:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::
"Everything is being compressed into tiny tablets. You take a little pill of news every day - 23 minutes - and that's supposed to be enough." -Walter Cronkite, RE TV news. The Web has changed that for many, however, and here is an extra dose for your daily news cocktail. This prescription tends to include surveillance and now war-related links, along with the occasional pop culture junk and whatever else seizes my attention as I scan online news sites.:: 6.11.2003 ::
:: Earth Attacks! ::
From Wired:
Landers to Probe Mars' Waterworks
A sprinkling of recent U.S. and European probe launches may soon unleash a flood of data about the history of water on Mars, helping to determine whether oceans ever existed on the red planet.
Three probes, one from the European Space Agency and twins from NASA, are to land on the surface of Mars in about half a year to seek signs of water there by testing rocks and soil.
Finding evidence that water once covered much of the surface of Mars would add new urgency to the search for life, or fossils of once-living things, on what appears to be a dead planet.
But another NASA probe already orbiting Mars sent back data last week from a heat-imaging camera indicating that the planet may always have been a world of glaciers fringed by dusty tundra, with only flash floods of water caused by ancient volcanoes or asteroid impacts. No Martian oceans, no warm alien Eden next door to Earth.
Europe's Beagle 2, named for Charles Darwin's ship and carried aboard the Mars Express, was launched June 2 from Kazakhstan. It's scheduled to land in December.
NASA launched its 400-pound Spirit probe Tuesday after weather delays, and an identical probe called Opportunity is set to launch June 25. The two U.S. rovers are slated to land in January.
posted by me
:: 6:11:00 PM [+] ::
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