Kepler is searching for Earth-like planets around far-flung stars, and the Mars Science Laboratory will sample the Red Planet's geology looking for the building blocks of life - though it will not explicitly look for life itself.
The Mars Global Surveyor, which mapped the Red Planet from the late 90s, and the Near-Shoemaker probe, which visited an Asteroid Eros in 2003, both carried the Westcott technology.
Mars Express will map the Red Planet in unprecedented detail - its best images will see objects down to two metres.
Last November, the Mars probe Curiosity began its months-long journey to the red planet.
Like surfers who have been waiting for the big wave, the spacecraft are riding to the red planet as Mars and Earth make their nearest pass to each other since prehistoric times.
And in case you missed the latest robotic resident arriving on Mars you can watch the action replay and view the very first pictures beamed back from the surface of the Red Planet on Nasa's Mars Science Laboratory mission homepage.
Malin is the principal investigator for the camera onboard Mars Global Surveyor, currently in its fifth month of mapping the red planet.
The Mars Society is a privately funded organization dedicated to promoting human exploration of the Red Planet, and the recent find will give the society's president Dr Robert Zubrin and his team more hope for a manned mission.
But when NASA's newest Mars rover, Curiosity, lands on the Red Planet next week, scientists hope to unlock a few more.
MSN: Curiosity aims to unlock Mars mysteries - Technology & science - Space - Space.com | NBC News
With the first week on Mars behind them, the scientists and engineers who put Pathfinder on the Red Planet say they have already met the major objectives set for the mission.
Mars One wants to build a colony on the red planet and grow the colony with an ever-expanding crew and sustain their lives where no one has lived before.
And in perhaps the week's oddest story, the Dutch nonprofit Mars One announced that it is now accepting applications for a four-person Mars colony with hopes of establishing a permanent settlement on the Red Planet.
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It includes a science lab that will collect mineral samples from the Red Planet, and try to determine if Mars is habitable.
Before Mars Global Surveyor, red planet researchers relied on Viking data from the 1970s, which yielded much lower resolution images.
On December 3rd 1999, a spacecraft called Mars Polar Lander (MPL) was supposed to touch down near the red planet's southern pole.
NASA's Spirit and Opportunity rovers, which landed on the Red Planet in 2004, have found plenty of evidence that Mars was far warmer and wetter billions of years ago than it is today.
MSN: Scientists say parts of Mars interior are as wet as Earth's
That clever piece of engineering was a tiny lander that was carried to the Red Planet in 2003 on board the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter.
It has also scanned the surface of the planet using Mola (Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter), which beams an infrared laser pulse towards the surface of the Red Planet 10 times a second.
The new results, however, add to astronomers' growing understanding of water on Mars, and could lead to clues of whether life exists, or ever existed, on the Red Planet.
MSN: New proof that water existed underground on ancient Mars
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