Astronauts who explore Mars should be careful not to leave too heavy of a footprint, experts stress. Indeed, human exploration of the Red Planet poses risks to gathering possible evidence of life on Mars, scientists say. After all, here on Earth, comparable sites of scientific interest have suffered significant damage. “We risk the same for […]
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The Curiosity Mars rover has detected intriguing chemical evidence, in the form of anomalous amounts of manganese oxide, which points to Mars having had not only a habitable environment billions of years ago, but also one possibly inhabited by microbes. NASA’s Curiosity is exploring the giant 154-kilometer (about 96-mile) diameter Gale crater, where the rover […]
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The annual Humans to Mars Summit takes place this week, bringing together members of the international space community to discuss a common goal of establishing a sustainable and permanent human presence on the Red Planet. Attendees will gather in Washington, D.C. for the 2024 Humans to Mars Summit (H2M), hosted by the nonprofit organization Explore […]
Read MoreNASA has selected nine companies to develop concepts that could aid agency science missions to Mars down the road. The agency is awarding each company between $200,000 and $300,000 for this early-stage work, with the goal of making robotic Mars exploration more efficient and more productive. “We’re in an exciting new era of space exploration, […]
Read MoreTwo NASA spacecraft will pay special attention to increasing levels of radiation that bombard Mars during this year’s approaching solar maximum, to better prepare astronauts for future missions to the Red Planet. Every 11 years or so, the sun experiences a peak in activity known as solar maximum, due to its strong and constantly shifting […]
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NASA has selected four volunteers to go on a mission to Mars — without actually leaving Earth. The simulated mission to the Red Planet will take place at a habitat created at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston; it will simulate what it would be like for astronauts to live and work on Mars for […]
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Seasonal, spider-like features have been spotted sprouting through cracks in Mars’ surface. The European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter captured new images of small, dark features that resemble spiders scuttling across the Martian region known as Inca City near the Red Planet‘s south pole. This phenomenon appears when spring sunlight warms layers of carbon dioxide […]
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Since 2012, NASA’s Curiosity rover has repeatedly detected methane on Mars, specifically near its landing site inside the 96-mile-wide (154 kilometers) Gale Crater. But that Mars methane is behaving erratically. It only appears at night, it fluctuates seasonally and it spikes unexpectedly to levels 40 times higher than usual. To make things more puzzling, the […]
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NASA’s history-making Ingenuity helicopter covered a lot of ground on Mars over the past three years, as a new video shows. The video, which was released on Thursday (April 18) by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), shows where Ingenuity went on each of its 72 Red Planet sorties, linking each flight line together in an […]
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Saying goodbye is never easy, especially from a world away. The Ingenuity Mars helicopter team convened one last time on Tuesday (April 16) to oversee a transmission from the little rotorcraft, the first robot ever to explore the skies of a world beyond Earth. The meeting, in a control room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory […]
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SpaceX’s Starship, the largest rocket in the world, will get even bigger as the company continues to target Mars missions in the future. Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of SpaceX, told employees on April 4 that Starship will eventually be as tall as 500 feet (150 meters), roughly 20 percent higher than the massive system […]
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Currently in the twelfth year of its mission, NASA’s Curiosity rover continues to press on while treading the world of Mars, delving into areas no rover has gone before. The latest phase of Curiosity’s adventure has brought it to what some scientists believe is the desiccated bed of an ancient river. As Curiosity prepares to […]
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Mars’ rusty red surface may have given it its famous “Red Planet” status, but it would also appear that thousands of white rocks are strangely littered on the Martian ground. NASA’s Perseverance rover, a robotic geologist that has been exploring the Jezero Crater since early 2021, puzzled scientists when it delivered images of over 4,000 […]
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