gear Push settings
Curiosity delivers once again.
Could mud cracks have meant seasonal climate patterns on the Red Planet?
The findings bring us a step closer to finding signs of past habitability on the red planet.
Don't miss one of the most spectacular space missions this year.
Nearly 1,200 individual images taken last year were pieced together to produce this epic panorama.
Oxygen is rising and falling with the seasons unpredictably.
Curiosity is the only rover left on Mars -- and this haunting photo it recently beamed to Earth perfectly describes the feeling.
Mars' past seems to be more and more interesting.
We've learned so much about Mars, but pressing questions still remain.
Curiosity is finding water beneath the ground -- and in the sky.
It's a hint that Mars had a wet past.
Rocks collected by the new rover will be transported to Earth.
NASA engineers had to invent a new clever technique.
We're looking at a view from millions of miles away. Take a moment to appreciate this fact.
It took a bit of creative tinkering, but significant progress has been reported.
Burping methane may have bought Mars some extra time before it turned into a wasteland.
Can you make out Curiosity from this satellite photo?
We don't know whether Mars held life... but there's certainly a lot of potential.
Water on Mars? Yes please!
Mars is full of secrets, but we're unraveling them one by one.
Using its Mast Camera, the Curiosity Rover has snapped stunning images of a blue sunset on the Red Planet. The blue-tinted images show the Sun dipping into the horizon as blue streaks shroud the sky across the evening light.
NASA's Curiosity Mars rover is expected to remain stationary for at least a couple of days after a shortcircuit has rendered its arm useless for the time being. The engineering problem occurred on February 27 as the rover was preparing to start drilling in the Martian soil.
Mars - our neighbor, the Red Planet... is not actually red. The first look at what’s under Mars’s dusty red surface has revealed a clearly greyish blue rocky layer.
After an exhaustive analysis conducted over a year and a half, NASA's Curiosity Rover has finally confirmed the existence of methane on Mars, somewthing which indicates that life may have existed (or still exist) on Mars.
Curiosity is preparing for its second drill on Mars - its eyeing a rock which may have a salty story to tell. The rock may be a former lake bed, from which all the water has evaporated.
NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover has discovered a tenfold spike in methane, an organic chemical which may indicate that there actually was life on Mars – or still is. The rover detected this high concentration in the atmosphere, as well as in a rock-powder sample collected by the robotic laboratory’s drill. Curiosity on the Red Planet Curiosity has […]
New evidence beamed back by the Curiosity rover and analyzed by NASA JPL scientists suggests that the Gale Crater on Mars had large lakes, rivers and deltas for millions or tens of millions of years. The implications are huge, since if Mars ever had a chance of fostering life, it needed to not only have flowing water […]
For the first time in its mission to study Mars and the potential for life on it, the Curiosity Rover has identified a mineral. The rover took samples by drilling in a Martian mountain and was then able to make the identification. The mineral in case is called hematite. Hematite is an iron oxide (Fe2O3) […]
It’s been a while since we’ve talked about the Curiosity rover, but that doesn’t mean that it stopped studying the Red Planet. Now, NASA’s rover has reached one of its main destinations: Mars’ Mount Sharp, a Mount-Rainier-size mountain at the center of the vast Gale Crater and the rover mission’s long-term prime destination. “Curiosity now will […]
Mark Lemmon is an associate professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University and a camera operator for numerous Mars missions, especially those involving the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity. These two rovers are considered nothing short of heroes by the men and women at mission control who were part of the projects. Spirit, for instance, […]
The photo right above was captured by the Curiosity Rover’s right-hand navigation camera , currently deployed on Mars and on route to Mount Sharp, which shows a striking flare of light seemingly torching near the horizon. Taken on April 4th, the photo somehow made its way to the general public (bad idea NASA) and stirred international […]
Dating rocks is not really something new – it’s been conducted on Earth for decades now; researchers have also determined the age of rocks from outer space, but the experiments always took place on Earth. Now, for the first time, this procedure took place on Mars. The work, led by geochemist Ken Farley of the […]
NASA recently announced that it will be tasking the Curiosity rover, currently exploring Mars’ surface at the Gale Crater, with a new mission that wasn’t included in the initial plan. After Curiosity provided some of the most fantastic scientific clues in recent history when it found evidence that Mars could have supported certain kind of […]
NASA’s Curiosity rover has come up with yet another remarkable discovery – evidence of an ancient, freshwater lake, with water that was likely very similar to that of today’s Earth lakes. The feature is thought to be part of a longstanding aquatic environment which could have supported simple life forms. “In March, we did know […]
Researchers at MIT have recreated Mars-like conditions within a three-story-tall cloud chamber in Germany, adjusting the temperature and humidity to match those on Mars – basically creating Martian clouds. Judging by the images Curiosity has sent us, Martian clouds look quite similar to ours – the gauzy, high-altitude wisps look a lot like the cirrus […]
After finding no methane in the Martian atmosphere, Curiosity has shown that the soil and dust on the surface of the Red Planet contain a few percent water, judging by weight. Yes, yes, I know, Curiosity has found signs that water flowed on Mars sometime during its past (1, 2, 3), but this time, it […]
The otherwordly new video features one of the two Martian moons – Phobos, as it rises on the sky. Even though the movie only has 32 seconds, the action actually took place over the course of 27 minutes. Mars has two moons: Phobos (which is just 22 km wide on average), and Deimos, which is […]
Detailed analysis and review have confirmed the scientists’ initial opinion – the pebble containing slabs Curiosity stumbled upon last year were indeed part of an ancient streambed. When the Curiosity rover landed on Mars, it was expecting to find lots of things – but finding evidence of ancient water so close to the land site […]
Billions of years ago, Mars had a much richer atmosphere than it has today, which is rather an understatement considering how thin it is. Some scientists hypothesize that once Mars was capable of holding liquid water at its surface, with recent evidence adding weight to these claims. Recent measurements made by Curiosity‘s instruments highlight a […]
Life on Mars The sedimentary processes on Mars have generally been governed by wind, not water – but is this the case where the Curiosity rover is searching for life at the moment. If this is the case (and Curiosity will either confirm or infirm this when it reaches Mount Sharp next year), then odds […]
The Curiosity rover is in a bit of trouble and is currently facing it’s longest period of inactivity since its touchdown on Mars. At the beginning of March, the rover experience fatal memory errors in one of its two side computers, presumably due to radiation exposure, which forced scientists on Earth to put the rover into […]
The space agency just recently tweeted that it will hold a public briefing centered around the rover Curiosity to inform the public on what’s going on with the mission. The conference will be streamed live today at 1 PM ET, or in less than an hour from the time of writing. You can also watch […]
The beginning of the month was a troublesome one for humanity’s Magellan on Mars – the Curiosity rover – and its team of engineers behind it after a major malfunction forced one of its computers to enter into safe mode. Luckily, the NASA engineers have thought of almost every possible glitch and also had this […]
NASA’s Curiosity rover has been put into “safe mode” after some files which it relies on running have defected. Exactly what damaged the files on the robot’s flash memory is not known. “We’re still early on in the process,” said project manager Richard Cook.”We have probably several days, maybe a week of activities to get […]
Despite some initial worry, Curiosity’s drill worked out just fine, and now, the rover has revealed historic images that confirm it has obtained the first samples from the inside of another planet. No other rover or device has drilled to another planet and collected a sample from its interior. “Seeing the powder from the drill […]
Recently, Curiosity rover made its most complex maneuver since it landed on Mars after it drilled a promising rock, offering scientists with invaluable geological information otherwise inaccessible. This is the first time a robot has carried out a drilling operation on another planet, and the last important check in Curiosity’s scientific arsenal, signaling all the […]
Exobiologists have found what they believe to be the clearest evidence that Mars supported life – though it may not seem obvious at a first glance. The research published in Nature Geoscience shows all the needed ingredients for life in a huge crater that goes up to 5km below the planet’s surface. The McLaughlin crater, […]
The first sample from underground Mars will come from a rockbed that showcases unexpected mineral veins of gypsum. A Martian candy store Astronomers and geologists are now in the equivalent of a Martian candy store of scientific objectives: the lowest point of Gale crater, called Yellowknife Bay is literally teeming with minerals that could only […]
There seems to be consisting evidence supplied both by past and recent rover missions – like the ever sturdy Opportunity, the eager newcomer Curiosity – and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter – a spacecraft currently hovering over Mars – that our neighboring red planet was once most likely covered by oceans and lakes and was layered by a thick […]
The Mars Curiosity rover is preparing to use its drilling tool for the first time, however as preparations for the operation are being carefully made, NASA engineers are frightened that a potential malfunction of the boring drill might cause an entire electrical disaster. This might mean that the entire rover could get irrecoverably fried. The issue lies […]
