[Monday, November 01, 2004] UC Irvine today announced that it has been awarded a contract with NASA to develop guidance algorithms aimed at pinpointing future Mars landers within 100 meters of the desired site.

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[Wednesday, November 03, 2004] "Purpose & Objective: The Committee will advise NASA Administrator on matters related to Exploration Systems. The Committee will draw on the expertise of its members and other sources to provide its advice and recommendations to the Agency."

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[Wednesday, November 03, 2004] NASA is currently preparing a set of high-level national roadmaps that will form the foundation of the Agency's strategic plan.

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[Thursday, November 04, 2004] All the scientific tools on NASA's two Mars Exploration Rovers are still working well, a full 10 months after Spirit's dramatic landing. The ones on Spirit are adding fresh evidence about the history of layered bedrock in a hill the rover is climbing.

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[Friday, November 05, 2004] "NASA is considering a more centralized approach to technology transfer in line with the NAPA recommendations and have developed a concept of how that centralized approach might work."

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[Friday, November 05, 2004] Owing to the proximity of the Moon to Earth, there are important technological and scientific concepts that could be developed on the Moon that will provide valuable insights to be feed-forward to the scientific exploration of Mars.

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[Thursday, November 11, 2004] The operators of Opportunity have determined that a proposed route eastward out of Endurance Crater is not passable, so the rover will backtrack to leave the crater by a southward route, perhaps by retracing its entry path.

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[Friday, November 12, 2004] Would Columbus have reached the New World if his ships could not carry enough water for their crews? Would Lewis and Clark have made it to the Pacific if they had no fresh water along the way?

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[Thursday, November 18, 2004] "The Committee will advise NASA Administrator on Mars exploration, including robotic exploration of Mars to search for evidence of life, to understand the history of the solar system, and to prepare for future human exploration."

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[Thursday, November 18, 2004] WIRED Magazine today announced that James Cameron, the blockbuster filmmaker whose work has won 18 Academy Awards, is the guest editor of the December issue, which examines the dynamic challenges and possibility in a new age of exploration. 

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[Thursday, November 18, 2004] A place so barren that NASA uses it as a model for the Martian environment, Chile's Atacama desert gets rain maybe once a decade. In 2003, scientists reported that the driest Atacama soils were sterile. Not so, reports a team of Arizona scientists.

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[Friday, November 19, 2004] Spirit remains in excellent health and has survived more than 300 martian days on the red planet.

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[Friday, November 19, 2004] This week, JPL managers took part in a practice session by Shuttle mission managers at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. It's part of a continuing exchange of best practices.

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[Wednesday, November 24, 2004] Under the omnibus bill funding the remaining FY 2005 appropriations (H.R. 4818), the House and Senate conferees gave NASA a substantial downpayment on the President's Space Exploration Initiative.

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[Thursday, November 25, 2004] Opportunity has now reached the furthest point east in its travels inside "Endurance Crater." Rover drivers have determined that there is no safe path beyond the current position.

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[Tuesday, November 30, 2004] This Mars Global Surveyor picture was obtained by MOC with a resolution that is better than 1 meter per pixel (better than 3 feet per pixel).

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