The 520 days of isolation for the Mars500 crew will end on 4 November, when the hatch of their ‘spacecraft’ is opened for the first time since June last year. Scientists eagerly await the final samples as the crew count the hours to liberty. During the 17-month simulated Mars mission, the...

An instrument on NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity can check for any water that might be bound into shallow underground minerals along the rover’s path. “If we conclude that there is something unusual in the subsurface at a particular spot, we could suggest more analysis of the...

NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity, gets ready to be encapsulated and transported to the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral, Fla., later this month. At Launch Complex 41, the Atlas V rocket was moved from the Vertical Integration Facility to the launch pad on...

PASADENA, Calif.—Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have directly determined the surface temperature of early Mars for the first time, providing evidence that’s consistent with a warmer and wetter Martian past. By analyzing carbonate minerals in a...

While NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity was traveling from Victoria crater to Endeavour crater, between September 2008 and August 2011, the rover team took an end-of-drive image on each Martian day that included a drive. A new video compiles these 309 images, providing an...

In preparation for launch later this year, the “back shell powered descent vehicle” configuration containing NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity, has been placed on the spacecraft’s heat shield.  The matchup was performed by technicians at NASA’s...

More than seven years after completing their three-month prime missions on opposite sides of Mars, NASA rovers Spirit and Opportunity have been selected for lifetime achievement award honors as part of the Breakthrough Awards presented by Popular Mechanics magazine. The magazine today...

During a speech at the National Press Club today, SpaceX founder, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Technology Officer Elon Musk made what he called an “exciting” announcement – SpaceX will develop a fully reusable space transportation system. Perhaps more exciting, and a bit...

The atmosphere on Mars contains up to a hundred times more water than previously suspected, according to a new study that could change our understanding of the Martian climate, and could suggest that more water existed on the surface of the Red Planet in its early history. Using data from the...

NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) mission has reached a new milestone. Lockheed Martin has completed building the primary structure of the MAVEN spacecraft at its Space Systems Company facility near Denver. The MAVEN spacecraft is scheduled to launch in November 2013...

NASA has selected the design of a new Space Launch System that will take the agency’s astronauts farther into space than ever before, create high-quality jobs here at home, and provide the cornerstone for America’s future human space exploration efforts.  This new heavy-lift...

A NASA-led team has used radar sounding technology developed to explore the subsurface of Mars to create high-resolution maps of freshwater aquifers buried deep beneath an Earth desert, in the first use of airborne sounding radar for aquifer mapping. The research may help scientists better...

Observations over the last decade suggest that methane clouds form briefly over Mars during the summer months. The discovery has left many scientists scratching their heads, since it doesn’t fit into models of the martian atmosphere. “The reports are extraordinary,” says...

A view of a memorial to victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center towers was taken on Mars yesterday, on the 10th anniversary of the attacks. The memorial, made from aluminum recovered from the site of the twin towers in weeks following the attacks, serves as a cable...

Operators of NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter are resuming use of the mission’s highest resolution camera following a second precautionary shutdown in two weeks.  The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) instrument powered off on Aug. 27 and again on Sept. 6. In...

In September 2001, Honeybee Robotics employees in lower Manhattan were building a pair of tools for grinding weathered rinds off rocks on Mars, so that scientific instruments on NASA’s Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity could inspect the rocks’ interiors. That...

Earth microbes trying to make it to Mars must survive sterilization in NASA’s clean rooms, harsh cosmic rays during months of space travel, and the Red Planet’s unforgiving surface environment. But any bacteria that successfully hitchhike aboard the wheels of NASA’s Mars...

Opportunity is continuing the in-situ (contact) investigation of rocks around the rim of Endeavour crater. On Sol 2697 (Aug. 25, 2011), the rover bumped a mere 0.15 meters (about 6 inches) to reposition at the large ejecta block, named “Tinsdale 2.” This allowed Opportunity to...

ESA’s Mars Express has spotted a rare case of a crater once filled by a lake, revealed by the presence of a delta. The delta is an ancient fan-shaped deposit of dark sediments, laid down in water. It is a reminder of Mars’ past, wetter climate. The delta is in the Eberswalde...

The initial work of NASA’s Mars rover Opportunity at its new location on Mars shows surface compositional differences from anything the robot has studied in its first 7.5 years of exploration. Opportunity arrived three weeks ago at the rim of a 14-mile-wide (22-kilometer-wide) crater...