Editor's blog

ExoMars!

Finally a mention of the ESA-Russia ExoMars project. A mock up moving around in the studio and a discussion of its potential to drill 2m below the surface of the planet to search for life.

Back to NASA

BBC goes back to NASA to discuss future missions to the red planet .... looking at orbiter at end of 2013, another rover in 2020, a sample return mission and the trillion dollar question of sending men to explore Mars.

For much of last year the physics world lived with the possibility that a group of scientists had detected neutrinos travelling faster than the speed of light. Unfortunately it turned out not to be the case. Far from the explanation being scientific, or due to some error in the measurements it all came down to the most mundane of explanations a faulty connection.

Fifty-years ago today John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth and the fifth man to go into space after succesful orbits by Russian cosmonauts Yuri Gagarin and Gherman Titov and sub-orbital hops by Americans Alan Shepherd and Gus Grissom.

The long awaited axe finally fell on the NASA program budget. Surprisingly, it was not James Webb Space Telescope carried the blow, but the joint European ExoMars programme.

The HiRISE camera on the NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has captured an image of the three-petal lander platform from the Spirit Mars Exploration Rover.