A radar device aboard ESA's Mars Express orbiter has allowed scientists to peek beneath the surface from afar, and the success with this research is now prompting them to think up other spots in the solar system that would be ideal for this sort of examination.

Setting a spacecraft down on Mars isn't exactly easy—just ask Beagle 2. NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander, en route and due for a May 25 rendezvous with the surface, recently received a course adjustment from mission planners as they try to ensure that the craft doesn't drop down in a danger zone.

The Mars Science Lab, the pricey, SUV-sized next-generation rover, will rush through the Red Planet's atmosphere at twice the speed of sound when it approaches in 2010, and engineers are now hard at work testing the parachute that will slow it down.

Such tests might not sound all that exciting, given that this rover is going to be loaded with high-tech gear, including the equipment necessary to identify, gather and then analyze interesting materials on-board. But they're absolutely critical, since the billion-dollar rover needs a soft landing, and won't have a chance to use any of those cool tools if it doesn't touch down properly.

When the shuttle retires in 2010, as many as 8,000 NASA contractors could lose their jobs. After a request from lawmakers, NASA released these numbers yesterday, but added that this could be a worst case scenario. The Kennedy Space Center would suffer the biggest losses, with 80 percent of its contract workers losing their jobs by 2011.

It would have been pretty heartbreaking for space fans if Spirit and Opportunity, the twin Martian rovers, had survived on the Red Planet all these years, only to be shut down and lost for good due to budget cuts.

Apparently NASA sent a letter last week to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the lab that runs the rovers' program, specifying a $4 million cut. Scientists said this move would have forced them to put one rover into hibernation mode, and limit the duties of the other.

Yesterday, NASA released more than two thousand images from the high-resolution camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, a spacecraft looping around the Red Planet. One of the highlight photos, taken February 19, shows the cloudy aftermath of an avalanche of ice and dust rushing down a steep slope. The image surprised scientists, and proved that Mars is not just some planet-sized museum, but a very active world.

I can say with fair confidence that if an astronaut died on a short mission to the moon, the craft would turn around and come back. But it gets thornier if the astronauts are on Mars, or even halfway there—any place where turning back would be inadvisable or even impossible.
There are really only two options for the body: Leave it there or bring it home.

Day 1,464 of the Mars rovers' 90-day mission to Mars (for those of you keeping track), and Steve Squires, the head of science operations for the Spirit and Opportunity rovers is getting us up to date on their latest findings. Most important: serendipity in action. The Spirit rover's right front wheel has broken, so engineers turn the rover around, drive it in reverse, and drag the wheel behind the rover. As it slogs across the planet, it carves a trench. And my, what a trench it carves.

When PopSci published Will Snyder's article on terraforming Mars, we opined that the Mars Society's colonial flag could use some sprucing up, so we asked readers to submit their own designs. The week the article appeared, 42 Martian-flag mockups turned up in our inbox. Some featured elaborate designs and detailed explanations (which we've printed in their entirety in the slideshow), while others simply included a name. A couple flags were even sent anonymously.

In a word: no. It would be impossible to destroy the Red Planet with any device scientists can build, let alone finance. Planets can survive enormous assaults; the Hellas Basin, a Martian crater about 1,300 miles wide, testifies to the planet having once collided with an asteroid so massive that the impact generated well over a hundred million megatons of energy. If a meteoroid that size were to hit Earth, it could wipe out life on an entire continent.