Squyres says more recent rover data confirms a watery history at Opportunity's landing site.
But at first Spirit's landing site at Gusev Crater was a bit of a dud.
This image of the crater wall is north of the landing site, or behind the rover.
"There are times when you may leave the landing site when the lake is still, " explains Kabonge.
The Canadian north-west has some ancient rock formations, similar in age, we think, to those found in Gale Crater, Curiosity's landing site.
Below lies the 1944 landing site on which most of these soldiers died.
Later today, scientists are expected to complete a full color panorama of the landing site of the Mars Phoenix mission.
Later on in its mission, Spirit will investigate a large crater at its Gusev Crater landing site called Bonneville Crater.
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Curiosity's discovery at its landing site in the equatorial Gale Crater provides the first real ground truth for those observations.
Luckily, the rover was built to withstand such battering, and the landing site was well clear of dust storms for now.
Mars scientists determined that they could identify the landing site of the Pathfinder, but could not see the spacecraft or its parachute.
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The two groups split up again, making their way to the landing site where the helicopters will carry them back to Kandahar.
Dr John Bridges of London's Natural History Museum, a member of the Beagle 2 landing site team, believes both targets are exciting.
The two rovers far outlasted their warranties, with Spirit exploring its Gusev Crater landing site until getting stuck in deep Martian sand.
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Flt Lt Cowan said he examined the landing site but "could find no evidence of a landing" and could offer no further explanation.
"We've only looked at one tiny little slit" of the landing site, principal investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson said Monday.
Air traffic control suggested Dobbins Air Force Base, about 20 miles (32 km) east, as a possible landing site, but it was beyond reach.
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The Gale Crater landing site at 4.59 degrees south, 137.44 degrees east, places the rover within driving distance of layers of the crater's interior mountain.
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As Spirit began ascending some hills about two miles from its landing site, it found signs that water was once on this part of Mars, too.
The landing site for the transatlantic cable is to be built at Coleraine, but politicians in Londonderry have claimed it was originally planned for the city.
The lesson for more than two thirds of the images was that Viking images alone might have led mission managers to choose an unsafe landing site, Spencer said.
It overshot the planned landing site, sounded several worrying alarms on its flight, and eventually touched down under manual control with a mere 25 seconds of fuel remaining.
Advances in satellite observations have narrowed down the error in the path and landing site of tropical cyclones, and improved the accuracy and precision of atmospheric-weather and ocean-weather forecasts.
Passing over the landing site early Monday, the space agency's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured a dramatic image of Curiosity plunging toward the surface, dangling from its fully deployed, 51-foot-wide parachute.
Studies at the Gale Crater landing site have been on hold since the beginning of March after engineers discovered a problem with Curiosity's computer memory, possibly caused by space radiation.
Researchers are discussing which features in the scene to investigate after a few weeks of initial checkouts and observations to assess equipment on the rover and characteristics of the landing site.
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After initial study of some so-called basaltic rocks near its landing site, Spirit embarked on a 10-week drive across the crater, more than a mile wide, to reach the Columbia Hills.
Precision in landing was important because NASA chose a relatively tight area for Curiosity's arrival: The Gale Crater, which contains an 18, 000-foot high mountain about 7.5 miles south of the landing site.
Unfortunately, many of the most valuable images, including those of the Apollo 11 landing site, had degraded beyond repair, likely due to the normal but damaging process of pausing, rewinding and playing again and again.
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The Moscow talks coincided with the deployment of a Soyuz craft to ferry a new crew to the ISS. The existing crew - two Americans and a Russian - had a dramatic re-entry that took their craft more than 400 kilometres (250 miles) beyond its intended landing site.
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