The hits just keep on coming from the Mars Perseverance rover. It’s exploring Jezero Crater on the Red Planet, looking for evidence of microbial life in the planet’s ancient (or even recent) past. Recently it spotted a very strange-looking rock with black and white stripes. Its appearance and location sparked a lot of questions. Perseverance team members have named it “Freya Castle.”
Continue reading “Perseverance Finds a Strange Black-and-White Striped Rock on Mars”Martian Clay Could Be Hiding the Planet's Atmosphere
Ages ago in its youth, Mars appeared much like Earth. It was a warm planet with lakes, rivers, and vast seas. It had a thick atmosphere with clouds and rain. One major difference is that the atmosphere was rich with carbon dioxide instead of oxygen. Then about 3.5 billion years ago much of the atmosphere disappeared, and we haven’t understood how. A new study in Science Advances suggests that the waters of Mars may have been the key, and much of the ancient atmosphere may be locked in the surface of the red planet.
Continue reading “Martian Clay Could Be Hiding the Planet's Atmosphere”Did Mars Once Have a Third, Larger Moon?
We are all familiar with our one Moon but other planets have different numbers of moons; Mercury has none, Jupiter has 95 and Mars has two. A new paper proposes that Mars may actually have had a third larger moon. Why? The red planet has a triaxial shape which means it bulges just like Earth does but along a third axis. The paper suggests a massive moon could have distorted Mars into this shape.
Continue reading “Did Mars Once Have a Third, Larger Moon?”Mars has an Amazing Variety of Clouds
Mars has always held a special place in our hearts, likely from hints over the decades of perhaps finding signs of life, albeit fossilised and primitive. It’s been the subject of study from telescopes and space missions alike, most notably ESA’s Mars Express which has been observing the red planet for 20 years. Over the two decades of observation it has studied an amazing variety of atmospheric phenomenon which have now been catalogued in a new ‘Cloud Atlas.’ Many will be familiar to sky watchers on Earth but some are very different.
Continue reading “Mars has an Amazing Variety of Clouds”A Gravity Map of Mars Uncovers Subsurface Mysteries
A team of scientists presented a new gravity map of Mars at the Europlanet Science Congress 2024. The map shows the presence of dense, large-scale structures under Mars’ long-gone ocean and that mantle processes are affecting Olympus Mons, the largest volcano in the Solar System.
Continue reading “A Gravity Map of Mars Uncovers Subsurface Mysteries”Scientists Recreate Mars Spiders in the Lab
In 2003, strange features on Mars’s surface got scientists’ “spidey senses” tingling when they saw them. That’s when unusual “anareiform terrain” landforms appeared in images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. They’ve returned each year, spreading across the southern hemisphere surface.
Continue reading “Scientists Recreate Mars Spiders in the Lab”How the ESA’s Rosalind Franklin Rover Will Drill for Samples on Mars
Russia’s attack on Ukraine has delayed its launch, but the ESA’s Rosalind Franklin rover is heading toward completion. It was originally scheduled to launch in 2018, but technical delays prevented it. Now, after dropping Russia from the project because of their invasion, the ESA says it won’t launch before 2028.
But when it does launch and then land on Mars, it will do something no other rover has done: drill down two meters into Mars and collect samples.
Continue reading “How the ESA’s Rosalind Franklin Rover Will Drill for Samples on Mars”A Swarm of Robots to Explore Mars’ Valles Marineris
Mars is known for its unique geological features. Olympus Mons is a massive shield volcano 2.5 times taller than Mt. Everest. Hellas Planitia is the largest visible impact crater in the Solar System. However, Mars’ most striking feature is Valles Marineris, the largest canyon in the Solar System.
This fascinating geological feature begs to be explored, and a team of German researchers think that a swarm of robots is best suited to the task.
Continue reading “A Swarm of Robots to Explore Mars’ Valles Marineris”China Will Launch its Mars Sample Return Mission in 2028
While NASA’s Mars Sample Return mission has experienced a setback, China is still moving forward with their plans to bring home a piece of the Red Planet. This week, officials from the China National Space Administration (CNSA) announced their sample return mission, called Tianwen-3, will blast off for Mars in 2028. It will land on the surface, retrieve a sample, and then take off again, docking with a return vehicle in orbit. They also announced another mission, Tianwen-4 will head off to Jupiter in 2030 as well as unveiling a conceptual plan for China’s first mission to test defenses against a near-Earth asteroid.
The announcements were made this week at the second International Deep Space Exploration Conference, also known as the Tiandu Forum, held in China. China says the conference promotes international cooperation for future large-scale missions.
Continue reading “China Will Launch its Mars Sample Return Mission in 2028”One Step Closer to Solving the Mystery of Mars’ Lost Water
Few scientists doubt that Mars was once warm and wet. The evidence for a warm, watery past keeps accumulating, and even healthy skepticism can’t dismiss it. All this evidence begs the next question: what happened to it?
Continue reading “One Step Closer to Solving the Mystery of Mars’ Lost Water”