Europe and Russia's ExoMars rover has been assigned its destination on the Red Planet. The robot explorer will almost certainly land on Oxia Planum -- a site rich in iron-magnesium clays near the equator -- say scientists from the Landing Site Select...
The ExoMars rover may search for life near the Red Planet’s equator
Europe and Russia's ExoMars rover has been assigned its destination on the Red Planet. The robot explorer will almost certainly land on Oxia Planum -- a site rich in iron-magnesium clays near the equator -- say scientists from the Landing Site Select...
The possibility of life on Mars has been a tantalizing possibility for years, and recent discoveries have only increased excitement about whether we'll find life on the red planet. Now, a new study in Nature Geoscience posits that it's possible that...
As a planet-wide dust storm enveloped Mars, many were concerned about the fate of the Opportunity rover. After all, Opportunity is dependent on solar panels; the opacity of the dust storm meant that she wasn't getting enough light to stay powered. Th...
Things have gone from bad to worst for the Opportunity rover now that it's caught up in a massive Mars dust storm. In an update, NASA revealed that Opportunity didn't respond to a contact attempt. The team now assumes the robotic explorer's batteri...
The Mars Opportunity rover is caught in a dust storm, and the craft is hunkered down doing its best to survive the intensifying weather. The storm was first detected on Friday June 1st by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, at which point the rover's te...
The next vehicle NASA is sending to Mars nestles somewhere between a rover and a satellite, at least in terms of altitude. The agency is bundling an autonomous helicopter with the Mars 2020 rover to test airborne vehicles on the red planet.
Mars is now a dry, cold planet, but whether it once supported life is still an open question. On Earth, areas that once hosted long dried-up bodies of water have been a rich source of evidence of ancient life and because of that, those sorts of areas...
NASA's Curiosity Rover has been roaming around Mars for more than five years. In that time, it's sent back a ton of data about the red planet. Thanks to the robot, we know that the veins dotted around its craters were likely created by evaporating la...
NASA wanted to find out whether the Mars 2020 rover can truly drill for samples and look for signs of life at the same time. So, a team of scientists spent the whole February testing tools using a practice rover called the KREX-2 in one of the driest...
Is there anything cooler than sending a robot to Mars to shoot rocks with lasers? Probably not -- which is why NASA is giving the Curiosity rover the ability to shoot even more rocks with lasers. Okay, technically NASA is giving the Martian rover the...