[Thursday, January 01, 2004] Houston Flight Control: "We appreciate your hard work day after day, your cheerful demeanors, and most of all the opportunity to be here with you as we make history together."

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[Friday, January 02, 2004] Team Stardust, NASA's first dedicated sample return mission to a comet, passed a huge milestone today by successfully navigating through the particle and gas-laden coma around comet Wild 2

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[Friday, January 02, 2004] The Maestro team at NASA JPL has created a public version of the primary software tool used to operate the twin mars rovers. You can download a scaled-down version of the program yourself. All major operating systems are supported.

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[Saturday, January 03, 2004] The Spirit rover will land just after 8:35 p.m. Pacific Standard Time today, 3 Jan 2004 (04:35, 4 Jan 2004 UTC). It is expected to land somewhere within the approximately 83 km (~52 mi) long by ~10 km (~6 mi) wide ellipse on the floor of Gusev Crater.

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[Saturday, January 03, 2004] In a perfect world, or in this case two perfect worlds -- Earth and Mars, the first of NASA's two robot geologists will bounce over rocks and roll to a safe stop on the martian surface shortly after 8:35 p.m. PST, January 3, 2004.

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[Saturday, January 03, 2004] NASA's Spirit Rover reached the surface of Mars at 8:35 PM PST (11:35 PM EST) tonight. NASA JPL has received data from the rover indicating that it survived the landing and has received a deluge of high resolution photos as well.

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[Sunday, January 04, 2004] This panorama was taken by the Spirit rover shortly after it landed.

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[Sunday, January 04, 2004] David Palermo from WorldVR.com has created this spectacular Quicktime VR panorama of Spirit's landing site using imagery sent back from Mars less than 24 hours ago.

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[Sunday, January 04, 2004] If you have the red/blue glasses, visit this page. Also, please be certain to visit the amazing 3D image collection at marsunearthed.com. There is an artist behind these images.

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[Monday, January 05, 2004] According to information received from NASA, this weekend's landing of the Spirit rover on Mars drew an unprecedented audience for NASA on the Internet.

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[Monday, January 05, 2004] Year-to-year changes in concentration of carbon dioxide and methane can be linked to fire activity associated with the El Nino-La Nina cycle, according to a study conducted by a team of NASA scientists and other researchers.

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[Monday, January 05, 2004] Until now, astronomers have been nearly blind when looking back in time to survey an era when most stars in the Universe were expected to have formed. The surprise: these galaxies appear to be more fully formed and mature than was expected.

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[Tuesday, January 06, 2004] New work with an old equation may help scientists calculate the thickness of ice covering the oceans on Jupiter's moon Europa and ultimately provide insight into planet formation.

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[Tuesday, January 06, 2004] In early 2003, Comet Kudo-Fujikawa (C/2002 X5) zipped past the Sun and was puffing out huge amounts of carbon, one of the key elements for life. The comet also emitted large amounts of water vapor as the Sun's heat baked its outer surface.

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[Tuesday, January 06, 2004] A University of Florida-led team of astronomers may have discovered the brightest star yet observed in the universe, a fiery behemoth that could be as much as much as seven times brighter than the current record holder.

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[Tuesday, January 06, 2004] NASA has announced plans to name the landing site of the Mars Spirit Rover in honor of the Shuttle Columbia astronauts. The area in the vast flatland of the Gusev Crater where Spirit landed this weekend will be called the Columbia Memorial Station.

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[Tuesday, January 06, 2004] This is the first color image of Mars taken by the panoramic camera on the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit. It is the highest resolution image ever taken on the surface of another planet.

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[Tuesday, January 06, 2004] "These images are better than we had hoped for in our wildest dreams," said Ray Newburn of JPL, a co-investigator for Stardust. "They will help us better understand the mechanisms that drive conditions on comets."

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[Tuesday, January 06, 2004] Scientiststaking advantage of multiple unique views of black hole particle jet over the course of a year with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, have assembled a "picture" of the region that has revealed several key discoveries.

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[Tuesday, January 06, 2004] Astronomers have made a 42-day movie showing the inner workings of a strange star system providing new insights that are changing scientists' understanding of the enigmatic stellar pairs known as microquasars.

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[Tuesday, January 06, 2004] Astronomers announced observations of a nearby supergiant star that directly show hot gas escaping its boiling atmosphere at a larger distance than from any other star.

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[Wednesday, January 07, 2004] The Chandra X-ray Observatory has discovered rich deposits of neon, magnesium, and silicon in a pair of colliding galaxies. When the clouds in which these elements are present cool, an exceptionally high number of stars with planets should form.

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[Thursday, January 08, 2004] The engineers and scientists for NASA's Spirit are eager to get the rover off its lander and out exploring the terrain that Spirit's pictures are revealing, but caution comes first.

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[Thursday, January 08, 2004] American astronauts will return to the moon early in the next decade in preparation for sending crews to explore Mars and nearby asteroids, President Bush will propose next week as part of a sweeping reform of the U.S. space program.

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[Saturday, January 10, 2004] Spirit has stood up and extended its front wheels while continuing to delight its human partners with new information about its neighborhood within Mars' Gusev Crater.

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[Saturday, January 10, 2004] Less than a week after landing on Mars, NASA's Spirit rover has found possible evidence that water once flowed on the now-barren planet, the goal of the mission. The scientists are cautious about their interpretation.

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[Saturday, January 10, 2004] "Onboard operations to isolate and identify the cause of the slight pressure drop of the past days are continuing according to the plan worked out jointly by U.S. & Russian specialists, checking all potential causes in order of priority."

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[Saturday, January 10, 2004] Canadian astronomers announced today the first evidence of a magnetic field on a planet outside of our solar system which is also the first observation of a planet heating its star.

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[Saturday, January 10, 2004] Astronomers have shown that the compact object orbiting pulsar PSR J0737-3039A with a period of just 2.4 hours is not only, as suspected, another neutron star but is also a detectable pulsar, PSR J0737-3039B, that is rotating once every 2.8 seconds.

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[Saturday, January 10, 2004] New research suggests that many if not most of the stellar corpses at the centers of these wildly varied cosmic objects have companion stars, a surprising finding that will influence how astronomers explain their origins.

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[Monday, January 12, 2004] The first 360-degree color view from NASA's Spirit Mars Exploration Rover presents a range of tempting targets from nearby rocks to hills on the horizon.

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[Monday, January 12, 2004] David Palermo from WorldVR.com has created another Quicktime VR view of the first 360-degree color view from NASA's Spirit Mars Exploration Rover.

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[Tuesday, January 13, 2004] The scientific research conducted aboard the International Space Station by the United States will be completely revamped under President Bush's new space policy.

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[Wednesday, January 14, 2004] Today, the President committed the United States to a long-term human and robotic program to explore the solar system, starting with a return to the Moon that will ultimately enable future exploration of Mars and other destinations.

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[Wednesday, January 14, 2004] The Bush administration's new policy for America's space program took a careful, deliberate and quiet effort in order to come into being. This is the story of how it happened.

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[Thursday, January 15, 2004] NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit successfully drove off its lander platform and onto the soil of Mars early today.

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[Thursday, January 15, 2004] Scientists have seen a neutron star spitting out a jet of matter at very close to the speed of light. This is the first time such a fast jet has been seen from anything other than a black hole.

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[Thursday, January 15, 2004] Do brown dwarfs they really form as stars do - from collapsing clouds of gas - or are their origins completely different?

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[Friday, January 16, 2004] "A few minutes ago, we concluded a meeting at which Sean O'Keefe, the NASA Administrator, announced his decision to cancel SM4, the next servicing mission to Hubble. "

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[Friday, January 16, 2004] The Bush administration's plan for America's space program is the product of a year of difficult choices resulting in a comprehensive approach to human exploration of the solar system and a restructuring of the country's space program.

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[Friday, January 16, 2004] NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe directed the cancellation of a previously planned space shuttle mission to repair and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope today.

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[Friday, January 16, 2004] NASA's Spirit rover reached out with its versatile robotic arm early today and examined a patch of fine-grained martian soil with a microscope at the end of the arm.

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[Saturday, January 17, 2004] More than a few complaints from members of Congress addressed the purpose of the space program. Both Democrats and Republicans had been questioning NASA's vision - or lack of one - and many looked to the Bush administration to come up with one.

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[Saturday, January 17, 2004] A dusty stellar nursery shines brightly in a new image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Spitzer's heat-sensing "infrared eyes" have pierced the veiled core of the Tarantula Nebula to provide an unprecedented peek at massive newborn stars.

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[Sunday, January 18, 2004] When NASA's Stardust spacecraft flew by Comet Wild 2, the probe saw something that surprised astronomers.

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[Monday, January 19, 2004] Although the seven scientific instruments on board Mars Express are still undergoing a thorough calibration phase, they have already started collecting amazing results. The first high-resolution images and spectra of Mars have already been acquired.

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[Tuesday, January 20, 2004] The Stafford-Covey Return to Flight Task Group has issued an interim report. The group is making an independent assessment of NASA's implementation of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board Space Shuttle return to flight recommendations.

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[Tuesday, January 20, 2004] On January 31 NASA's Deep Impact mission will end its campaign to launch the names of space enthusiasts who want to make a deep impact on a comet.

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[Wednesday, January 21, 2004] This image mosaic taken by the panoramic camera onboard the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit shows the rover's landing site, the Columbia Memorial Station, at Gusev Crater, Mars.

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[Wednesday, January 21, 2004] Controllers were able to send commands to the Spirit early Wednesday and received a simple signal acknowledging that the rover heard them, but they did not receive expected scientific and engineering data during scheduled communication passes.

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[Thursday, January 22, 2004] NASA's plan to establish an International Space Station Research Institute (ISSRI) has been postponed. A draft Statement of Work was released in Sept. 5, 2003, and a draft Request for Proposal was scheduled for release in winter 2004.

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[Thursday, January 22, 2004] "Exploration of the solar system will be guided by compelling questions of scientific and societal importance."

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[Thursday, January 22, 2004] A volunteer who analyzes on-line images for the University of Arizona Spacewatch program has discovered a 60-to-120-foot diameter asteroid that will miss Earth by about 1.2 million miles tomorrow, Jan. 22.

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[Thursday, January 22, 2004] Eleven Earth and space scientists say that a recent paper attributing most climate change on Earth to cosmic rays is incorrect and based on questionable methodology.

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[Thursday, January 22, 2004] A duo of Chinese and American astronomers have discovered a young star in the fierce environs of the Rosette Nebula that is ejecting a complex jet of material riddled with knots and bow shocks.

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[Thursday, January 22, 2004] Uranus and Neptune aren't the identical egg-blue twins they appear to be in natural color, according to NASA Hubble Space Telescope images released today.

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[Friday, January 23, 2004] The flight team for NASA's Spirit received data from the rover in a communication session that began at 13:26 Universal Time (5:26 a.m. PST) and lasted 20 minutes at a data rate of 120 bits per second.

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[Friday, January 23, 2004] One of the main targets of the Mars Express mission is to discover the presence of water in one of its chemical states. Through the initial mapping of the South polar cap it has already revealed the presence of water ice and carbon dioxide ice.

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[Friday, January 23, 2004] Some members of the flight team for NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers are preparing for this weekend's landing of the second rover, Opportunity, while others are focused on trying to restore the first rover, Spirit, to working order.

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[Friday, January 23, 2004] NASA's Spirit rover did not go to sleep today even after ground controllers sent commands twice for it to do so.

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[Saturday, January 24, 2004] Hours before NASA's Opportunity rover reaches Mars, engineers have found a way to communicate reliably with its twin, Spirit.

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[Saturday, January 24, 2004] NASA's Mars Opportunity Rover landed on the Surface of Mars this evening at 9:05 PM PST.

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[Sunday, January 25, 2004] NASA's Opportunity Rover has already sent back dozens of photos from Mars. According to mission PI Steve Sqyures "its like nothing I have ever seen before!"

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[Sunday, January 25, 2004] This is one of the first images beamed back to Earth from the rover shortly after it touched down. The image was captured by the rover's panoramic camera.

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[Sunday, January 25, 2004] Once again Jeffrey WIlliams at Marsunearthed.com has been kind enough to allow us to post anaglphs he has made of images received from Oportunity on Mars early this morning.

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[Monday, January 26, 2004] Recently Sean O'Keefe decided not to proceed with the last scheduled Space Shuttle Servicing Mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. Yet, in this decision not to use the Shuttle to extend Hubble's life, is there not the seed of another approach?

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[Monday, January 26, 2004] The discovery of a unique phenomenon: a beautiful set of expanding X-ray halos surrounding a gamma-ray burst which have never been seen before has been announced by an international team of astronomers.

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[Monday, January 26, 2004] Like a doctor trying to understand an elderly patient's sudden demise, astronomers have obtained the first-ever detailed observations of an old but otherwise normal massive star just before and after its life ended in a spectacular supernova explosion.

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[Monday, January 26, 2004] When we last went to the Moon, it was with the computer equivalent of stone knives and bear skins. It is truly mind boggling to the modern engineer that we were able to do this with the hardware and software developed from scratch back then.

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[Tuesday, January 27, 2004] The Ulysses spacecraft and all scientific instruments are in good health. Preparations are underway for the Jupiter Distant Encounter campaign that will take place between the end of January and mid-March 2004.

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[Tuesday, January 27, 2004] NASA memorialized the Apollo 1 crew by dedicating the hills surrounding the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit's landing site to the astronauts. The crew of Apollo 1 perished during a launch pad test of their Apollo spacecraft 37 years ago today.

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[Wednesday, January 28, 2004] NASA recently dedicated the landing site of the Spirit rover on Mars to the crew of Columbia. Curiously, the JPL logo that was on the plaque when it left Earth disappeared on Mars. Where did it go?

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[Wednesday, January 28, 2004] NASA announced plans to name the landing site of the Mars Opportunity rover in honor of the Space Shuttle Challenger's final crew. The area where Opportunity landed this weekend, will be called the Challenger Memorial Station.

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[Wednesday, January 28, 2004] NASA's Opportunity rover has untucked its front wheels and latched its suspension system in place, key steps in preparing to drive off its lander and onto martian soil.

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[Thursday, January 29, 2004] At 14 hours 58 minutes 8 seconds Moscow Time the Soyuz-U/Progress M1-11 Rocket-Space Complex was launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome.

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[Thursday, January 29, 2004] Spirit has resumed taking pictures as engineers continue work on restoring its health. Meanwhile, Spirit's twin, Opportunity, extended its rear wheels backward to driving position last night as part of preparations to roll off its lander, possibly as ea

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[Thursday, January 29, 2004] Everyone loves to poke fun at the government for paying too much for things. Examples such as $500 toilet seats on Air Force planes and the like have taken on mythical stature. NASA is no different.

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[Friday, January 30, 2004] Following the President's speech on 14 January, Sean O'Keefe responded to questions about the new space policy. O'Keefe's remarks provide greater detail about the Administration's intentions, and serve as a preview of coming congressional hearings.

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[Friday, January 30, 2004] The effect of the attacks of Dec. 7, 1941, and Sept. 11, 2001, was that our enemies had awakened a sleeping giant. We can be equally proud that our response to the loss of Columbia has not been to retreat from our exploration of space, but rather to stren

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[Saturday, January 31, 2004] NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity drove down a reinforced fabric ramp at the front of its lander platform and onto the soil of Mars' Meridiani Planum this morning.

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[Saturday, January 31, 2004] Astronomers have used an observation by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory to make the best case yet that a star can be engulfed by its companion star and survive.

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[Saturday, January 31, 2004] One year ago today, Space Shuttle Columbia began to return home after a successful 16 day Mission.

It would never arrive.

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