Mars has an asteroid entourage, with nine so-called Trojans trailing in its wake. Now it seems these travelling companions all had the same violent beginning: as the innards of a mini-planet, eviscerated in a violent collision. Some remnants may even have been incorporated into the material that became Mars.
A research team has devised a plan to make a portion of Mars more Earth-like by slamming an asteroid into it.
The Red Planet lacks a source of carbon dioxide that could transform its thin, cold atmosphere into something resembling conditions on Earth.
New research suggests that active volcanoes on the Red Planet could have created an environment habitable to ancient microbes.
Mars’s atmosphere harbours a layer of electrically charged metal atoms, and they’re not behaving as expected.
In this image from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, a group of steeply inclined light-toned layers is bounded above and below by unconformities (sudden or irregular changes from one deposit to another) that indicate a “break” where erosion of pre-existing layers was taking place at a higher rate than deposition of new materials.
Mars can blame Jupiter for its small stature. The Red Planet may be much smaller than we expect because Jupiter’s gravity beat it up as it was forming.
Last week, NASA did something many have demanded it do since the Space Launch System was unveiled in 2011: Provide more details on how the agency will send humans to Mars.
Possibly a ‘Archaeological Site’ spotted in NASA “Global Mars Surveyor Mission” photo.
Scientists in Peru conducted experiments reminiscent of the 2015 Matt Damon film the Martian, creating similar conditions on Earth
