MARS

Over 20 years ago, then Indonesian president Megawati Soekarnoputri banned the export of sea sand from her archipelago nation. The ban was in response to the widespread environmental and economic damage it was causing. Unchecked sea sand...
Chirality refers to objects that cannot be superimposed onto their mirror images through any combination of rotations or translations, much like the distinct left and right hands of a human. In chiral crystals, the spatial arrangement...

Signatures of ice-free ancient ponds and lakes found on Mars

Researchers have discovered two sets of ancient wave ripples on Mars, signatures of long-dried bodies of water preserved in the rock record. Wave ripples...

Where’s the most promising place to find Martian life?

New research suggests that our best hopes for finding existing life on Mars isn't on the surface, but buried deep within the crust. Several years...

Ancient Mars’ thick crust could have supported hidden water reservoirs and rare magmas, new research suggests

A new study explores how variations in Mars' crustal thickness during its ancient history may have influenced the planet's magmatic evolution and hydrological systems....

Building concrete on Mars from local materials

Imagine you've just gotten to Mars as part of the first contingent of settlers. Your first challenge: build a long-term habitat using local materials....

Mars orbiter spots retired InSight lander to study dust movement

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) caught a glimpse of the agency's retired InSight lander recently, documenting the accumulation of dust on the spacecraft's solar...

New study says we’re unlikely to find liquid water on Mars anytime soon

More than a hundred years ago, astronomer Percival Lowell made the case for the existence of canals on Mars designed to redistribute water from...

A 4.45 billion-year-old crystal from Mars reveals the planet had water from the beginning

Water is ubiquitous on Earth—about 70% of Earth's surface is covered by the stuff. Water is in the air, on the surface and inside...

Oldest direct evidence of hot water activity on Mars found

New Curtin University-led research has uncovered what may be the oldest direct evidence of ancient hot water activity on Mars, revealing the planet may...

Making Mars’s moons: Supercomputers offer ‘disruptive’ new explanation

A NASA study using a series of supercomputer simulations reveals a potential new solution to a longstanding Martian mystery: How did Mars get its...

The new Mars landing approach: How we’ll land large payloads on the Red Planet

Back in 2007, I talked with Rob Manning, engineer extraordinaire at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and he told me something shocking. Even though he...

Carbon dioxide collapse: How water flowed on an icy Mars

On a cold, ancient Mars, rivers flowed and a lake the size of the Mediterranean Sea swelled under the protection of thick ice ceilings,...

Could life exist below Mars ice? Study proposes possibilities

While actual evidence for life on Mars has never been found, a new NASA study proposes microbes could find a potential home beneath frozen...

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