Tag Archive for 'Mars'

The young Mars would have had enough water to cover its entire surface in a liquid layer about 140 m deep, but it is more likely that the liquid would have pooled to form an ocean occupying almost half of Mars’s northern hemisphere, and in some regions reaching depths greater than 1.6 km. Image credit: M. Kornmesser / ESO / N. Risinger, skysurvey.org.

What Would Alien Lifeforms on Titan and Mars-Type Exoplanets Be Like?

Aug 27, 2015 by News Staff

In a new paper published in the journal Life, Prof Dirk Schulze-Makuch of Washington State University and his colleagues from Germany draw upon what is...

A noticeable feature of the Atlantis basin is the several hundred mesas and small peaks strewn ‘chaotically’ across its roughly 200-km expanse. The uppermost layer of these elevated areas consists of light-colored material. Spectroscopic measurements have shown these consist of phyllosilicates, minerals produced in the presence of water. Image credit: ESA / DLR / FU Berlin / CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.

Fly Over Mars’ Atlantis Basin in New Video

Aug 21, 2015 by News Staff

A virtual flight across the Atlantis basin reveals a broad variety of phenomena, etched into this landscape billions of years ago. The animation is based...

Scientists Find Evidence for Ancient Lake in Meridiani Planum on Mars

Aug 7, 2015 by News Staff

A team of scientists – led by Dr Brian Hynek from the University of Colorado Boulder – has discovered evidence of an ancient lake that likely...

An artist’s depiction of Earth’s magnetic field deflecting high-energy protons from the Sun around 4 billion years ago. Image credit: Michael Osadciw / University of Rochester.

Earth’s Magnetic Field Older than Thought, Says New Study

Jul 31, 2015 by News Staff

American and Canadian scientists have reported in the latest issue of Science that the magnetic field of our planet is at least 4 billion years old, up...

Igneous clast named Harrison embedded in a conglomerate rock in Gale crater shows elongated light-toned feldspar crystals. The mosaic merges an image from Curiosity’s Mastcam with higher-resolution images from ChemCam’s Remote Micro-Imager. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / LANL / IRAP / U. Nantes / IAS / MSSS.

Curiosity Finds Evidence for Continental Crust on Early Mars

Jul 15, 2015 by News Staff

According to a team headed by Dr Violaine Sautter from the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, France, Martian crustal components bear a strong...

Map of MAVEN’s auroral detections in December 2014 overlaid on the surface of Mars: the map shows that the aurora was widespread in the northern hemisphere, not tied to any geographic location. Image credit: University of Colorado.

MAVEN Sheds New Light on Atmosphere of Mars

Jun 24, 2015 by News Staff

NASA’s MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) spacecraft has observed three phenomena in the atmosphere of Mars: a polar plume of escaping atmospheric...

This artist’s impression shows how Mars may have looked about 4 billion years ago. Image credit: M. Kornmesser / ESO.

Martian Ocean May Never Have Existed

Jun 17, 2015 by News Staff

A new study published online in the Journal of Geophysical Research – Planets suggests that a frigid, icy planet 3 – 4 billion years ago better...

A meteorite from the Red Planet. Image credit: Michael Helfenbein.

Researchers Discover Traces of Methane in Meteorites from Mars

Jun 16, 2015 by News Staff

A multinational group of scientists led by Dr Nigel Blamey of Brock University and the University of Aberdeen, UK, has found methane in fragments of Martian...

This artist’s concept shows two MarCO CubeSats and the Mars lander InSight. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Two CubeSats Will Accompany NASA’s InSight Lander to Mars in 2016

Jun 15, 2015 by News Staff

NASA’s two small Mars Cube One (MarCO) CubeSats will be flying past Mars in 2016 just as the agency’s next Mars lander, InSight (Interior Exploration...

Deposits of impact glass have been preserved in Martian craters, including Alga Crater, shown here. In color coding based on analysis of data from the CRISM instrument on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, green indicates the presence of glass; blues are pyroxene; reds are olivine. This view shows Alga Crater’s central peak, which is about 3 miles (5 km) wide within the 12-mile (19-km) diameter of this southern-hemisphere crater. The information from CRISM is shown over a terrain model and image based on observations by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera. The vertical dimension is exaggerated by a factor of two. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / JHUAPL / University of Arizona.

Scientists Detect Large Deposits of Impact Glass on Mars

Jun 9, 2015 by News Staff

Glasses formed by asteroid impacts are an important target to search for signs of ancient life on Mars, but until now they have not been detected on the...

This image of an impact crater in the Sirenum Fossae region of Mars was taken by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on March 30, 2015. Image credit: NASA / JPL / University of Arizona / Alfred McEwen.

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Beams Back Close-Up Photo of Fresh Crater

Jun 8, 2015 by News Staff

The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has captured an impressive picture of a fresh...

This image was captured by the Mars Express orbiter on November 19, 2014. Image credit: ESA / DLR / FU Berlin.

Mars Express Sees Strange Craters in Arabia Terra

Jun 2, 2015 by News Staff

This new image from ESA’s Mars Express orbiter shows bluish wind-blown deposits inside eroded craters in the Arabia Terra region of Mars. This image...

This artist’s rendition shows the InSight Mars lander spacecraft on the Red Planet. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

InSight: NASA Engineers Begin Testing Next Mars Lander

May 28, 2015 by News Staff

NASA engineers have begun testing a car-sized Mars lander, dubbed InSight, scheduled to launch in 2016. This artist’s rendition shows the InSight Mars...

The Siloe Patera structure lies close to the center of this image within the Arabia Terra region of Mars. The image was acquired by the High Resolution Stereo Camera on ESA’s Mars Express on November 26, 2014. Image credit: ESA / DLR / FU Berlin / CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.

Mars Express May Have Discovered Ancient Supervolcano on Red Planet

May 25, 2015 by News Staff

ESA’s Mars Express orbiter has captured an image of what appears to be the remains of an ancient supervolcano. The image was taken on 26 November 2014,...

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover captured this beautiful view of nightfall on the Red Planet on April 15, 2015. The red surface coloring of Mars is due to oxidized iron. At certain times of the Martian year, great dust storms occur; the large amounts of dust in the atmosphere during these storms absorb much of the incoming radiation from the Sun; this causes large temperature inversions in the Martian atmosphere. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS.

Curiosity Spies Sunset on Mars

May 11, 2015 by News Staff

This awesome-looking time-lapse sequence of the Martian sunset was created by piecing together images taken by NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity. NASA’s...

Artist’s conception of a human mission to Mars. Image credit: Les Bossinas / NASA Lewis Research Center.

What Happens to Astronaut’s Brain on Way to Mars

May 3, 2015 by News Staff

According to new research from the University of California, Irvine, and the University of Nevada, exposure to galactic cosmic rays may have long-term...

Gale crater is 155 km in diameter and now holds a layered mountain rising about 5 km above the crater floor. This illustration depicts a lake of water partially filling the crater. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / ASU / UA / Sci-News.com.

Curiosity Finds Evidence for Night-Time Brines in Gale Crater on Mars

Apr 13, 2015 by News Staff

An international team of scientists, led by Dr Javier Martin-Torres of the Spanish Research Council in Spain and the Lulea University of Technology in...

Mars has massive water glacier belts at its central latitudes. Image credit: Nanna Karlsson / Mars Digital Image Model / NASA.

Planetary Scientists Calculate Volume of Water Ice in Martian Glacier Belts

Apr 8, 2015 by News Staff

A team of planetary scientists led by Dr Nanna Bjørnholt Karlsson from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, has calculated the total volume of water...

This view from Curiosity rover’s Mastcam shows a network of 2-tone mineral veins at the Garden City area on lower Mount Sharp, Mars. This is a mosaic combining 28 images taken with Mastcam’s right-eye camera, which has a telephoto lens with a focal length of 100 mm. The component images were taken on March 18, 2015, during the 929th Martian day of Curiosity’s work on the Red Planet. The color has been approximately white-balanced to resemble how the scene would appear under daytime lighting conditions on Earth. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS.

Curiosity Spots Intriguing Mineral Veins on Mars

Apr 2, 2015 by News Staff

This March 18, 2015, view from the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA’s Curiosity rover shows a network of two-tone mineral veins at an area called Garden...

Martian aurora is similar to Earth’s Aurora borealis but has a different origin. Image credit: University of Colorado.

NASA’s MAVEN Orbiter Detects Ultraviolet Aurora on Mars

Mar 18, 2015 by News Staff

Scientists using the Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph (IUVS) instrument on NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft have observed...

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