NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is an incredibly useful tool that allows scientists to image areas of the planet’s surface with ultra-sharp detail. It has revealed many things about Mars and offered insights into how the planet’s weather has affected its geography over millions and sometimes billions of years.
NASA isn’t the only space agency with a hunger for the Red Planet. The European Space Agency would also like to snatch samples from Mars, and now they’re making their own plans for a mission that will bring back priceless pieces of our neighboring planet.
A rover scanning the surface of Mars for evidence of life might want to check for rocks that look like pasta, researchers report in the journal Astrobiology.
An evolutionary biologist has outlined what is likely to happen when people start living full-time on Mars.
The gas-shrouded Red Planet has long been associated with undercover state programmes, with multiple experiments reportedly being carried out outside Earth’s atmosphere for security reasons, but the latest one of a kind sighting has nothing to do with any technological or military drills, observers claim.
In April 2019, NASA’s InSight lander used its Instrument Deployment Camera (IDC) to capture a series of Martian sunrise and sunset images.
Here’s what a rumbling Red Planet sounds like
An independent report concluded that NASA has no chance of sending humans to Mars by 2033, with the earliest such a mission could be flown being the late 2030s.
When NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover landed in 2012, it brought along eclipse glasses. The solar filters on its Mast Camera (Mastcam) allow it to stare directly at the Sun. Over the past few weeks, Curiosity has been putting them to good use by sending back some spectacular imagery of solar eclipses caused by Phobos and Deimos, Mars’ two moons.
The space agency is hoping to launch its first manned mission to the Red Planet within the next 14 years.
