Results tagged “Mars”

ESA's Mars Express spacecraft has discovered several ponds of liquid water buried under the ice in the south polar region of Mars.

Recent science missions and results are bringing the search for life closer to home, and scientists at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) and the Florida Institute of Technology (FIT) may have figured out how to determine whether life is--or was--lurking deep beneath the surface of Mars, the Moon, and other rocky objects in the universe.

NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover has a challenging road ahead: After having to make it through the harrowing entry, descent, and landing phase of the mission on Feb. 18, 2021, it will begin searching for traces of microscopic life from billions of years back.

In a little more than a decade, samples of rover-scooped Martian soil will rocket to Earth.

NASA should design missions to Mars for the purpose of generating "Aha!" discoveries to jolt scientists contemplating the molecular origins of life.

A new study from The University of Texas at Austin is helping scientists piece together the ancient climate of Mars by revealing how much rainfall and snowmelt filled its lake beds and river valleys 3.5 billion to 4 billion years ago.

The Red Planet has fascinated humans for millennia, especially for the last few centuries, and particularly during the Space Age. The nagging suspicion of extant Martian life is both fed by, and drives the many space missions to Mars and recent detections of large, seasonal volumes of atmospheric methane have re-fuelled the discussion.

Insights and technology gleaned from creating a carbon-measuring instrument for Earth climate studies is being leveraged to build another that would remotely profile, for the first time, water vapor up to nine miles above the Martian surface, along with wind speeds and minute particles suspended in the planet's atmosphere.

A large number of the valley networks scarring Mars's surface were carved by water melting beneath glacial ice, not by free-flowing rivers as previously thought, according to new UBC research published today in Nature Geoscience.

NASA Launched the Mars 2020 rover Perseverance today. As Perseverance departs it leaves a troubled world behind to explore a new one in search of life. At the Perseverance post-launch media event I asked NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine and Science Mission Directorate Associate Administrator Thomas Zurbuchen about exploring a new world during such difficult times.

NASA's Mars 2020 will land in Jezero Crater, pictured here. The image was taken by instruments on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which regularly takes images of potential landing sites for future missions.

Although no life has been detected on the Martian surface, a new study from astrophysicist and research scientist at the Center for Space Science at NYU Abu Dhabi, Dimitra Atri finds that conditions below the surface could potentially support it.

ESA's ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter has spotted new gas signatures at Mars. These unlock new secrets about the martian atmosphere, and will enable a more accurate determination of whether there is methane, a gas associated with biological or geological activity, at the planet.

Nuclear spectroscopy is the only instrumentation that provides bulk geochemical constraints at depth (up to one meter in the surface). These instruments identify and quantify water and other key elements relevant to planetary exploration, including assessing planetary processes, context in the search for life, and in-situ resource utilization.

We discuss the results of a remote sensing study that has revealed new details about an important rock unit dominated by two minerals that can be associated with volcanism (olivine) and life (carbonate).

NASA has stepped closer to allowing remote onboard computers to direct the search for life on other planets.

Terrestrial planets provide Solar System insights into the evolution of accretion, core-mantle and crust-mantle differentiation, and surface processes. The Earth and Mars have equal enrichment in refractory elements (1.9 × CI), although the Earth is more volatile-depleted and less oxidized than Mars.

NASA's Perseverance Mars rover is just over a month from its July 20 targeted launch date. The rover's astrobiology mission will seek signs of past microscopic life on Mars, explore the geology of the Jezero Crater landing site, and demonstrate key technologies to help prepare for future robotic and human exploration.

The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) was sent to Mars in March 2016 to search for trace gases diagnostic of active geological or biogenic processes.

There is growing evidence suggesting the presence of aqueous environment on ancient Mars, raising the question of the possibility of life in such an environment.