2003, and was to land on Dec. 25th, but no signals were heard from it. The Mars Express orbiter successfully entered orbit on Dec. 25th; it is the primary vehicle of the ESA mission. ESA Multimedia Gallery An earlier US Mars orbiter, Mars Odyssey, relays some of the data back from the landers. Mars Odyssey entered Martian orbit on October 24, 2001. Odyssey maps chemical elements and minerals on the Martian surface, looks for water, and analyzes the radiation environment around Mars. Until Nov. 2006, the Mars Global Surveyor also relayed some data back from the landers. MGS entered Martian orbit in September, 1997. The spacecraft was aerobraked to a lower orbit, and began mapping the planet in March, 1999. On Nov. 2, 2006, the signal from MGS was lost. By this time about 240,000 Mars images had already been sent from MGS to Earth, including photos which suggest that running water might still occur occasionally on Mars.   Mars Images Phobos 2 Images has images from and a description of the Soviet Phobos 2 mission to the Martian moon in 1989. From the Russian Space Research Institute Image Processing Lab website. Hubble Space Telescope Mars Images: 2003 - 2001 - globe animation, 1.73 MB mpg SolarViews has a nice collection of selected Mars images, including a good rotating Mars globe animation (841 KB mpeg) created from Viking Orbiter images. It is not as sharp as the Space4Case anim (below), but the large volcanoes and some other features show up better. Space4Case has some nice free downloadable Mars rotating globe animations in divx format (the true color one looks great, except the big volcanoes are hard to see, and cast no shadows).   Mars Maps and Mars Atlases Google Mars, using an interface similar to Google Earth, displays the Martian surface in visible light, infrared, and color-coded elevation maps, generated from data gathered by the Mars Global Surveyor & Mars Odyssey spacecraft. JMars, a Java-based Geographic Information System, provides the data which is displayed by Google Mars, and has additional Martian and Lunar datasets available online. Mars 24 Sunclock is a free Java program or browser applet which displays an image of Mars showing its current sun- and nightsides, along with the time in 24-hour format, and more. The USGS Geologic Map of Mars can be downloaded at 150 dpi from the Lunar and Planetary Institute. This is a very large, 7197x5768 JPEG image, which is a 37 MB download (the page says 3.7 MB, that is an error). If you have a JPEG2000 viewer, you can download a even larger, 300 dpi image, which is a smaller file due to improved compression.     US Geological Survey Mars resources include other USGS Mars maps and globes cut-and-paste globes. These .pdf files of maps (made with data from the Mars Global Surveyor and the Viking Orbiters), are smaller downloads The full list of USGS downloadable Mars maps includes maps of specific areas. The USGS also provides full Mars hemisphere photomosaics made from Viking Orbiter images of Mars, and USGS Map-a-Planet: Mars, a clickable Mars atlas. The Clickable Mars Atlas is a rotatable color globe of Mars, which you can click on to see photos of the spot where you clicked. You can also browse through a directory of named features. The NASA-Ames Clickable Mars Atlas is a similar Mars atlas, this one in black and white images, from the NASA Ames Research Center. According to PhysOrg News, a paper in the journal Space Weather says radiation (high-energy protons) following solar flares (CMEs) might prevent any manned mars mission. Sky and Telescope is the world's leading source of information about astronomy and space science. Save 29%! (lowest rate)

MISSIONS: NASA - ESA - JAXA KENNEDY SPACE CENTER: Shuttle Countdown Online KSC Video Feeds webcams galore NASA TV LIVE: RealVideo - Windows Media alternate RealVideo - sound only RealAudio POSTION TRACKING: Shuttle - ISS - ESA LAUNCH SCHEDULES: KSC - SpaceflightNow Space.com - Space-Launcher.com SPACE & ASTRONOMY: JPL Space Calendar See also: Science Gifts, Astronomy, Planets, Asteroids, Meteorites & Comets, Space, and NASA   Mars News FeedDirect NewsFeeds Try NEWS SEARCH ENGINES Google Usenet Newsgroups alt.planets.mars alt.planets (11 groups) alt.sci.planetary sci.astro (8 groups) sci.space (7 groups) sci.space.news gov.us.fed.nasa.announce Mars Search: The DMOZ Open Directory searches for keywords in website titles and descriptions (not page content). You can limit your search to the Mars links category, or search all science links. find this: in: Mars Sites Solar System All Astronomy All Science Astronomy Search: AstroWeb is a directory of about 3000 astronomy links, maintained at the University of Strasbourg, in France. If you search for "mars" at AstroWeb (already entered), the results will be a list of over 150 links. Or enter any other search terms you wish. find this:

Mars Today is a Martian news archive from SpaceRef.

Mars News has Mars news briefs, photos, and articles, plus descriptions of current and upcoming Mars spacecraft missions.

Mars Daily is a similar site from Space Daily, concentrating on current news, without as much background.

Space.com: Mars Rovers "special report".

Explore Mars has articles and information about the planet Mars, including a Mars Database of Named Features, with basic information on over 1400 named features on Mars.

The Mars Society is a non-profit independent organization dedicated to Mars exploration and settlement.

  Online Books about Mars, including NASA Books (NASA Special Publications)

Some of the books below are Adobe .pdf files, which are nice for reading materials offline. If you would like to read NASA's .html online books, like most of those below, when you are offline, you can "harvest" the pages and images for free using HTTrack, a very useful freeware website capture and offline browsing tool. HTTrack also works well with groups of .pdf files linked to from a page or directory. The Planet Mars: A History of Observation and Discovery Sheehan (1996) On Mars: Exploration of the Red Planet 1958-1978 Ezell & Ezell (1984) The Martian Landscape, NASA SP-425, 1978. Viking Orbiter Views of Mars, NASA SP-441, 1980. Basaltic Volcanism on the Terrestrial Planets (1981) Planetary Geology in the 1980s SP-467 (1985) Mars Sample Return: Issues and Recommendations commission report (1997) Humans to Mars: Fifty Years of Mission Planning, 1950-2000 Mars, Percival Lowell (1895) Is Mars Habitable? A Critical Examination of Professor Lowell's Book "Mars and Its Canals," With an Alternative Explanation Wallace (1907) over 100 NASA online books are listed on the NASA News page