Tagged: Mars

Even as NASA’s Mars helicopter Ingenuity has captured the imagination with flight after flight on the Red Planet, the chopper’s rover companion has been hard at work doing science, and NASA is ready to share the results. The Perseverance rover is a robotic geologist and...

NASA’s Perseverance rover is preparing to collect its first samples on Mars, a milestone that could happen within the next two weeks, agency officials announced today (July 21). Perseverance landed on the Red Planet in an ancient lake bed known as Jezero Crater on Feb....

When NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter hovered above the Red Planet April 19 on its maiden voyage, the moment was hailed as the first instance of powered, controlled flight on another planet. Figuring out how to fly on Mars, where the air is thin but gravity...

Why do some science instruments detect the gas on the Red Planet while others don’t? Reports of methane detections at Mars have captivated scientists and non-scientists alike. On Earth, a significant amount of methane is produced by microbes that help most livestock digest plants. This...

There will be all sorts of risks for any future colonists on Mars, such as extreme weather and temperatures, radiation, and the human physiological problems associated with living in with decreased gravity. But another issue is that colonists on Mars will have to be on...

A team of researchers from Spain, France and the U.S. has found evidence of a glauconitic-like clay on Mars that suggests the planet once had habitable conditions. In their paper published in the journal Nature Astronomy, the group describes their study of clay minerals extracted...

An earlier discovery of liquid water lakes beneath Mars’ south pole may not be as wet as believed, a new paper says. Using the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding (MARSIS) radar instrument aboard the European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter, scientists had...

After several weeks of bad weather and strong winds, the latest pair of high-altitude drop tests of the ExoMars parachutes took place in Kiruna, Sweden. The 15 m-wide first stage main parachute performed flawlessly at supersonic speeds, while the 35 m-wide second stage parachute experienced...

NASA’s newest six-wheeled robot on Mars, the Perseverance rover, is beginning an epic journey across a crater floor seeking signs of ancient life. That means the rover team is deeply engaged with planning navigation routes, drafting instructions to be beamed up, even donning special 3D...

Two research teams, using data from the European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter, have recently published results suggesting that what were thought to be subsurface lakes on Mars may not really be lakes at all. In 2018, scientists working with data from the Mars Express...