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MARS ROVER LAUNCH

The second of NASA’s two Mars Exploration Rovers, Opportunity, is poised for launch. As Â鶹´«Ã½ went to press, lift-off from Cape Canaveral was scheduled for Saturday 28 June at 11.56.16 pm local time. The first Mars Rover, Spirit, was launched on 10 June.

BEAGLE DELAY

First contact with the British Mars lander Beagle 2, which is on board the European Space Agency’s Mars Express craft launched on 2 June, has been postponed. Engineers had planned to boot up Beagle 2’s computer systems last Friday, to check they had survived lift-off. But mission controllers received an unexpected…