(NASA/JPL-Caltech/YouTube)Even in its final moments, NASA's Ingenuity helicopter continues to contribute to our understanding of Mars.The groundbreaking aircraft, designed for just five flights over 31 days, exceeded expectations by completing an astonishing 72 missions over nearly three years. Ingenuity’s extraordinary journey ended on January 18, 2024, during a routine flight in the thin Martian...
Most of the Lafayette meteorite is kept at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. (NMNH)There is increasing evidence that Mars was once a wet and watery world, with lakes and oceans shaping its surface, leaving behind sediments that are now being carefully analyzed by rovers exploring the planet’s dry, dusty landscape. We know water...
Rendering of what a watery Mars may have looked likeNASAData gathered by NASA's Curiosity rover on Mars is revealing new information about how the Red Planet became uninhabitable in the distant past, attributed to a changing climate that led to the evaporation of surface water or its entrapment as ice.Not too long ago, the...
Artist's concept of Starship entering the Martian atmosphereSpaceXSpaceX founder Elon Musk announced that the first Starship spacecraft will head to Mars within two years, with crewed missions following in 2028. This effort is part of his broader vision to make humanity an interplanetary species.Musk is known for making bold predictions that occasionally come true,...
Mars lost most of its surface water billions of years agoNASAThe promising news is that a massive underground ocean on Mars could cover the entire planet with a mile (1.6 km) of water. However, the downside is that this water is buried so deep and is so inaccessible that it might as well be...
Credit: PixabayJust over ten years ago, a robotic rover on Mars provided a long-awaited answer to a critical question: it confirmed the presence of organic material buried in the sediment of the planet's ancient lakebeds.Since then, we have continued to discover organic molecules on Mars, distributed in a manner indicating widespread carbon chemistry on...
Astronauts will encounter time dilation effects during their mission. Credit: Unsplash.When astronauts embark on a journey to Mars, the phenomenon of time dilation becomes a significant aspect of their experience. This anticipated occurrence, where time passes at different rates for observers in motion or under the influence of gravitational fields, prompts the question: How...
NASA has been the primary force in Martian research, utilizing instruments such as Hubble to capture images. However, the emergence of a formidable competitor has the potential to alter the landscape. Credit: NASA.A year ago, the Chinese National Space Administration (CNSA) quietly unveiled plans for a significant space exploration initiative, Tianwen-3, to bring back...
Credit: PixaobayResearchers have unearthed a straightforward and dependable method for detecting indications of past or present life on planets, a breakthrough often referred to as the ultimate goal of astrobiology.In the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of seven researchers has reported a groundbreaking development. Their artificial intelligence-based approach has shown...
Comparison between the classical model of rotation of Mars and the one proposed in this study. Temporal evolution of the 30-months solutions for the FCN period (a), the core amplification factor (b), and the precession rate (c), with the classical spin model (orange) and with the model with corrections on the rotation rate for the post-dust-storm period...
