Tag Archives: Mars

A giant parachute built for Europe’s beleaguered ExoMars mission has aced a drop test with a mock lander during a test campaign in the Arctic. The double parachute system consists of a 50-foot-wide (15-meter) first-stage chute and a secondary 118-foot-wide (35m) chute, which is, according to ESA, the largest ever designed to land an object on Mars. If all goes …

Americans Want Americans To Go (Back) To The Moon (And On To Mars Too)  NASA Watch CBS News poll: Most Americans favor U.S. returning to moon, going to Mars  CBS News Growing number of people want astronauts to visit Mars  The Independent On Apollo 11 lunar landing anniversary, we look at future missions to the moon  The Mercury News 5 Reasons Why We Need …

In a potential milestone for space exploration, scientists have successfully grown algae under simulated Martian conditions using equipment made from biodegradable bioplastics — a step that could bring long-term space colonization closer to reality. As interest in human missions to Mars grows, scientists are focusing on how to sustain life in space without constant resupply from Earth. A team of …

The Day Mars Died – 60th Anniversary of Mariner 4 – YouTube Watch On On Episode 169 of This Week In Space, Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik are joined by Rob Manning, JPL’s Chief Engineer Emeritus, to look back at the Mariner 4 Mars mission 60 years later. Six decades ago this week, the Mariner 4 probe sped past Mars, …

A NASA Mars mission’s long and winding road to the launch pad is nearing its end. The twin ESCAPADE (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers) Mars probes had been scheduled to launch last October, on the first-ever flight of Blue Origin‘s huge, partially reusable New Glenn rocket. But NASA took the two spacecraft off that flight in September, citing …

Add this to the list of “things that might be fun if you had a buttload of money”: Someone forked over $5.3 million in a Sotheby’s auction to own a piece of Mars. The Red Planet meteorite was discovered in 2023 in a remote area of the Sahara Desert in Niger. Martian meteorites of any size are incredibly rare. To …

The largest piece of Mars on Earth is seen on display as part of Sotheby’s Geek Week series of auctions in New York on Tuesday. Photo by Sarah Yenesel/EPA July 17 (UPI) — A meteorite from Mars, the largest piece ever found on Earth, sold for $5.3 million to an anonymous bidder at a Sotheby’s auction in New York on …

NASA’s Viking 1 orbiter photographed this region in the northern latitudes of Mars on July 25, 1976, while searching for a landing site for the Viking 2 lander. The image shows a mesa that resembles a human face (centre), which helped to spawn a cottage industry of pseudoscientific claims about ancient Martian civilisations. Further high-resolution images from later missions revealed …

On July 15, 2025, NASA’s Curiosity Rover continued its investigation of Mars with a mix of scientific observations and geological analyses. As part of the Mars Science Laboratory Mission, Curiosity continues to explore the Red Planet’s surface with methods designed to unlock Mars’ secrets—one sol at a time. This blog post provides an inside look at the challenges and precision …

The largest individual Martian rock ever found on Earth has sold at a Sotheby’s auction for almost US$5.3 million, to an anonymous bidder. This massive chunk of Mars is a meteorite named NWA-16788, and at 24.67 kilograms (54.39 pounds), it towers over the previous record-holder, Taoudenni 002, a meteorite weighing 14.51 kg found in Mali back in 2021. The Sotheby’s …