Tag: Mars
-
Launch Roundup: New Glenn and Starship headline a week dominated by SpaceX missions
SpaceX dominated this week’s launch manifest with two Falcon 9 missions and the seventh flight of its Starship rocket. The two Falcon 9 missions will see the launches of a Transporter rideshare mission, and two Moon landers. Blue Origin’s New Glenn achieved orbit on Thursday morning following the scrub of its maiden flight attempt on…
-
NASA defers decision on Mars Sample Return to the Trump administration
For nearly four years, NASA’s Perseverance rover has journeyed across an unexplored patch of land on Mars—once home to an ancient river delta—and collected a slew of rock samples sealed inside cigar-sized titanium tubes. These tubes might contain tantalizing clues about past life on Mars, but NASA’s ever-changing plans to bring them back to Earth…
-
MRO observes dormant InSight lander; collects data on Martian dust movements
NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) recently imaged NASA’s Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport (InSight) lander, which has been dormant on the Martian surface for two years. The new imagery highlights movements in Martian surface dust around InSight, providing planetary scientists with more information on Mars’s climate and atmospheric qualities. On Nov.…
-
Space science in 2024: Moon missions, Martian milestones, astrophysics discoveries, and more
2024 was another busy year for space science, with many new missions, successes, and discoveries across the solar system and beyond. Three new missions were launched to the Moon, while one mission was canceled, and Curiosity and Perseverance continued to explore and make discoveries in their respective regions on Mars. Beyond the Earth-Moon system and…
-
NASA believes it understands why Ingenuity crashed on Mars
Eleven months after the Ingenuity helicopter made its final flight on Mars, engineers and scientists at NASA and a private company that helped build the flying vehicle said they have identified what probably caused it to crash on the surface of Mars. In short, the helicopter’s on-board navigation sensors were unable to discern enough features…
-
New study provides explanation behind origins of Martian moons Phobos and Deimos
Using supercomputer simulations, a team of NASA scientists recently modeled the destruction of an asteroid around Mars to investigate the possible origins of Mars’ two, mysterious moons — Phobos and Deimos. Since their discovery in 1877 and subsequent investigations by telescopes and Martian spacecraft, scientists have pondered how the two moons came to be, and…
-
Perseverance faces challenges climbing to crater rim as sample tube supply dwindles
In August, NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover began its fifth science campaign — the rover’s most ambitious yet. The campaign has seen Perseverance climb the western rim of Jezero Crater and face its steepest and most challenging terrain yet, all the while continuing to take surface samples and look for signs of ancient microbial life. Currently, Perseverance…
-
New study reveals potential existence of life in subsurface water pools on Mars
Mars has long been theorized to be a place where ancient microbial life once existed, and NASA and other agencies have sent countless missions to the planet in hopes of uncovering the mystery that is life on Mars. While evidence for this microbial life is yet to have been found, a new NASA study from…
-
Researchers suggest new place to look for microbial life on Mars: ice with bits of dust
The white areas on the edges of these gullies in the Martian region of Terra Sirenium, shown in an image from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, are thought to be areas of dusty ice similar to those identified as potential havens for microbial life in a research study. (Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Univ. of Arizona)…
-
With NASA’s plan faltering, China knows it can be first with Mars sample return
China plans to launch two heavy-lift Long March 5 rockets with elements of the Tianwen-3 Mars sample return mission in 2028, the mission’s chief designer said Thursday. In a presentation at a Chinese space exploration conference, the chief designer of China’s robotic Mars sample return project described the mission’s high-level design and outlined how the…