Astronomy, features and articles | Educational Science

Sep 2, 2021

'Perfect' Mars rock sample drilled from the Red Planet in historic mission

Following a failed first attempt last month, NASA's Perseverance rover has successfully drilled and captured a perfect rock core from the Red Planet. This puts scientists one big step closer to their goal of someday returning the rock sample to Earth, in order to study it for signs of ancient...

Sep 11, 2021

Perseverance rover collects 2nd Mars sample (photos)

NASA's Perseverance rover has now socked away two Red Planet samples. Perseverance collected a drilled-out core of a Martian rock dubbed Rochette and sealed the sample in its designated titanium tube, mission team members announced via Twitter on Wednesday (Sept. 8). The success came just four days after the car-sized...

Sep 22, 2021

Mars was doomed to desiccation

Mars was doomed to desiccation by its small size, a new study suggests. Thanks to observations by robotic explorers such as NASA's Curiosity and Perseverance rovers, scientists know that in the ancient past, liquid water coursed across the Martian surface: The Red Planet once hosted lakes, rivers and streams, and...

Sep 29, 2021

Mars on the cheap: Scientists working to revolutionize access to the Red Planet

While officials at NASA and the European Space Agency, as well as planners in China, plot out ultra-expensive and complicated missions to return samples from Mars, there are an increasing number of researchers blueprinting low-cost and novel ways to further explore the Red Planet. Be it via souped-up helicopters or...

Oct 12, 2021

Perseverance's first major successes on Mars — an update from mission scientists

In the short time since NASA's Perseverance rover landed in Mars' Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, 2021, it's already made history. At the moment, Mars and the Earth are on opposite sides of the sun, and the two planets cannot communicate with each other. After working nonstop for the past...

Oct 28, 2021

Perseverance rover snaps stunning images of Mars after communications blackout

NASA's Perseverance Mars rover has emerged from its first solar conjunction blackout and gotten back to work on the Red Planet. It's even phoned home with its first Mars photos since reawakening. The car-sized Perseverance and other Mars spacecraft had to stand down for about two weeks recently when the...

Nov 18, 2021

Is there water on Mars?

Is there water on Mars? The fourth planet from our sun, Mars, is named after the Roman God of War, so dubbed because of its bloody red color, according to NASA. In 1897, novelist H. G. Wells in his book The War of the Worlds described that this color was...

Nov 22, 2021

'False fossils' littered across Mars may complicate the search for life on Red Planet

Mars may be covered in dozens of different nonbiological false fossils, which could interfere with the search for life on the Red Planet, two researchers say. NASA's Perseverance rover touched down on Mars in February, and the European Space Agency (ESA) will launch the Rosalind Franklin rover in 2022. Both...

Dec 13, 2021

Europe's Mars orbiter relays data from Chinese rover back to Earth

The European Space Agency's Mars Express collected data from China's Zhurong Mars rover and successfully sent it to Earth following a series of experimental communications tests. The Zhurong rover was designed only to communicate with its companion orbiter, Tianwen 1; however, the rover has long outlived its planned mission and...

Dec 17, 2021

Giant reservoir of 'hidden water' discovered on Mars

An enormous cache of water has been found just a few feet beneath the surface of Mars. The European Space Agency's ExoMars orbiter has discovered significant amounts of water in the Valles Marineris canyon, the largest known canyon in the solar system. According to the researchers, 40 percent of the...

Jan 4, 2022

China's Mars orbiter snaps amazing selfies above Red Planet

China's Tianwen-1 spacecraft at Mars pulled a big New Year's surprise with stunning new images captured by a small camera that flew free of the orbiter to snap epic selfies above the Red Planet. The new images published by the China National Space Administration show Tianwen-1 above Mars' north pole,...

Jan 19, 2022

Curiosity rover finds 'tantalizing' signs of ancient Mars life

NASA's Curiosity rover has found some interesting organic compounds on the Red Planet that could be signs of ancient Mars life, but it will take a lot more work to test that hypothesis. Some of the powdered rock samples that Curiosity has collected over the years contain organics rich in...

Jan 28, 2022

Water on Mars may have flowed for a billion years longer than thought

Observations by a long-running Mars mission suggest that liquid water may have flowed on the Red Planet as little as 2 billion years ago, much later than scientists once thought. Scientists charted the presence of chloride salt deposits left behind by flowing water using years of data from NASA's Mars...

Jan 29, 2022

Giant 'tree stump' impact crater spotted on Mars

A Mars probe has snapped a peculiar image of the Red Planet's surface that looks like a giant tree stump, rings and all. The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), a joint mission by the European Space Agency (ESA) and Russia's space agency Roscosmos, studies Mars from above, circling the planet...

Mar 2, 2022

Curiosity rover snaps close-up of tiny 'mineral flower' on Mars

NASA's Curiosity rover recently got up close and personal with a tiny, flower-like mineral deposit on the surface of Mars. The beautiful branching rock, which is just 0.4 inch (1 centimeter) wide, looks a bit like a coral or a sponge. Despite its likeness to a living organism, however, the...