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Every 26 months or so, when the planets are favorably aligned, spacecraft can be sent to Mars at a discount—in terms of the rocket fuel required. NASA, which has a lot of experience in this area, rarely misses the chance. U.S. spacecraft have been dispatched to Mars during six of the last eight biennial launch windows.
This summer, two newcomers are ready to hop on the Mars train: China and the United Arab Emirates, the first Arab country to attempt a planetary mission. Meanwhile, NASA will up its game with the first half of a two-part campaign to collect Martian samples and return them to Earth.
Were you following this:
NASA's Curiosity rover finds clues to chilly ancient Mars buried in rocks -- ScienceDaily
In a recent Nature Astronomy report on a multi-year experiment conducted in the chemistry lab inside Curiosity's belly, called Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM), a team of scientists offers some insights to help answer these questions. The team found that certain minerals in rocks at Gale Crater may have formed in an ice-covered lake. These minerals may have formed during a cold stage sandwiched between warmer periods, or after Mars lost most of its atmosphere and began to turn permanently cold.
Testing for Mars...in the High Arctic | Aerospace Testing International
The Haughton-Mars Project is a multi-disciplinary field research program located at the Haughton impact crater site on Canada's northern Devon Island in the High Arctic. Devon Island is the largest uninhabited island in the world and the world's leading analog test site for testing the technology that is destined for use on the red planet.
The Haughton-Mars Project (HMP) research station was established on Devon Island in 1997 and is supported mainly by NASA. A range of academic, non-profit, industry and government partners also run research programs at the station. These include the HMP Science Program, which is studying the biology and geology of the site to better understand the nature and evolution of the Moon and Mars in comparison with the Earth.
What Is Mars Made Of? - SpaceRef
Earth-based experiments on iron-sulfur alloys thought to comprise the core of Mars reveal details about the planet's seismic properties for the first time.
This information will be compared to observations made by Martian space probes in the near future. Whether the results between experiment and observation coincide or not will either confirm existing theories about Mars' composition or call into question the story of its origin.
Mars is one of our closest terrestrial neighbors, yet it's still very far away -- between about 55 million and 400 million kilometers depending on where Earth and Mars are relative to the sun. At the time of writing, Mars is around 200 million kilometers away, and in any case, it is extremely difficult, expensive and dangerous to get to.
Quite a lot has been going on:
The first footprints on Mars could belong to this geologist
Jessica Watkins spent her PhD studying landslides on Mars. Now she is among the few humans with a shot at being the first to walk on the red planet.
In January, Watkins graduated as a member of NASA's newest astronaut class. As a planetary geologist, she is a leading candidate to participate in the agency's Artemis programme, which aims to send people back to the Moon by the end of 2024. Further down the line — Watkins is only 32 years old — there might even be a trip to Mars.
Colonizing Mars may require humanity to tweak its DNA | Space
Crewed missions to Mars, which NASA wants to start flying in the 2030s, will be tough on astronauts , exposing them to high radiation loads, bone-wasting microgravity and other hazards for several years at a time. But these pioneers should still be able to make it back to Earth in relatively good nick, agency officials have said.
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Genetic enhancement may not be restricted to the pages of sci-fi novels for much longer. For example, scientists have already inserted genes from tardigrades — tiny, adorable and famously tough animals that can survive the vacuum of space — into human cells in the laboratory.
Mud volcanoes on Mars hint at ancient water reservoirs | Popular Science
Curiosity Finds Evidence of Mars' Ancient Ice-Covered Lakes | Planetary Science, Space
Using data from the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument on NASA's rover Curiosity, researchers have found that certain minerals in rocks at Gale Crater, the 150-km-wide ancient basin that Curiosity is exploring, may have formed in an ice-covered lake during a cold stage sandwiched between warmer periods, or after Mars lost most of its atmosphere and began to turn permanently cold. Their findings appear in the journal Nature Astronomy .
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.
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