The scientists operating NASA's Curiosity rover are breathing a sigh of relief after successfully removing a troublesome rock that got stuck on the end of the Mars rover's robotic arm for nearly a week. Video footage shows the robot "struggling" to shake off its pesky passenger by tilting, rotating and vibrating its metallic limb.

The first-of-its-kind fiasco began when Curiosity came across a fairly innocuous-looking rock, dubbed Atacama (after the Chilean desert on Earth), while exploring the slopes of Mount Sharp, which stands at the heart of Gale crater, near the Red Planet's equator. The rock was around 1.5 feet (46 centimeters) in diameter, 6 inches (15 cm) thick and approximately 28.6 pounds (13 kilograms), making it an ideal candidate for further analysis.

On April 25, Curiosity attempted to drill into Atacama to extract a sample that might be analyzed within its onboard "wet chemistry" laboratory. Although the robot's drill arm successfully bored into the rock, it quickly became clear that something had gone wrong.

"When the rover retracted its arm, the entire rock lifted out of the ground, suspended by the fixed sleeve that surrounds the rotating drill bit," NASA representatives wrote in a statement. "Drilling has fractured or separated the upper layers of rocks in the past, but a rock has never remained attached to the drill sleeve."

This posed an entirely new problem to the scientists controlling Curiosity, who "went to work to develop a plan to extract the drill bit from the rock," Bill Farrand, a senior research scientist at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado, who worked on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover mission, wrote in a NASA blog post. But this ended up being something of a "struggle," he wrote.

The Curiosity team initially tried to remove Atacama by "vibrating the drill to shake off the rock," but they were unsuccessful. On April 29, they tried to vibrate the drill while reorienting the arm. However, this only managed to shake tiny, sand-like fragments off the rock.

Finally, on May 1, the rock dislodged after the team attempted "tilting the drill more," as well as rotating, vibrating and spinning the drill bit. They had planned to do this multiple times. However, the rock separated at the first attempt and fell back to the Martian surface, Farrand wrote.

Images show that Atacama fractured into at least two pieces upon impacting the ground.

Unfortunately, the sample, or drill tailings, were "lost from Atacama as part of the effort to dislodge the drill bit from the rock," Farrand wrote. The Curiosity team is, therefore, "seeking a more firmly rooted drill target in order to collect drill tailings for analysis," he added.

A busy few months

Curiosity has been through a lot since it first landed on Mars in 2012, but the past few months have been particularly eventful for the wandering robot.

In late April, researchers revealed that the rover had collected seven organic molecules at once — the largest single haul on Mars to date — to go along with a "giant string" of hydrocarbons discovered in February. (Both of these findings offer clues about the potential for ancient alien life on the Red Planet.)

A few weeks earlier, in early April, Curiosity also snapped photos of dozens of what look like "dragon scales" scattered across the ground. And in March, the robot found ruby-like crystals hidden within rocks similar to Atacama.

Prior to these findings, the rover had spent more than six months closely studying a series of ridge-like features, dubbed boxwork, which look like giant rocky spiderwebs zigzagging across the Red Planet's surface, and, most recently, discovered that they are covered in tiny, egg-like structures.

Mars quiz: Is your knowledge of the Red Planet out of this world?

NASA's Perseverance rover has discovered a highly unusual rock lying on the surface of Mars. The lumpy boulder, which has a metal-rich composition, is most likely a meteorite that crash-landed on the Red Planet — and it's the first one that Perseverance has found during its four-year mission scouring Mars rocks for signs of life.

Perseverance has found many different rocks since landing within Mars' Jezero crater in early 2021, including a "spider-egg" rock, an out-of-place "skull" and, most recently, a bizarre "turtle-shaped" formation. Some of these rocks have also yielded surprising results, such as strange nodules recently found in organic-rich samples, which could be the "clearest sign" yet of past extraterrestrial life on Mars.

Until now, the one thing that all the rocks surveyed by Perseverance had in common was that they originated on Mars. But on Sept. 19, during the 1,629th Sol (Martian day) of the rover's mission, the wandering robot came across an odd-looking boulder while exploring an area of Jezero dubbed "Vernodden." The unusual rock, which measures around 31 inches (80 centimeters) across, has since been named "Phippsaksla" — and is unlikely to have a Martian origin.

"This rock was identified as a target of interest based on its sculpted, high-standing appearance that differed from that of the low-lying, flat and fragmented surrounding rocks," Candice Bedford, a geochemist and mineralogist at Purdue University's Planetary Science department, wrote in a NASA statement.

Analysis of the rock revealed it has a high concentration of iron and nickel, which is unusual in Martian rocks. But these metals are commonly found in meteorites, "suggesting that this rock formed elsewhere in the solar system," Bedford wrote. It is unclear how long it has been on Mars, but it is likely millions, if not billions, of years old.

"This is not the first time a rover has encountered an exotic rock on Mars," Bedford wrote. In fact, three different NASA rovers — Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity — have found potential meteorites during their respective missions, she added. (Of these missions, only Curiosity is still active.)

"As such, it has been somewhat unexpected that Perseverance had not seen iron-nickel meteorites within Jezero crater, particularly given its similar age to Gale crater [where Curiosity currently resides]," Bedford wrote.

Despite finding the potential meteorite roughly two months ago, the discovery has only just been announced due to the recent U.S. government shutdown. The NASA statement about Phippsaksla was originally written on Oct.1, the same day the shutdown began, and was released on Nov. 13, the day after the government reopened.

The shutdown proved to be quite eventful for NASA. Live Science's sister site Space.com recently reported that officials had likely begun implementing the agency's proposed budget cuts during this time, before they had been approved by Congress. And since the shutdown has ended, NASA scientists have been busy sharing previously withheld images of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS.

However, Perseverance remained online throughout the entire shutdown along with several other "mission-critical operations."

Martian meteorites

While finding meteorites on Mars is uncommon, here on Earth we have found lots of space rocks that came from Mars.

These Martian meteorites were ejected by other large meteor impacts on Mars, and later fell to Earth after drifting through space for thousands of years. They are highly sought after by scientists because they can tell us a lot about the rocks on Mars, just like Perseverance.

In 2024, one study found that around 200 of the Martian meteorites that have fallen to Earth originated from just five different impact craters on the Red Planet.

And in July, one Martian meteorite — a 54-pound (24.5 kilograms) space rock dubbed NWA 16788, which crashed into the Sahara desert in 2023 — was sold for $5.3 million at auction, which is a new record for a Martian space rock.

Andy Weir's bestselling story "The Martian" predicts that by 2035 NASA will have landed humans on Mars three times, perfected return-to-Earth flight systems and collaborated with the China National Space Administration. We are now 10 years past the Hollywood adaptation's 2015 release and 10 years shy of its fictional timeline. At this midpoint, Mars exploration looks a bit different than how it was portrayed in "The Martian," with both more discoveries and more controversy.

As a planetary geologist who works with NASA missions to study Mars, I follow exploration science and policy closely. In 2010, the U.S. National Space Policy set goals for human missions to Mars in the 2030s. But in 2017, the White House Space Policy Directive 1 shifted NASA's focus toward returning first to the Moon under what would become the Artemis program.

Although concepts for crewed missions to Mars have gained popularity, NASA's actual plans for landing humans on Mars remain fragile. Notably, over the last 10 years, it has been robotic, rather than crewed, missions that have propelled discovery and the human imagination forward.

Robotic discoveries

Since 2015, satellites and rovers have reshaped scientists' understanding of Mars. They have revealed countless insights into how its climate has changed over time.

As Earth's neighbor, climate shifts on Mars also reflect solar system processes affecting Earth at a time when life was first taking hold. Thus, Mars has become a focal point for investigating the age-old questions of "where do we come from?" and "are we alone?"

The Opportunity, Curiosity and Perseverance rovers have driven dozens of miles studying layered rock formations that serve as a record of Mars' past. By studying sedimentary layers — rock formations stacked like layers of a cake — planetary geologists have pieced together a vivid tale of environmental change that dwarfs what Earth is currently experiencing.

Mars was once a world of erupting volcanoes, glaciers, lakes and flowing rivers — an environment not unlike early Earth. Then its core cooled, its magnetic field faltered and its atmosphere drifted away. The planet's exposed surface has retained signs of those processes ever since in the form of landscape patterns, sequences of layered sediment and mineral mixtures.

Related: NASA rover discovers out-of-place 'Skull' on Mars, and scientists are baffled

Arabia Terra

One focus of scientific investigation over the last 10 years is particularly relevant to the setting of "The Martian" but fails to receive mention in the story. To reach his best chance of survival, protagonist Mark Watney, played by Matt Damon, must cross a vast, dusty and crater-pocked region of Mars known as Arabia Terra.

In 2022 and 2023, I, along with colleagues at Northern Arizona University and Johns Hopkins University, published detailed analyses of the layered materials there using imagery from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Odyssey satellites.

By using infrared imagery and measuring the dimensions of surface features, we linked multiple layered deposits to the same episodes of formation and learned more about the widespread crumbling nature of the terrain seen there today. Because water tends to cement rock tightly together, that loose material indicates that around 3.5 billion years ago, that area had a drying climate.

To make the discussions about this area easier, we even worked with the International Astronomical Union to name a few previously unnamed craters that were mentioned in the story. For example, one that Watney would have driven right by is now named Kozova Crater, after a town in Ukraine.

More to explore

Despite rapid advances in Mars science, many unknowns remain. Scientists still aren't sure of the precise ages, atmospheric conditions and possible signatures of life associated with each of the different rock types observed on the surface.

For instance, the Perseverance rover recently drilled into and analyzed a unique set of rocks hosting organic — that is, carbon-based — compounds. Organic compounds serve as the building blocks of life, but more detailed analysis is required to determine whether these specific rocks once hosted microbial life.

The in-development Mars Sample Return mission aims to address these basic outstanding questions by delivering the first-ever unaltered fragments of another world to Earth. The Perseverance rover is already caching rock and soil samples, including ones hosting organic compounds, in sealed tubes. A future lander will then need to pick up and launch the caches back to Earth.

Once home, researchers can examine these materials with instruments orders of magnitude more sensitive than anything that could be flown on a spacecraft. Scientists stand to learn far more about the habitability, geologic history and presence of any signs of life on Mars through the sample return campaign than by sending humans to the surface.

This perspective is why NASA, the European Space Agency and others have invested some US$30 billion in robotic Mars exploration since the 1960s. The payoff has been staggering: That work has triggered rapid technological advances in robotics, telecommunications and materials science. For example, Mars mission technology has led to better sutures for heart surgery and cars that can drive themselves.

It has also bolstered the status of NASA and the U.S. as bastions of modern exploration and technology; and it has inspired millions of students to take an interest in scientific fields.

Calling the red planet home?

Colonizing Mars has a seductive appeal. It's hard not to cheer for the indomitable human spirit while watching Watney battle dust storms, oxygen shortages and food scarcity over 140 million miles from rescue.

Much of the momentum toward colonizing Mars is now tied to SpaceX and its CEO Elon Musk, whose stated mission to make humanity a "multi-planetary species" has become a sort of rallying cry. But while Mars colonization is romantic on paper, it is extremely difficult to actually carry out, and many critics have questioned the viability of a Mars habitation as a refuge far from Earth.

Now, with NASA potentially facing a nearly 50% reduction to its science budget, the U.S. risks dissolving its planetary science and robotic operations portfolio altogether, including sample return.

Nonetheless, President Donald Trump and Musk have pushed for human space exploration to somehow continue to progress, despite those proposed cuts — effectively sidelining the robotic, science-driven programs that have underpinned all of Mars exploration to date.

Yet, it is these programs that have yielded humanity's richest insights into the red planet and given both scientists and storytellers like Andy Weir the foundation to imagine what it must be like to stand on Mars' surface at all.

This edited article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

NASA's Perseverance rover has made to a new region on Mars, which may contain some of the Red Planet's oldest and most interesting rocks.

Perseverance landed inside the 28-mile-wide (45 kilometers) Jezero Crater in February 2021, on a mission to search for past signs of Mars life and collect dozens of samples for future return to Earth.

The car-sized rover has covered a lot of ground in the past four-plus years, and it has now reached yet another new spot — a plateau of rocky outcrops that the mission team named Krokodillen, after a mountain ridge on Prins Karls Forland island in Norway. (Krokodillen means "crocodile" in Norwegian.)

Krokodillen, which covers about 73 acres (30 hectares), is a boundary of sorts between the ancient rocks of Jezero's rim and the plains beyond. Earlier work suggest that it harbors clay minerals, which form in the presence of liquid water.

If Perseverance finds more such minerals throughout Krokodillen, it would suggest that the area may have been habitable long ago — an intriguing thought, given the age of the rocks.

"The Krokodillen rocks formed before Jezero Crater was created, during Mars' earliest geologic period, the Noachian, and are among the oldest rocks on Mars," Ken Farley, deputy project scientist for Perseverance from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, said in a statement on May 19.

"If we find a potential biosignature here, it would most likely be from an entirely different and much earlier epoch of Mars evolution than the one we found last year in the crater with 'Cheyava Falls,'" Farley added.

Cheyava Falls is an arrowhead-shaped rock that Perseverance studied in 2024. The rover found chemical signatures and structures that are consistent with the activity of ancient microbial life. But such features may also have been produced by geological processes, so they remain potential rather than definitive biosignatures.

Related: Scientists find hint of hidden liquid water ocean deep below Mars' surface

Indeed, confirming the presence of current or past life on Mars may be too tall a task for Perseverance, given its limited scientific payload. That's why the rover is collecting samples that can be returned to Earth for study in well-equipped labs around the globe. (The future of Mars sample return is currently in doubt, however; the Trump administration's 2026 budget request would cancel the current plan to bring Perseverance's collected material home.)

And speaking of sampling: The Perseverance team is implementing a new strategy going forward, according to the Monday statement. The rover will now leave some of its newly filled tubes unsealed, so it can dump out collected samples in favor of potentially more exciting ones if need be. The team is taking this tack because Perseverance is getting low on unsealed tubes and still has a lot of intriguing ground to cover.

The rover carries 43 tubes, 38 of which are for collecting samples. (The other five are "witness" tubes that are designed to help the mission team determine if any materials in the collected samples are contaminants from Earth.)

Perseverance has filled all but seven of its sample tubes at this point, according to Perseverance acting project scientist Katie Stack Morgan of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

"We have been exploring Mars for over four years, and every single filled sample tube we have on board has its own unique and compelling story to tell," she said in the same statement. "This strategy allows us maximum flexibility as we continue our collection of diverse and compelling rock samples."

This article was originally published on Space.com.

NASA's Perseverance Mars rover has come across several unusual rocks that don't seem to be in their original place.

Perseverance is currently searching for signs of ancient life in the hills and rocky outcrops along the rim of the Jezero Crater — a barren, bowl-shaped depression north of the Martian equator that scientists suspect held a huge lake billions of years ago. Since December 2024, the rover has been trekking down a tall slope called Witch Hazel Hill, which scientists hope will provide clues about Mars' past climate.

On April 11, Perseverance paused at a visually distinct geological boundary where light and dark rock outcrops meet. Here, one particular rock, which scientists nicknamed "Skull Hill," stood out against the surrounding light-toned, rock-riddled surface due to its dark color, angular shape and pitted texture, according to a NASA blog post.

Related: Perseverance rover spots peculiar 'spider egg' rock on Mars — and scientists have no idea how it got there

The region, called Port Anson, contains several such rocks that may have been transported from elsewhere, scientists said. Known as "floats," these loose rocks likely traveled vast distances billions of years ago when Mars possessed a warmer, wetter environment with rivers, lakes and potentially even oceans. As the water receded and softer surrounding material eroded over eons, the more resilient rocks remained perched on the Martian soil.

"We've found a few of these dark-toned floats in the Port Anson region," the post noted. "The team is working to better understand where these rocks came from and how they got here."

The mystery of Skull Hill

According to the post, the pits on Skull Hill may have formed in a couple of ways. Small pieces within Skull Hill itself might have become loose and eroded away, leaving the holes. Another possibility is that Martian winds, carrying tiny dust and rock particles, could have acted like sandpaper, slowly wearing away the rock's surface and creating the pits.

The dark tone of Skull Hill and similar rocks could suggest they are meteorites, but recent analysis of their chemical data from Perseverance's SuperCam instrument indicates their composition doesn't match that of a typical meteorite.

Alternatively, these dark rocks could have a volcanic origin. On both Earth and Mars, minerals like olivine, pyroxene and biotite are known to give igneous rocks their dark color. If these rocks are indeed igneous, they might have come from nearby volcanic rock formations that have eroded away, or they could have been blasted out of the ground by an impact crater that excavated deeper volcanic layers.

"Luckily for us, the rover has instruments that can measure the chemical composition of rocks on Mars," according to the post. "Understanding the composition of these darker-toned floats will help the team to interpret the origin of this unique rock."

In the past few months, Perseverance has collected samples of five rocks, analyzed seven others in detail and zapped 83 more with its laser for remote study — the robotic explorer's fastest pace of scientific data collection since landing on Mars four years ago, representatives of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) said in another statement.

Mission scientists noted that it often takes months of searching the crater to find a scientifically unique rock worth sampling. On the crater rim, however, Perseverance is encountering new and intriguing rocks at every turn, according to the statement.

"Crater rims — you gotta love 'em," Katie Morgan, Perseverance's project scientist at JPL, said in the statement. "The last four months have been a whirlwind for the science team, and we still feel that Witch Hazel Hill has more to tell us — it has been all we had hoped for and more."

Scientists are keen to get the samples Perseverance has collected back to Earth to determine if life ever existed on Mars. However, NASA's Mars Sample Return mission is facing significant challenges with budget, timelines and technical complexities, leaving its future uncertain.

The ever-reliable Curiosity rover is about to begin a new quest to study giant "spiderwebs" on Mars' surface, after successfully concluding its previous mission, NASA has announced. The web-like rocks span for miles and may hold secrets about the Red Planet's watery past.

Over the last year, Curiosity has been exploring Gediz Vallis — a channel carved into the steep slopes of Mount Sharp at the heart of Gale Crater. During this stage of its 12-year mission on Mars, the rover made some important discoveries, including accidentally unveiling crystals of pure sulfur and finding "wavey" rocks left behind by an ancient lake. Mission scientists also first noticed a large hole in one of the rover's wheels as the wandering robot traversed this region's steep slopes.

But the rover's time in Gediz Vallis is about to come to a close. On Nov. 18, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) released a final 360-degree "selfie" of the area taken by Curiosity as it prepared to head off on the next leg of its epic journey, which has already lasted a decade longer than initially expected.

Curiosity's next target is a large collection of spiderweb-like surface features, known as "the boxwork," spanning between 6 and 12 miles (10 and 20 kilometers) across. This unusual patchwork of zig-zagging rocks, or boxwork deposits, was first spotted decades ago but has never been studied up close, according to a JPL statement.

The web-like features should not be confused with the infamous "spiders on Mars" — a geological feature created when carbon dioxide ice on the planet's surface sublimates, or turns into gas from a solid. Scientists recently recreated these strange features on Earth for the first time.

Related: 32 things on Mars that look like they shouldn't be there

Boxwork deposits are also found in caves on Earth. They form when calcite-rich water fills gaps between rocks and hardens before eventually eroding away, creating "thin blades of crystalline material protruding from rocky walls" similar to stalactites and stalagmites, according to the National Speleological Society. The best examples of this on our planet are found in Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota, according to the U.S. Geological Service. However, terrestrial boxwork features are never more than a few feet wide.

Martian boxwork, which has been identified at several locations across the Red Planet, is believed to form via a similar process as terrestrial boxwork. However, instead of water dripping through caves, the sprawling mineral veins were left behind by the last remnants of ancient, mineral-rich lakes and oceans.

Researchers hope that Curiosity will learn more about exactly how this happened and what it can tell us about Mars' watery past. Mission scientists are particularly interested in the minerals that make up these web-like structures because they could shed light on whether extraterrestrial life once existed on the Red Planet.

"These ridges will include minerals that crystallized underground, where it would have been warmer, with salty liquid water flowing through," Kirsten Siebach, a Curiosity mission scientist at Rice University in Houston who has been studying the area, said in the statement. "Early Earth microbes could have survived in a similar environment. That makes this an exciting place to explore."

Curiosity will arrive at the boxwork at some point in early 2025.

Even Mars rovers like to chase solar eclipses.

On Sept. 30, NASA's Perseverance rover turned its Left Mastcam-Z camera toward the sky and photographed a solar eclipse from Mars, capturing the planet's moon Phobos partially blocking the sun's disk.

In the series of photographs, you can distinctly see the shape of Phobos, which resembles a lumpy potato. Phobos, which is the larger of Mars' two tiny moons, isn't spherical like our own moon — or many moons in our solar system, for that matter — but rather irregular like an asteroid.

Measuring roughly 17 miles by 14 miles by 11 miles (27 by 22 by 18 kilometers), this Phobos orbits Mars at an exceptionally close distance — just 3,700 miles (6,000 km). By comparison, our moon circles at an average distance of 238,855 miles (384,400 km) from Earth. And Phobos is a fast mover, completing three orbits of Mars in a single day.

Related: NASA's Perseverance rover may already have found signs of life on Mars, discovery of ancient lake sediments reveals

While Phobos might look like an asteroid, it likely isn't one. In fact, the origin of Phobos is one of the moon's biggest mysteries. Some scientists have ruled out Phobos as a captured asteroid for one main reason — its orbit around Mars is nearly perfect. If Mars' gravitational pull had snagged a passing asteroid, the abducted object likely would have an irregular orbit.

Current theories about the origin of Phobos and its companion moon, Deimos, revolve around some form of accretion, whether that's from leftover material as Mars formed or from a cataclysmic collision between the Red Planet and another celestial body.

Perseverance's recent photo series of Phobos isn't the first time the rover has imaged a solar eclipse; it also photographed the oblong moon transiting the sun in April 2022 and February 2024.

And, in fact, Perseverance wasn't even the first rover to image such an event. NASA's twin Spirit and Opportunity rovers observed Phobos solar transits in 2004, while Curiosity recorded the first video of one in 2019. See? Rovers really do love chasing solar eclipses!

Originally posted on Space.com.

NASA's Perseverance rover has spotted a funky "zebra rock" on Mars' Jezero crater that's nothing like any rock seen on the Red Planet before.

The rover captured images of the black-and-white striped rock earlier this month using a camera mounted high on its mast. NASA scientists acquired the images Sept. 13, after Perseverance had already left the area, according to a statement.

The rock, which scientists dubbed "Freya Castle," has a never-before-seen texture. "Our knowledge of its chemical composition is limited, but early interpretations are that igneous and/or metamorphic processes could have created its stripes," NASA representatives wrote in the statement.

Igneous processes are those related to the crystallization of magma, while metamorphic processes are changes in the composition of rocks due to high heat and pressure.

Freya Castle measures roughly 8 inches (20 centimeters) across. The zebra rock is loose and different from the underlying bedrock, suggesting it originated from somewhere else, according to the statement.

Related: 'Martian dog' and dozens of other mysterious blobs found hiding under Mars' north pole in new 'gravity map'

One possibility is that the rock may have rolled down from farther up the crater. "This possibility has us excited," NASA representatives said. "We hope that as we continue to drive uphill, Perseverance will encounter an outcrop of this new rock type so that more detailed measurements can be acquired."

Perseverance is currently climbing the steep slopes of the Jezero crater, where it first touched down in February 2021. It has been nearly a month since the rover began its ascent. Progress was slow to start with, but in recent days, the rover has cruised along flatter stretches of terrain, according to the statement.

Perseverance has completed four science campaigns so far on Mars, and the crater ascent is the start of a fifth called the Crater Rim Campaign. The rover is on the hunt for signs of ancient life and clues about the early history of the Red Planet. It has already made potentially groundbreaking discoveries, including ancient lake sediments that could contain microbial fossils.

Freya Castle is one of several intriguing rocks spotted by Perseverance on the Jezero crater. In June, NASA received images showing an unusually light-colored boulder near the crater's Mount Washburn, and in July, the agency acquired photographs of a leopard-spotted rock holding tantalizing clues about ancient life on Mars.

Scientists hope the zebra rock will be one of many discoveries during the rover's fifth mission. "As we start the Crater Rim Campaign, our rover is in excellent condition, and the team is raring to see what’s on the roof of this place," Art Thompson, the Perseverance project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, said in an earlier statement Aug. 14.

NASA's Perseverance rover has spotted an unusually light-colored rock in Mars' Jezero Crater — the likes of which has never been seen on the Red Planet before. According to project researchers, the strange boulder may hint at new details about Mars' ancient past.

The rock, dubbed "Atoko Point" after a similarly light-colored feature of the Grand Canyon, is "in a league of its own," clearly standing out amidst all the darker boulders dotting the search area near the crater's Mount Washburn, the team wrote in a NASA statement. Scientists caught their first glimpse of the rock as part of an 18-image mosaic taken on May 27. 

Atoko Point is estimated to measure 18 inches (45 centimeters) wide and 14 inches (35 centimeters) tall. Using the rover's camera instruments, SuperCam and Mastcam-Z, the scientists confirmed that the rock was made of pyroxene and feldspar. The team speculated that the pale rock may have been transported from a different part of the planet via an ancient river, or formed underground by a body of magma before ultimately being revealed through erosion. 

"The diversity of textures and compositions at Mount Washburn was an exciting discovery for the team, as these rocks represent a grab bag of geologic gifts brought down from the crater rim and potentially beyond," Brad Garczynski of Western Washington University in Bellingham and co-lead of the current science campaign said in the statement.

The researchers added that while Atoko is "first of its kind" spotted on Mars, it almost certainly "won't be the last" as Perseverance continues its mission toward the rim of Jezero Crater.

Related: NASA's Perseverance rover may already have found signs of life on Mars, discovery of ancient lake sediments reveals

Perseverance landed on Mars in February 2021, and has been exploring Jezero Crater — a region thought to have once been an ancient lake — ever since. The rover's primary mission is to find signs of ancient life, and it has already collected 24 geological samples for future study. 

The current trip through Jezero Crater is part of Perseverance's fourth science campaign to find carbonate and olivine minerals along the crater's rim. On Earth, carbonates are usually found on the shallow surfaces of freshwater lakes, forming when carbon dioxide reacts with water. By analyzing these minerals, scientists may catch a glimpse of the Mars' past carbon dioxide levels, an important indicator of its historical climate. Carbonates are also excellent minerals for preserving fossils, which may point to traces of ancient life, if they existed.

Recently, Perseverance has been doing a little detour from Mount Washburn to reach "Bright Angel", an area within the Neretva Vallis channel, an ancient river that once flowed to Jezero Crater. The team will decide whether to collect a rock core sample as they survey the new territory. 

It looks like something fishy is happening on Mars. NASA's Perseverance Rover recently spotted a shark-fin-looking outcrop and an accompanying crab-claw-like boulder on the Red Planet.

Since arriving on Mars on Feb. 18, 2021, the rolling robot has been exploring the Jezero Crater on Mars while hunting for signs of ancient life. But these strange rocks, captured on Aug. 18, 2023, came as surprise.

Even though the now barren and arid landscape of Mars overflowed with water billions of years ago, there is no evidence that the planet was abundant with any sort of seafood, and these images certainly don't change that. Instead, what the rocks in the image evidence is the phenomenon of pareidolia.

Pareidolia refers to the brain's tendency to perceive a meaningful image from random visual data. It is the reason we see dogs or clowns in clouds, and it has been responsible for humans catching a wide variety of famous figures in foodstuff. And Mars is no stranger to being subjected to pareidolia.

In fact, one of the most famous examples of pareidolia in history is the iconic "Face on Mars."

Related: NASA spies Martian rocks that look just like a teddy bear

What was the Face on Mars?

In July 1976, NASA's Viking 1 spacecraft was exploring Mars from orbit, taking pictures of the Martian landscape that would later be used to select a landing site for the Viking 2 lander. Then, something extraordinary was revealed in the monitors of its operators here on Earth.

The spacecraft had appeared to capture a huge sculpture of a crudely drawn face replete with eyes, a nose and a mouth. The image was shown to the public a few days after it was taken, and despite NASA being clear the appearance of a face was an illusion caused by shadows, it caused quite a fuss. Many claimed that this was the work of sentient beings.

The debate surrounding the "Face on Mars" raged (at least in certain quarters) through the 1980s, with books published on the topic and even scientific conferences held to discuss it.

Much of the sensationalism surrounding this image was settled in the late 1990s. In Sept. 1997, NASA's Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) arrived at the Red Planet, with one of its primary missions being to reexamine this rocky outcrop.

"We felt this was important to taxpayers," chief scientist for NASA's Mars Exploration Program Jim Garvin explained in a statement. "We photographed the Face as soon as we could get a good shot at it."

In April 1998, the MGS finally flew over the Cydonia region of Mars, where the supposed Face on Mars was located, capturing images ten times sharper than those taken 18 years prior by Viking 1. These revealed the formation to be much more natural in nature, with evidence of facial features fading. Still, some insisted the facial features of this supposed alien monument had been obscured by haze as the MGS flew overhead.

However, such objections were dealt a serious blow in April 2001 when the same spacecraft imaged the outcrop on a cloudless day for Cydonia. This revealed the Face on Mars to be a butte, or mesa, which is a common geological feature in the western United States.

"It reminds me most of Middle Butte in the Snake River Plain of Idaho," Garvin said. "That's a lava dome that takes the form of an isolated mesa about the same height as the Face on Mars."

Yet, the revelation that this Martian facial sculpture was little more than a common geological structure hasn't quelled our passion for space simulacrum.

In May of this year, Perseverance's fellow Martian rover caught a shadowy feature in a rock face nicknamed the "East Cliffs" that many claimed was a "doorway" carved into the rock. Some even speculated that this could be one end of a passageway leading to an underground bunker.

NASA poured cold water on speculation when it revealed this so-called doorway was little more than a few inches wide and tall. Geologists also spoiled the party by adding that it is likely the result of several straight-line fractures coinciding.

But there was more to discuss as a recent image by the agency's Curiosity rover seemed to show an abandoned spoon floating over the surface of the Red Planet.

The hovering cutlery imaged on Aug. 30 was actually revealed to be a strangely shaped rock, with NASA officials writing in an image description: "There is no spoon. This weird Mars feature is likely a ventifact — a rock shaped by wind."

The "Martian spoon" is just further evidence that humans really eat up all Mars-related pareidolia. Though these images ultimately represent random rock formations, speculating about their significance can be fascinating in itself.

NASA's Perseverance rover has found a diverse menagerie of organic molecules in a Martian crater, a new study reports.

Organic compounds are molecules composed of carbon, and often include other elements such as hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur. Previously, scientists had detected several types of organic molecules of Martian origin — in meteorites blasted off Mars by cosmic impacts that landed on Earth, and in Gale Crater on the Red Planet, which NASA's Curiosity rover has been exploring since 2012.

"They are an exciting clue for astrobiologists, since they are often thought of as building blocks of life," study lead author Sunanda Sharma, a planetary scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, told Space.com.

However, "importantly, they can be created by processes not related to life," Sharma emphasized. As such, investigating what organic molecules exist on the Red Planet and how they were created is key to understanding what may or may not be linked to life on Mars.

Related: 'Anomalous' metal spheres unlikely to be alien technology, despite Harvard scientist's claim

"As planetary scientists and astrobiologists, we are very careful with laying out claims — claiming that life is the source of organics or possible biosignatures is a last-resort hypothesis, meaning we would need to rule out any non-biological source of origin," Sharma said.

In the new study, Sharma and her colleagues analyzed data from Perseverance. In February 2021, the rover landed within Jezero Crater, the site of an ancient lake basin that prior work suggested displayed high potential for past habitability. The crater floor also possesses clays and other minerals that may preserve organic materials.

Specifically, the scientists examined data from the Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals (SHERLOC) instrument onboard Perseverance. SHERLOC is the first tool on Mars capable of conducting fine-scale mapping and analysis of organic molecules.

The researchers focused on SHERLOC data from Máaz and Séítah, two rock formations on the Jezero Crater floor. When ultraviolet light from SHERLOC illuminates organic compounds, they can glow much like material beneath a blacklight. The fingerprint of wavelengths in the glow from a molecule can help identify it.

Sharma and her colleagues found signs of organic molecules in all 10 targets that Perseverance drilled into at Máaz and Séítah, covering a span of time from at least about 2.3 billion to 2.6 billion years ago. These "point to the possibility that building blocks of life could have been present for a long time on the surface of Mars, in more than one place," Sharma said.

The scientists discovered evidence of many different classes of organic molecules. These occurred in a variety of patterns in space within Máaz and Séítah, suggesting they might have originated from a number of different minerals and mechanisms of formation. These organic compounds mostly appeared connected to minerals linked to water.

"Seeing that the possible organic signals differ in terms of type, number of detections and distribution between the two units of the crater floor was surprising and exciting," Sharma said. "That opens the possibility of different formation, preservation or transportation mechanisms across the crater and, more broadly, the surface of Mars."

The scientists could not identify specific organic molecules. "To confirm the presence of organics and their specific types, we would need the samples to be returned to Earth," Sharma said. "That's our goal."

The scientists detailed their findings online today (July 12) in the journal Nature.

Originally posted on Space.com.

China's Zhurong Mars rover has found evidence of a dramatic shift in Mars' climate 400,000 years ago, in the form of dark ridges laid on top of bright dunes that ripple across the sands of Utopia Planitia, which the rover is exploring.

Scientists led by Li Chunlai from the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences used the rover's instruments, coupled with high-resolution observations from China's Tianwen-1 Mars orbiter, to take a closer look at large sand dunes near where Zhurong landed in May 2021.

The crescent shape of the dunes has been eroded over hundreds of thousand years, with long dark ridges, called transverse aeolian ridges (TARs), forming on top of the dune fields, but apparently at a different angle than that of the wind-blown dunes. TARs have been observed all across Mars at lower mid-latitudes, but global atmospheric circulation models that describe the direction of the winds on the Red Planet have been unable to explain how the features could have formed — until now.

Related: Bizarre sand dunes on Mars are 'almost perfectly circular,' and scientists don't know why

Zhurong's investigation of the dunes found that their crescent-shaped bodies are made of brighter material underneath the darker material that forms the TARs. From orbit, Tianwen-1 observed 2,262 bright dunes across Mars, and based on the number of craters that have impacted on top of the dunes, the research team estimates that they formed between 2.1 million and 400,000 years ago. That means the dark TARs must have formed on top of them within the past 400,000 years.

These dates coincide with the start and end of Mars' last major ice age. For the TARs to have formed at a different angle to the dunes implies that the wind direction in the lower mid-latitudes must have changed with the end of the ice age.

The ice age began and ended because of changes in the angle at which Mars spins, brought about by Milankovitch cycles. These cycles involve a periodic wandering of a planet's rotational axis relative to the plane of its orbit, caused by the combined effects of the gravity of the sun, Jupiter and the other planets, as well as the shape and precession of the planet's orbit. 

Both Earth and Mars experience these cycles, which correspond to climatic shifts. In the case of Mars, its angle of rotation (referred to as its obliquity) varied between 15 degrees and 35 degrees between 2.1 million and 400,000 years ago, playing havoc with its climate. Today, Mars' obliquity is about 25 degrees.

Somewhat surprisingly, an ice age on Mars is not quite the same as on Earth. Typically, Martian ice ages see warmer temperatures at the poles, and movement of water vapor and dust towards the mid-latitudes, where they are deposited. During the last ice age, this water and dust formed a meters-thick layer that still remains beneath the surface in selected locations below 60 degrees latitude, and almost everywhere above 60 degrees.

The current geological era on Mars is known as the Amazonian epoch, which began sometimes between 3.55 and 1.88 billion years ago and is defined by the number of impacts over that time.

"Understanding the Amazonian climate is essential to explain the current Martian landscape, volatile matter reservoirs and atmospheric state, and to relate these current observations and active processes to models of the ancient climate of Mars," Li said in a statement. "Observations of the current climate of Mars can help refine physical models of Martian climate and landscape evolution, and even form new paradigms."

Meanwhile, the Zhurong rover entered hibernation during Mars' long northern winter. It is yet to reactivate, and its fate remains uncertain. In April, Chinese scientists admitted that the rover's solar panels are likely coated with dust, meaning that the rover may never wake up.

The findings were published on July 5 in the journal Nature.

Originally posted on Space.com.

The Ingenuity Mars helicopter's two-month silent stretch is over.

Ingenuity got in touch with its handlers on June 28 via its robotic partner, the Perseverance rover, NASA officials announced on Friday, June 30. It was the first such communication since April 26, when the 4-pound (1.8 kilograms) chopper went dark toward the end of its 52nd flight on the floor of Mars' Jezero Crater.

"The portion of Jezero Crater the rover and helicopter are currently exploring has a lot of rugged terrain, which makes communications dropouts more likely," Ingenuity team lead Josh Anderson, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, said in a statement.

"The team’s goal is to keep Ingenuity ahead of Perseverance, which occasionally involves temporarily pushing beyond communication limits," Anderson added. "We're excited to be back in communications range with Ingenuity and receive confirmation of Flight 52."

Related: Facts about the Mars helicopter Ingenuity, 1st aircraft to fly on Red Planet

Ingenuity covered 1,191 feet (363 meters) of ground on the 139-second-long Flight 52. The main goals of the sortie were to reposition the chopper and snap photos for Perseverance's science team, NASA officials said.

The newly received flight data suggest that Ingenuity remains in good health. If further checkouts confirm that, the chopper could fly again within the next few weeks, team members said.

Ingenuity and the life-hunting, sample-collecting Perseverance landed inside Jezero in February 2021. The chopper quickly aced its primary mission, a five-flight campaign designed to show that aerial exploration is feasible on Mars. Ingenuity then embarked on an extended mission, during which it's serving as a scout for Perseverance.

All communications to and from Ingenuity must be routed through Perseverance. That explains the recent silent spell, which the two mission teams had expected: The rover had disappeared behind a hill from the helicopter's perspective, and it didn't come back into view until June 28.

Ingenuity's handlers have battled through other communications issues lately as well. In early April, for example, the chopper went dark for six days, a surprise dropout that had the mission team sweating a bit.

Originally posted on Space.com.

After months of silence, Chinese government officials have finally revealed the fate of the nation's robotic Mars explorer, which stopped moving nearly a year ago. 

Zhurong, China's first Mars rover, is likely covered in dust, coating its solar panels and making it impossible to generate enough power to wake up from a planned hibernation, Zhang Rongqiao, chief designer of China's Mars exploration program, told China's state television CCTV, according to Al Jazeera. 

This scenario has long been considered the most likely reason that Zhurong never woke up from the hibernation it entered in May 2022. The rover was expected to wake again in December 2022 as winter in the Martian northern hemisphere drew to a close and sunlight became more abundant, but the rover remained quiet. In March, NASA images of the Red Planet showed the rover in the same position where it had entered its hibernation period, nearly one year earlier.

There was hope that an unusually cold Martian winter was to blame and that perhaps the rover might wake when temperatures rose. But Zhang's comments on Tuesday indicate that dust is the most likely culprit. The rover exceeded its original mission time by three months, exploring a broad plain on Mars known as Utopia Planitia for 358 days before it went silent, Zhang said. In that time, the rover traveled 6,302.5 feet (1,921 meters). 

The rover landed on Mars in 2021 with the goal of studying Martian rocks, soil, magnetic fields and weather. According to a description published in 2021 in the journal Innovation, the rover carried six instruments, including subsurface detector radars, a surface composition detector, a surface magnetic field detector, a multispectral camera, a weather station and a camera for navigating the Martian terrain. The name Zhurong comes from the god of fire in Chinese mythology. 

During its time on Mars, the rover snapped a selfie and captured images of the Martian surface. It recorded the sound of the Martian wind and took part in experiments in relaying information between the European Space Agency and the China National Space Administration. 

NASA's Perseverance and Curiosity rovers continue to explore the Martian surface. According to NASA, China's future space plans include a sample-return mission to the moon and detailed surveys of the lunar south pole. 

China's Zhurong rover may have reached the end of its lifespan on the Red Planet. 

New images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter reveal that the Mars rover did not move from its spot on Utopia Planitia, a large plain in Mars' northern hemisphere, between September 2022 and February 2023. The rover had been in a planned hibernation since May 2022, but was expected to wake up in December as winter in Mars' northern hemisphere came to a close and sunlight to power the rover became more abundant. 

However, China's space agency has been silent on the rover's status, according to Live Science's sister site Space.com. In January, two anonymous sources familiar with the country's Mars program, known as the Tianwen-1 mission, told the South China Morning Post that the rover has failed to re-establish communication with mission control. 

Related: Mars meteorite that crashed to Earth contains 'huge diversity' of organic compounds

The new images from NASA were released Feb. 21 and show the rover on Sept. 8, 2022 and Feb. 7, 2023. The lack of movement suggests that the rover is still in hibernation. The reason could be an unusually cold Martian winter — the temperature must be at least 5 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 15 degrees Celsius) for Zhurong to operate, according to Tianwen-1 mission officials — or it could be that dust is obscuring the rover's solar panels, making it impossible for the robot to power up. Dusty solar panels spelled the doom of NASA's Mars InSight rover, which sent its last photograph back to Earth on Dec. 19, 2022, after four years on the Red Planet.

Zhurong has yet to be declared officially dead, and might come back to life if temperatures warm or if a storm blows its solar panels clean. However, the new images confirm that the rover did not wake as expected at the end of its planned hibernation period.

Zhurong is China's first planetary rover. It began its exploration of the Martian surface on May 22, 2021, beaming photographs and audio clips of the Utopia Planitia landscape back to Earth. The rover carries a ground-penetrating radar for imaging the Martian subsurface, a magnetometer to measure local magnetic fields, a climate station, multiple cameras, and spectroscopy instruments to determine the molecular makeup of Mars samples. 

The original mission was planned to last three months, but Zhurong continued operating for a full year before its planned hibernation. The larger Tianwen-1 mission also includes an orbiter, which will continue to collect data on Mars' atmosphere and surface regardless of the rover's fate.

The current generation of Mars rovers may have trouble confirming any signs of ancient life on the Red Planet because their scientific instruments aren't up to snuff, according to research published Feb. 21 in the journal Nature Communications. 

In the study, researchers conducted tests on sedimentary rocks in the Red Stone region of Chile's Atacama Desert, one of the oldest and driest deserts on Earth and a geological analog to ancient sites on Mars that two NASA rovers are currently exploring. The same team of researchers previously discovered that Red Stone's clays are inhabited by a previously unknown mix of ancient and modern microorganisms dubbed the "dark microbiome." 

Using four instruments that are on current or upcoming Mars rovers, the team studied samples from Red Stone and found them incapable of detecting organic material. Only genetic sequencing, a procedure that can be done only in a laboratory on Earth, was capable of finding evidence of microbial life in the samples — but even then, it was barely detectable. 

Any ancient organic material and microorganisms that exist in the Martian rock record could therefore be "hard, if not impossible" to detect in their current locations with existing technology, the researchers concluded. The new research stresses that, other than sending more advanced rovers to the Red Planet, the only way to prove unequivocal signs of life on Mars is to send samples back to Earth for DNA analysis. 

"The chance of obtaining false negatives in the search for life on Mars highlights the need for more powerful tools," lead study author Armando Azua-Bustos, a research scientist at the Center of Astrobiology (CAB) in Madrid, said in a statement. 

So, scientists can either develop more sensitive and complex instrumentation for Mars rovers, or bring samples back to Earth. Each option comes with risks and benefits, the authors added.

"You need to decide whether it's more advantageous having limited capability for analysis on the surface of Mars to interrogate a wide variety of samples or having limited samples to be analyzed with the wide variety of state-of-the-art instrumentation on Earth," study co-lead author Alberto G. Fairén, a planetary scientist and astrobiologist at Cornell University, said in the statement. 

There are currently three rovers on Mars. NASA's Curiosity rover landed in Mars' Gale Crater in 2012 and recently found its best evidence yet for water and waves on the Red Planet. Since 2021, NASA's Perseverance rover has been exploring an ancient river delta at Jezero Crater for signs of ancient microbial life in the rock record. The rover is currently preparing samples that will be collected by a spacecraft and returned to Earth for in-depth analysis, though the challenging mission is still in its early stages. 

In May 2021, Curiosity and Perseverance were joined by China's Zhurong rover, which landed in the Utopia Planitia plain and quickly found evidence of water. However, that rover isn't searching for signs of ancient life.  

Meanwhile, the European Space Agency plans to launch its delayed ExoMars mission in 2028 to land its Rosalind Franklin rover in the clay-bearing plain of Oxia Planum. 

“This European rover will carry a drill with the unprecedented capability of reaching down to a depth of 2 meters (6.5 feet) to analyze sediments better protected against the harsh conditions on the Martian surface," Fairén said. "If biosignatures are better preserved at depth, which we expect, there will be more abundance and diversity, and better preservation of biosignatures, in those deep samples." 

A small pile of pebbles is clogging up the Perseverance Mars rover's operations. 

The rover, which is collecting rock samples for eventual return to Earth, began to struggle on Dec. 29, after extracting a core from a rock the mission team nicknamed "Issole." According to a NASA blog, the problem occurred in the device that transfers the drill bit and sample out of the rover's drill arm and into a carousel inside the rover's chassis for storage. During the transfer, sensors within the rover recorded a higher-than-normal amount of friction at an unexpected point in the process. 

The rover shut down and sent an alert back to Earth. Operators requested more data from the rover, but Perseverance took about a week to respond due to the mismatch between Martian days and Earth days, which restricts how quickly data can transfer. Once the data arrived, the team ordered the rover to act as its own mechanic by removing the drill bit and undocking its drilling arm in order to photograph its own innards. 

Related: Perseverance rover collects 2nd Mars sample (photos)

The resulting images revealed the problem: a small pile of pebbles inside the carousel. These bits of debris fell off the sample during the transfer process, blocking the drill bit from sitting properly inside the bit carousel. 

The carousel is designed to operate even in the presence of some debris, but NASA operators are taking their time to work out a solution. 

"This is not the first curve Mars has thrown at us — just the latest," Louise Jandura, chief engineer for sampling & caching at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, wrote in the blog post. "One thing we've found is that when the engineering challenge is hundreds of millions of miles away (Mars is currently 215 million miles from Earth [346 million kilometers]), it pays to take your time and be thorough. We are going to do that here," she added.

The Perseverance rover landed on Mars on Feb. 18, 2021. It is exploring Jezero Crater, which was once a river delta. The goal is to take rock and soil samples to assess the crater for signs that it once hosted life. The rover has equipment that can do some analysis on board, but the hope is that a future Mars mission will be able to retrieve and return the rover's rock samples to Earth. 

This is not the first time the Perseverance team has had to overcome a sampling hiccup. The rover's very first attempt to collect a rock sample failed. But the rover soon succeeded in collecting a pair of rock samples in quick succession. 

Originally published on Live Science

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 inexpensive landers and orbiters, they say it's time to script new ways to gather more data from a variety of places on that remote world. 

How to use relatively low-priced craft for a next round of investigation is backed by Bethany Ehlmann, a planetary scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

Related: A brief history of Mars missions

"Mars, like Earth, is diverse. Different locales capture different environmental snapshots," Ehlmann told Space.com. There's plenty of exploration to do, she added, citing the possibility of visiting amazing and exotic sites that spacecraft have imaged from orbit, such as the Valles Marineris canyon system and the Martian polar caps. 

"A system as complicated as Mars requires breadth as well as depth," Ehlmann said, "and that means finding new ways to explore at multiple locations by lowering the price per spacecraft mission through technology or new programmatic paradigms and collaborations. Imagine half a dozen mobile Mars explorers, operated by universities around the country … That would get students energized about careers in science and engineering!"

After decades of Mars exploration, many of the important questions that remain can be answered only with boots on the ground, be those "boots" robotic or human, Ehlmann said.

'NewSpace' approaches

"NASA has always been a very risk-averse agency. This is completely understandable, since taxpayer dollars are being spent," said Robert Lillis, Associate Director for Planetary Science and Astrobiology within the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley.

Lillis points to NASA's Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration (SIMPLEx) program as a "bold effort" to facilitate first-rate planetary science at a fraction of the cost of a typical Discovery mission. (NASA's Discovery program supports ambitious but relatively low-cost exploration efforts. The current cost cap for a Discovery mission is about $500 million.)

SIMPLEx also serves as a pathfinder to investigate the trade-off between cost and risk, Lillis said.

For example, the Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (EscaPADE) mission is a SIMPLEx undertaking, one that promises a very good bang for the buck in terms of science per dollar, said Lillis, who's EscaPADE's principal investigator. The total cost of this Mars mission, which is projected to arrive in orbit around the Red Planet in 2026, is pegged at under $80 million. 

The twin EscaPADE probes will provide a unique "stereo" perspective to Mars' highly complex upper atmosphere system, Lillis said. "Our two spacecraft — Blue and Gold — will provide us with two pairs of eyes, enabling us to, for the first time, understand the real-time response of Mars' patterns of atmospheric loss to the electromagnetic gusts and gales of the solar wind that buffet Mars," he said.

Taking "NewSpace" approaches to spacecraft development will allow constellations of small satellites to explore and monitor the Martian atmosphere with unprecedented fidelity and coverage, Lillis said. "We'll be able to see all parts of the planet at all times of day, from the surface to the upper atmosphere."

Lillis added that this kind of "situational awareness" will be crucial to protect future human explorers, in two primary ways. First, better characterization of near-surface air pressure and wind allows for safer entry, descent and landing. Second, weather monitoring will enable accurate weather forecasting through data assimilation.

"When we talk about weather forecasting on Mars being important for the safety of explorers, we're talking about dust storms, regional or global," Lillis said. "Dust storms reduce solar power generation and visibility."

Related: What would it be like to live on Mars?

Dot the distant planet

A new technology to land on Mars cheaply and safely is the Small High Impact Energy Landing Device (SHIELD) concept, now under study at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California.

"SHIELD is basically both a lander and a shock absorber in one," said Louis Giersch, the primary investigator for SHIELD. 

"It won't be able to put a spacecraft like the Perseverance rover on the surface, but it could allow scientists to study more of the Martian surface while riding along with larger NASA missions," Giersch added. "We're still evaluating what kinds of science instruments make sense, but weather sensors, cameras and mass spectrometers are all on the drawing board."

SHIELD's goal is to reduce Mars lander costs by an order of magnitude, making doable a broad suite of potential missions. For example, the tech could potentially allow NASA to put down dozens of individual robots over a relatively short timespan, dotting the distant planet with landers. 

Giersch said that SHIELD will place more limitations on science payloads relative to more conventional Mars landers. The science payloads will need to be even more compact and rugged, he said, but with the anticipated benefit of more frequent access to the Martian surface as a result of reduced mission cost.

Related: The best (and worst) Mars landings of all time

Paradigm shift

"The opportunity for low-cost frequent access to Mars is here," added JPL's Nathan Barba, systems engineer for SHIELD. That door was opened when the Mars Cube One (MarCO) A and B cubesats, nicknamed EVE and WALL-E, completed a successful flyby of Mars in November 2018. The duo, which cost just $18.5 million for JPL to build and operate, hitched a ride with NASA's InSight Mars lander.

"SHIELD could be delivered as a single lander or many in a single launch. A low-cost lander like SHIELD could enable first-time measurements or pathfinder exploration like ground-truthing information that is critical for larger, more-expensive missions," Barba said.

Increased access to space is exciting, Barba continued, "because it means more opportunities for science at Mars. If a new class of lower-cost interplanetary missions were to come to fruition, it would foster an even more diverse set of investigations and provide an opportunity for many new early-career scientists and engineers."

Smaller, lower-cost spacecraft missions could provide decadal-class science in parallel to the Mars sample return campaign, Barba said. The paradigm shift in capability and cost can be attributed to many factors, from an order-of-magnitude reduction in launch cost, enabled by rideshare and emerging small launch vehicles, to the fabrication of science instruments capable of high-precision and/or fundamentally novel measurements, he said.

Teachable moments

Yet another future Mars investigation idea has already been bolstered by the multiple flights of NASA's Ingenuity helicopter. Ingenuity, a technology demonstrator, has clearly showcased its aerial "Wright stuff" — but what comes next?

"Flights of Ingenuity have been beyond what we could have imagined," said Shannah Withrow-Maser, Mars Science Helicopter Vehicle Systems Lead at NASA's Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley. "Each flight is teaching us more and more and opening doors for future mission concepts," she told Space.com.

One idea that's percolating is an advanced Mars helicopter, a hexacopter device that can haul larger payloads and travel greater distances than the currently flying Ingenuity. Withrow-Maser said this Mars Science Helicopter approach is taking shape courtesy of the teachable moments supplied by Ingenuity data, which is downloaded and evaluated after each flight.

"There's a little bit of holding your breath every time Ingenuity flies," Withrow-Maser said. "We're taking it one flight at a time. It far exceeds the boundaries of what was designed for and tested here on Earth." 

Aerial exploration

Defining a future rotorcraft for Mars is just its own beast, Withrow-Maser said. "We're able to do some really cool things with rotorcraft," she said, "taking off from anywhere and also hover[ing] over objects of interest."

Now being appraised is a future mid-air deployment of a hexacopter, which would be released part way through the entry, descent and landing process. Potentially, a variety of Mars features that are tough or impossible for rovers to explore could be surveyed — for example, polar caps, vertical cliffs and mud volcanoes.

The craft could also zip over the intriguing Martian dark streaks known as recurring slope lineae, which might be signs of liquid water activity. A hexacopter could also potentially help map out vertical profiles of the atmosphere or even dive into lava tube openings.

"The community is just starting to get an idea of what might be done using aero-exploration," Withrow-Maser said. "A rotorcraft allows us to move much further and faster. New vehicle platforms can be a catalyst for all types of science. I think we're in a good position to be able to take advantage of any opportunities that would come our way."

Leonard David is author of the book "Moon Rush: The New Space Race," published by National Geographic in May 2019. A longtime writer for Space.com, David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.

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 rover collected its first-ever Martian sample, which was also cored from Rochette. 

Related: Where to find the latest Mars photos from NASA's Perseverance rover

Perseverance landed inside the Red Planet's 28-mile-wide (45 kilometers) Jezero Crater on Feb. 18. The six-wheeled robot's chief tasks are hunting for signs of ancient Mars life and collecting and caching dozens of samples, which will be brought to Earth by a joint NASA-European Space Agency campaign a decade or so from now. 

Early in its mission, the rover also supported and documented the first few flights of NASA's technology-demonstrating Ingenuity helicopter, which traveled to Mars on Perseverance's belly. Ingenuity is now embarked on an extended mission, scouting out areas of potential interest to the rover.

Once Perseverance's samples arrive here, scientists in labs around the world will study them for evidence of life and clues about Mars' climate and geological history, NASA officials have said.

Perseverance first tried to collect a sample on Aug. 5 but was stymied by an unexpectedly soft target rock, which crumbled to bits beneath the rover's percussive drill. Rochette is made of much sturdier stuff, as the two latest drilling efforts have shown.

NASA will hold a news conference at 12 p.m. EDT (1600 GMT) on Friday (Sept. 10) to discuss the recent sampling efforts and what the Perseverance team has learned about Rochette to date, among other topics. You can watch it live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA, or directly via the space agency.

The briefing participants will be:

• Lori Glaze, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division at NASA headquarters in Washington
• Jessica Samuels, Perseverance surface mission manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California
• Matt Robinson, Perseverance strategic sampling operations team chief, JPL
• Katie Stack Morgan, Perseverance deputy project scientist, JPL
• Yulia Goreva, Perseverance return sample investigation scientist, JPL
• Meenakshi Wadhwa, Mars sample return principal scientist, JPL and Arizona State University

Mike Wall is the author of "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook. 

NASA's Perseverance rover's first sample collection didn't go as planned due to trouble with a "unique" and unexpectedly powdery Mars rock. 

Perseverance launched to the Red Planet on Feb. 18 to search for signs of ancient Mars life and collect and store samples for future study back on Earth. However, when the rover made its first attempt to take a sample of Martian dirt on Aug. 6, things didn't go exactly as planned in a series of events that Louise Jandura, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory's chief engineer for sampling and caching, described as a "rollercoaster of emotions" in a NASA statement. 

Initial signs suggested that the rover had successfully collected and stored a chunk of Martian material in one of its 43 sample tubes. But the morning after the collection, the volume measurement and post-measurement images came in and mission team members back on Earth determined that the sample tube was actually empty. After two days of investigating what happened, the team declared that this particular Martian rock was too powdery to be successfully collected.

The science and engineering teams working on the mission found that, they think, the "uniqueness of this rock" at this sampling site is the "dominant contributor to the difficulty in extracting a core from it," Jandura said in the statement. "The hardware performed as commanded, but the rock did not cooperate this time."

Related: Where to find the latest Mars photos from NASA's Perseverance rover

"It took a few minutes for this reality to sink in but the team quickly transitioned to investigation mode. It is what we do. It is the basis of science and engineering," Jandura said about the moments after team members realized that what they thought was Perseverance's first successful Mars sample capture wasn't so successful after all. 

To expand a bit on what exactly happened, the team came to three different conclusions after investigating the sampling event. 

They found that there was no unusual response from the "Corer," the drill that collects Martian rock samples; in images of the sampling site, they found no intact sample core or pieces on the surface; and, perhaps most notably, they found that the "unusual rock" they tried to sample ended up being just "powder/small fragments which were not retained due to their size and the lack of any significant chunk of a core," according to the statement.

"It appears that the rock was not robust enough to produce a core," Jandura added in the statement. "Some material is visible in the bottom of the hole. The material from the desired core is likely either in the bottom of the hole, in the cuttings pile, or some combination of both. We are unable to distinguish further given the measurement uncertainties." 

Despite the difficulties of this first attempt, Jandura said that the team's outlook remains positive. 

"It reminds me yet again of the nature of exploration," Jandura said. "A specific result is never guaranteed no matter how much you prepare. Despite this result, science and engineering have progressed. We achieved the first complete autonomous sequence of our sampling system on Mars within the time constraints of a single Sol [one Martian day, about 40 minutes longer than one Earth day]. This bodes well for the pace of our remaining science campaign."

Because of the difficulties of this sampling attempt, the team will have Perseverance travel to a new location before attempting to grab another piece of Martian rock. Mission teams will have Percy roll to its next sampling site, which is located in a region known as South Seitah, which is the farthest point from where the rover landed that the team has planned for it to collect samples. 

The current goal is to attempt this sample collection in early September, according to the statement. 

Email Chelsea Gohd at cgohd@space.com or follow her on Twitter @chelsea_gohd. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

This May, China landed a rover on Mars, expanding the nation's growing presence in space. The feat showed the world the nation's space capabilities and fueled fires anew of competition in space, but is there truly cause for concern?

China became the second nation ever to successfully land on Mars when its Zhurong rover touched down May 14 on the Martian plain of Utopia Planitia . Zhurong's arrival  followed NASA's successful landing of its own Perseverance rover in Jezero Crater on Mars Feb. 18. This step is one of many being taken by China to expand its presence in space, including the development of a space station and continued exploration of the far side of the moon by its lunar rover Chang'e 4. 

However, while leaders in the U.S. space sector like new NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and the former astronaut Pam Melroy, the nominee for deputy administrator, congratulated China on this incredible accomplishment, they also shared words of caution, with Nelson describing China as "a very aggressive competitor."

Related: China's Tianwen-1 Mars mission in photos

Issuing a warning

In dramatic fashion, Nelson issued a warning to U.S. lawmakers during a May 19 congressional hearing, holding up a photo from Mars snapped by China's Zhurong rover. "I want you to see this photograph … it is a very aggressive competitor," he said about China. 

"They're going to be landing humans on the moon. That should tell us something about our need to get off our duff and get our Human Landing System program going vigorously," Nelson said, adding that China's recent progress in space adds "a new element as to whether or not we want to get serious and get a lot of activity going in landing humans back on the surface of the moon." 

Nelson seemed to imply that China's success in space puts more pressure on NASA to land humans back on the moon. With its Artemis program, NASA is currently working to return humans to the lunar surface and establish a sustainable human presence on the moon by the end of the decade. 

Nelson added that China is developing three "big landers" to land near the moon's south pole, the same region Artemis aims to land. He also asserted, pointing to unnamed reports, that China is planning a flyby and a lunar landing this decade. 

Political support

Nelson used his warnings on China's progress to make the case for increased funding for the U.S. space agency. "NASA can't do it alone," he said. "We want a vigorous competition, but we've got to have the money in order to be able to do that." 

"Nelson knows that NASA needs more money than it currently has to carry out the Artemis program to return humans to the moon," David Burbach, associate professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, told Space.com. Burbach's comments are his personal opinion and do not reflect the opinions of his employer.  

"I think it mostly was a very convenient way to remind the senators that there are competitors in space," Burbach added. "I don't think it's likely that China is going to beat the U.S. back to the moon. And we certainly have an aggressive program of Mars exploration. So I think it's a stretch to suggest that China is about to surpass the United States in those areas. But Nelson is correct that China is quickly catching up to become a very serious player in deep space exploration."

Nelson is not alone in his concern. Melroy was questioned about China's activity in space during a Senate hearing on May 20 and pointed to China's numerous recent achievements. "It's not just the landing on Mars, which is very impressive, but also a couple of landings on the moon, and of course the new construction starting of a low Earth orbit space station," Melroy said.

"China has made their goals very clear — to take away space superiority from the United States," she added.

Not everyone feels the same way. 

"I think China is a long way from taking away space superiority," Burbach said. Rather, he added, "I think China is moving into the number two slot if there's a global pecking order for space capabilities." Burbach also raised the issue of what "space superiority" means, for "if we are talking about who does the most exciting or most challenging [things in space], I think the U.S. still is in a pretty good position."

Not just about a rover landing

Melroy posits that her concern doesn't just arise from China's continued accomplishments. "We are right to be concerned, when you add the other concerns of intellectual property theft and aggressive behavior in space." 

There have been concerns over the years about illegal information sharing as, by public law NASA "may not engage in any bilateral activities with China or Chinese-owned companies," according to NASA. In fact, in January 2021, according to a report from Reuters, a NASA scientist pleaded guilty to lying about ties that he had to a Chinese government program that recruits researchers from abroad to develop relationships.  

"NASA will continue to follow the law," she continued. "It's there to ensure that the U.S. thinks very carefully about any kind of engagement with China. However, we have to operate together in the space domain. So there are times when it's in the best interest of the United States to talk to China."

In May, China sparked worldwide concern when the nation's Long March 5B rocket (CZ-5B), fell uncontrolled back to Earth. The rocket launched Tianhe, the first module for China's new space station. While predictions estimated that it was unlikely that the booster or pieces of the booster would land in a populated area, it remained a possibility. Luckily, the rocket's remains fell in the Indian Ocean, well away from populated areas, but the danger sparked quite a bit of worry both at NASA and around the world. 

"Spacefaring nations must minimize the risks to people and property on Earth of re-entries of space objects and maximize transparency regarding those operations," Nelson wrote in a statement before the rocket crashed back to Earth. 

"It is clear that China is failing to meet responsible standards regarding their space debris. It is critical that China and all spacefaring nations and commercial entities act responsibly and transparently in space to ensure the safety, stability, security, and long-term sustainability of outer space activities," he added.

"Landing a rover on Mars doesn't impact America's national security, but China is working on other types of space capabilities and technologies that impact America's national security," Brain Weeden, director of program planning at Secure World Foundation, told Space.com in an email. Weeden's comments are his personal opinion and do not reflect the opinions of his employer.  

China's accomplishments on Mars and the moon aside, the country has been steadily working on military uses of space including anti-satellite missile testing, and, according to a 2018 report, developing hypersonic weapons, activities which the U.S. department of defense has been watching. At the same time, China has been reaching out to other countries to expand international cooperation, most recently by agreeing to build a research station on the moon with Russia. 

Looking to the future

So what's next? China continues to develop its space station and explore Mars and the moon as the U.S. continues its many space ventures. With the law prohibiting bilateral activities between NASA and China, collaboration in general is extremely limited. 

However, despite political constraints on information sharing, researchers will go on to publish papers about Zhurong's findings on Mars. As it's not a direct transfer of information between the two nations, this is a small way in which, in the U.S. and abroad, scientists can benefit from exploration no matter which country's rover collected the data. 

"The Chinese lunar rover results have been published in scientific journals," Edwin Wright, a planetary geoscientist at the University of Chicago, told Space.com. "So the results are shared in that way with the community." Additionally, while NASA scientists are not able to work with China, "academic scientists are free to collaborate with Chinese scientists," he added. 

Currently, competition seems to outweigh collaboration as both nations continue to push the boundaries of science and technology in space. Still, as we have seen throughout NASA's history, especially with the political pressures of the 1960s "space race" with the former Soviet Union that drove NASA to land the first humans on the moon, competition can spark innovation.

"I hope that this competition spurs both the U.S. and China and others to advance space technologies and capabilities that result in more benefits for everyone on Earth," Weeden said. "But if there's too much emphasis on the 'us or them' rhetoric, the competition in space could worsen tensions here on earth that leads to conflict, which would be bad for everyone."

The possibility of increased political and also social tension is an added concern, especially as studies have shown that anti-Asian hate crimes increased in 2020 and continue to rise in 2021 (fueled in part, experts think, by the COVID-19 virus originating in China).

"For the last four plus years, many in the U.S. have been making China out as the enemy without always distinguishing between the Chinese people, the country of China, and the ruling Chinese Communist Party," Weeden said. "The hard part is calling out the irresponsible behaviors of the government, like the CZ-5B reentry, while not making it a racist indictment of an entire people or culture."

Email Chelsea Gohd at cgohd@space.com or follow her on Twitter @chelsea_gohd. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

China has released the first photographs taken by its Zhurong rover, which touched down on Mars late on Friday (May 14) as part of the country's Tianwen-1 mission.

The China National Space Administration (CNSA), which runs the mission, has released two Mars photographs taken by the rover: one in color and one in black and white. Both images show parts of the rover and its lander against a backdrop of Utopia Planitia, the expansive northern plain that Zhurong will explore during its mission.

Related: China's Tianwen-1 Mars mission in photos

The color image shows a view looking to the rear of Zhurong from a navigation camera above the rover's main deck. Solar arrays are visible, as are some surface rocks and features. The black and white image is from an obstacle avoidance camera at the front of the rover. It was captured with a wide-angle lens that also revealed a view of the Mars horizon in the distance, as well as two subsurface radar instruments on the rover itself.

In addition to the photos from the surface, CNSA also released two short videos of the orbiter and Zhurong rover's landing capsule separating during Friday's maneuver. Both videos come from cameras on the orbiter and show the capsule pulling away.

China's successful Mars landing made the country only the second nation to successfully soft-land on Mars, joining the United States. The Soviet Union and the European Space Agency have also sent missions to the Red Planet's surface, but those landings have not been successful. Zhurong's arrival brings the active Mars rover tally to three, joining NASA's Curiosity and Perseverance rovers.

The landing comes as part of China's Tianwen-1 mission, which was also the nation's first successful Mars orbiter; China was the sixth entity to notch that accomplishment in February. Tianwen-1 translates to "Heavenly Questions"; the name Zhurong honors an ancient Chinese fire god. 

The six-wheeled, 530-lb. (240 kilogram) Zhurong rover carries six instruments that the rover will use to study geology and climate in the Utopia Planitia region. The rover is meant to operate for about three months. 

Zhurong's next milestone is expected to occur on Friday or Saturday (May 21 or May 22), when the rover will make its way down the pair of ramps seen in the new greyscale image to reach the Martian surface proper.

Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her on Twitter @meghanbartels. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. 

NASA's Mars rover Perseverance is starting to take the measure of its new Red Planet home.

For the past five weeks, Perseverance has been focused primarily on supporting and documenting the pioneering flights of its little cousin, NASA's 4-lb. (1.8 kilograms) Mars helicopter Ingenuity. But the car-sized rover has been doing science work of its own in the background as well.

For example, Perseverance has extensively photographed its surroundings — the boulder-studded floor of Mars' 28-mile-wide (45 kilometers) Jezero Crater, where the rover and chopper touched down on Feb. 18 — with its high-resolution Mastcam-Z imaging system. 

In photos: NASA's Perseverance rover mission to the Red Planet

Perseverance has also studied nearby rocks in greater detail using two other instruments: its rock-zapping SuperCam laser and the WATSON ("Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and Engineering") camera at the end of its robotic arm.

The mission team is keen to know whether the stones are volcanic or sedimentary in origin. Volcanic rocks can serve as geological clocks, allowing researchers to better understand the history and evolution of Jezero, which hosted a lake and a river delta billions of years ago. And sedimentary rocks, which form through the deposition of dirt and sand over time, have greater potential to preserve signatures of Mars life, if it ever existed at Jezero.

Hunting for biosignatures is one of Perseverance's two core mission tasks, along with collecting and caching several dozen samples of potential astrobiological significance. That pristine Mars material will be hauled to Earth by a joint NASA-European Space Agency campaign, perhaps as early as 2031.

Determining the Jezero rocks' origin may require abrading their surfaces and obtaining compositional information from their interiors using two other instruments on the robotic arm, PIXL ("Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry") and SHERLOC ("Scanning for Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals").

"When you look inside a rock, that's where you see the story," Perseverance project scientist Ken Farley, of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, said in a statement.

Perseverance is set to ramp up its science work considerably, for its days as a helicopter observer are mostly over. Ingenuity wrapped up its main technology-demonstrating mission last week and is now embarking on an extended mission designed to showcase the scouting potential of Red Planet rotorcraft. 

So Ingenuity will continue to fly for a while, on sorties that could help the Perseverance team pick the most efficient routes and identify rock formations that merit up-close inspection.

Mike Wall is the author of "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook. 

NASA's little Mars helicopter has opened its eyes on the Red Planet.

The 4-lb. (1.8 kilograms) chopper, known as Ingenuity, snapped its first color photograph on Saturday (April 3), shortly after being lowered to the Martian dirt by the Perseverance rover.

The tableau shows "the floor of Mars' Jezero Crater and a portion of two wheels of NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover," agency officials wrote in a description on Monday (April 5), when the photo was released.

Video: Watch NASA's Mars helicopter unfold like a butterfly

The car-sized Perseverance landed inside the 28-mile-wide (45 kilometers) Jezero on Feb. 18 with Ingenuity firmly attached to its belly. The rover deployed Ingenuity on Saturday and has since moved a short distance away, allowing the Martian sunlight to reach the solar-powered rotorcraft.

Over the next few days, Perseverance will drive still farther away, to a place called Van Zyl Overlook, which provides a good view of the airfield that mission team members have chosen for Ingenuity. If all goes according to plan, Ingenuity will lift off as soon as Sunday (April 11), conducting the first-ever powered flight in the skies of a world beyond Earth.

The goal is to demonstrate that this exploration mode is feasible on Mars. If Ingenuity performs well during its month-long, five-flight campaign, future Red Planet missions could commonly include helicopters, as scouts for rovers and as explorers in their own right, NASA officials have said.

Ingenuity doesn't carry any science instruments. But the little flyer will capture imagery during its flights, and those photos should be sharper than the grainy one it snapped on Saturday from beneath Perseverance, NASA officials said.

The six-wheeled rover will attempt to document Ingenuity's flight program from Van Zyl Overlook using its high-resolution MastCam-Z camera system. There's even a chance that Perseverance could record audio of Ingenuity's sorties using its two onboard microphones, mission team members have said. There are certainly no guarantees on the audio front, however, given how quickly sound attenuates in the thin Martian atmosphere.

Ingenuity's flight program is hard-capped at one month, because Perseverance has business of its own to attend to. The $2.7 billion rover will search for signs of ancient Mars life on the floor of Jezero, which hosted a river delta and a big lake billions of years ago. 

Perseverance will also collect and cache several dozen samples, which will be returned to Earth by a joint NASA-European Space Agency campaign, perhaps as early as 2031.

Mike Wall is the author of "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook. 

When NASA’s Perseverance rover touched down on Mars in February, it carried a bit of the Wright brothers' first airplane with it.

A swatch of fabric from the airplane, known as the Flyer, is secured beneath the solar panels of an experimental helicopter, which in turn is strapped to the underside of the rover, according to a statement from NASA. The helicopter, called Ingenuity, is attached to the rover for now, but soon, if all goes well,  scientists will pilot the aircraft remotely over the surface of the Red Planet.

This flight will be attempted "no earlier than April 8," NASA said. The rover must first transport Ingenuity to a designated airfield and deploy the chopper; once dropped off, the helicopter must gather enough solar energy to power its internal heaters and prevent its instruments from freezing. 

Related: Voyager to Mars Rover: NASA's 10 greatest innovations 

"While Ingenuity will attempt the first powered, controlled flight on another planet, the first powered, controlled flight on Earth took place Dec. 17, 1903," when the Wright brothers launched their first airplane in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, according to the NASA statement. 

The brothers used an unbleached muslin material to cover the aircraft's wings. The Ingenuity chopper carries a bit of that muslin, wrapped in insulating tape and secured to a cable within the helicopter. The Carillon Historical Park in Dayton, Ohio collected the small piece of fabric, about the size of a postage stamp, from the plane's left wing and donated it at NASA's request, The Associated Press (AP) reported. 

"Wilbur and Orville Wright would be pleased to know that a little piece of their 1903 Wright Flyer I, the machine that launched the Space Age by barely one quarter of a mile, is going to soar into history again on Mars," Amanda Wright Lane and Stephen Wright, the Wright brothers’ great-grandniece and great-grandnephew, said in a statement, according to the AP. 

This isn't the first scrap of the Wright Flyer I to blast off into space. Apollo 11 carried both a bit of muslin and a splinter of wood from the Flyer during the 1969 mission to the Moon, according to NASA.

Originally published on Live Science. 

NASA's Perseverance rover continues to get up to speed on the Red Planet.

Since Perseverance's picture-perfect landing on Feb. 18, the rover team has been methodically checking out its seven science instruments and various subsystems. For example, Perseverance just deployed its wind sensor, as before-and-after photos captured by the six-wheeled robot's navigation cameras show.

The wind sensor is part of Perseverance's weather station, which is called the Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer (MEDA). The instrument will monitor air temperature, humidity, radiation, dust and wind at Perseverance's landing site, the floor of Jezero Crater, a 28-mile-wide (45 kilometers) hole in the ground that harbored a deep lake and a river delta in the ancient past.

Live updates: NASA's Perseverance Mars rover mission 

Perseverance, the heart of NASA's $2.7 billion Mars 2020 mission, will hunt for signs of life inside Jezero and collect and cache samples for future return to Earth. But that main science work won't start immediately after the rover gets up and running; Perseverance's first big job will be to find an airfield where its little helicopter buddy can take off.

That helicopter, a 4-lb. (1.8 kilograms) craft named Ingenuity, journeyed to Mars on Perseverance's belly. Ingenuity will deploy at the airfield and try to make the first-ever rotorcraft flights on a world beyond Earth, demonstrating technology that could pave the way for a whole new Mars exploration strategy. 

Ingenuity's flights will likely take place this spring, with science and sampling work commencing in earnest in the summer, mission team members have said. 

But Perseverance's early days on Mars are far from boring. The rover team has already posted more than 6,300 of the rover's Jezero photos, many of them spectacular high-resolution shots taken with Perseverance's Mastcam-Z camera system. You can find them here. Happy sightseeing!

Mike Wall is the author of "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook. 

NASA's rhinoceros-size Perseverance rover pulled off the most precise landing in Martian history Thursday (Feb. 18), touching down successfully in Jezero crater. The landing put the mobile robot laboratory in position to begin the hunt for signs of long-lost life in the ancient remnants of a river delta that once flowed through the region.

The 2,260-pound (1,025 kilograms) machine radioed home a series of short chirps during its meteoric plunge into the Martian atmosphere, indicating success during each of the complex maneuvers that were required to safely deposit its bulk on the surface. (Live Science detailed these maneuvers here.) The final stage of the landing involved a never-before-used robotic skycrane that guided the rover to a safe landing location and brought its plunge to a complete halt before lowering it 65 feet (20 meters) to the surface using cables. Relaying its signal through the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) satellite, the rover reported that it was on the surface and safe at 3:56 p.m. ET.

Related: 5 Mars myths and misconceptions

"Touchdown success! Perseverance has landed on Mars," said Swati Mohan, guidance and control operations lead for the mission and NASA's mission commentator on NASA TV's live stream during the event.

A video feed showed the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's entry, descent and landing team erupting with cheers when Perseverance sent its chirp of success, which arrived after a 15-minute delay due to the distance between Mars and Earth and a certain amount of lag from the MRO.

Perseverance hasn't yet sent any images home, though they should be coming in the following hours and days. NASA mounted cameras and a microphone on the descent vehicle and rover to record the landing. The large video files may take up to a week to fully upload across interplanetary space, NASA said.

Related: Photo tour of Jezero Crater: Here's where Perseverance will land on Mars

Perseverance's life-hunting mission means that the rover is more or less a $2.7 billion nuclear-powered geologist, carrying a big toolbelt of instruments to precisely observe the compounds present in the crater's minerals, looking for signs of ancient life. It also carries a ground-penetrating radar to study the subsurface geology of the region and an experiment designed to produce oxygen from Martian carbon dioxide — a proof of concept of a technology that would likely be a key component of any future crewed Mars missions. The rover will also collect samples that NASA hopes to return to Earth using a future joint mission with the European Space Agency.

A pigeon-sized helicopter named Ingenuity rode to the surface attached to Perseverance's belly. It's also a proof-of-concept experiment, the goal being to achieve the first powered flight on Mars.

All of that will take time to get up and running, however. For now, NASA can breathe a sigh of relief that its big project wasn't destroyed on impact.

Originally published on Live Science.

On Feb. 18, NASA's newest Mars rover, Perseverance, will descend into the Red Planet's atmosphere, braving temperatures equivalent to those on the surface of the sun as it deploys a supersonic parachute in hopes of a safe landing. 

Earthbound viewers can follow the nail-biting action at home here on Live Science, on NASA Television or on the NASA website, which will carry live coverage from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. The broadcast begins Feb. 18 at 2:15 p.m. EST (11:15 a.m. local time). There are also news conferences and informational sessions before landing day; a schedule is available on the Perseverance mission website.

The rover will search Mars' Jezero crater for signs of microbial life. The 28-mile-wide (45 kilometers) crater was once a river delta and lake, a moist environment that could have been conducive to life in Mars' past. If all goes as planned, Perseverance will be the first Mars rover to collect samples to return to Earth. Future missions by NASA and the European Space Agency will ferry the Mars rocks back.

Related: Photo tour of Jezero Crater: Here's where Perseverance will land on Mars

A long journey

The rover left for Mars on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V 541 rocket on July 30, 2020, with a 293-million-mile (471 million km) journey ahead of it. Traveling at 1.6 miles per second (2.5 km per second) through space, the rover will have to decelerate quickly when it hits the Martian atmosphere. About 10 minutes before reaching the atmosphere, the rover will drop its fuel tanks and solar panels and sensors used during its trip, a bundle known as the cruise stage. Next, special thrusters will slow the spacecraft's spinning and line it up for planetary entry. With only 5 minutes in space left, the rover will drop two 154-lb. (70 kilograms) weights to lighten its load. 

Then come the crucial final 7 minutes. As the rover hits the atmosphere, friction will cause the craft to heat dramatically. It will also slow down quickly, using thrusters to guide it through any turbulence it may meet. With only about 3 minutes to go, the rover will enter a phase NASA is calling "Straighten Up and Fly Right." The spacecraft will drop several more balances and maneuver into an appropriate angle for landing. 

At this point, the rover will be 7 miles (11 km) above the Martian surface, traveling at 940 mph (1,512 km/h). Its parachute, 70.5 feet (21.5 meters) in diameter, will explode out of its shell, slowing the craft to 200 mph (320 km/h). 

Twenty seconds later, the rover will be on the job. Its heat shields will fall away, exposing cameras and other sensors. They will immediately begin taking in data, even though the rover will still be still 6 miles (9.6 km) from the surface. An automatic navigation system will turn on, allowing the rover to steer for safe landing spots on the terrain below. At a bit over a mile (2 km) from the ground, the rover will detach from its parachute and free-fly to its landing. If all goes well, Perseverance should throttle down to a speed of 1.7 mph (2.7 km/h) just before it lands. NASA's interactive Entry Descent Landing simulator has more detail on these stages.

A rover's mission

Perseverance's mission on Mars will last at least one Martian year, or 687 Earth days. Mars rovers can far outlive their planned missions, however. NASA's Curiosity rover, launched in 2011, was originally intended for a two-year mission but is still roaming the Red Planet more than eight Earth years after landing, and the Spirit rover was active for six years despite a planned mission duration of only 92 Earth days.

Perseverance is equipped with advanced cameras and tools capable of analyzing a rock's composition based on the kind of X-rays it gives off after being zapped with a stream of high-energy X-rays. It has ground-penetrating radar for imaging the subsurface of the planet and a drill for collecting samples from below the surface. The rover will also test whether humans could survive on Mars by transforming the planet's carbon dioxide into oxygen with an experiment called the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment.

Ultimately, the goal is to look for ancient life or biosignatures left in Mars rocks. The car-sized rover is part of the Mars 2020 mission, which has a goal of eventually sending human explorers to the Red Planet.

Originally published on Live Science.

NASA's newest Mars car will touch down on the Red Planet less than 100 days from now.

The life-hunting Mars 2020 Perseverance rover, which launched on July 30, is scheduled to land inside the 28-mile-wide (45 kilometers) Jezero Crater on the afternoon of Feb. 18, 2021 — just 97 days from Friday (Nov. 13).

The home stretch will be busy for the car-size robot's handlers.

Related: NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission in photos

"While we call the six-and-a-half-month trip from Earth to Mars 'cruise, I assure you there is not much croquet going on at the lido deck," mission project manager John McNamee, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, said in a statement. 

"Between checking out the spacecraft and planning and simulating our landing and surface operations, the entire team is on the clock, working toward our exploration of Jezero Crater," McNamee said.

Perseverance — the centerpiece of NASA's $2.7 billion Mars 2020 mission — will employ the landing strategy pioneered by its predecessor, the Curiosity rover: A rocket-powered sky crane will lower Perseverance to Jezero's floor on cables, then fly off to crash-land a safe distance away.

Perseverance will use its advanced instrument suite to hunt for signs of ancient Mars life in Jezero, which harbored a lake and river delta billions of years ago. The rover will also collect and cache samples for future return to Earth and demonstrate technologies that could aid future exploration of the Red Planet.

For example, one of Perseverance's instruments, called MOXIE (short for "Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment"), will generate oxygen from the thin, carbon dioxide-dominated Martian atmosphere. A scaled-up version of MOXIE could help humanity get a foothold on the Red Planet, NASA officials have said. (The agency plans to launch its first crewed Mars missions in the 2030s.)

And a tiny helicopter named Ingenuity is flying to Mars on Perseverance's belly. After the rover has touched down and found a good place for the helicopter to conduct test flights, Ingenuity will detach and make a few short forays into the Martian skies — the first-ever flights by a rotorcraft on a world beyond Earth. If Ingenuity is successful, future Mars missions could employ helicopters to gather data in hard-to-reach places and serve as scouts for rovers, Ingenuity team members have said.

Two other Mars missions are also scheduled to arrive at the Red Planet in February 2021 — Hope, a weather-studying orbiter operated by the United Arab Emirates Space Agency, and China's Tianwen-1 mission. Tianwen-1 consists of an orbiter and a lander-rover duo; the surface craft are expected to touch down a few months after the mission slides into orbit around Mars.

Mike Wall is the author of "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook. 

A spacecraft is only as strong as its power source, which is why when NASA was designing its Perseverance Mars rover, the agency turned to radioactive plutonium.

The plutonium that blasted off the planet this morning (July 30) isn't in the same form as is used for weapons, and it's well protected in case something happens to go wrong during the launch. But these plutonium units are a respected power source for spacecraft — NASA's Curiosity rover runs on a similar device.

"NASA likes to explore, and we have to explore in some very distant locations, dusty locations, dark locations and harsh environments," June Zakrajsek, a nuclear fuel expert at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Ohio, said in a Department of Energy (DOE) podcast about the Perseverance mission. "When we're in those kinds of environments, solar energy sometimes does not provide the power that we need. The light just does not get to those locations like we would need it."

Related: NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover: Live updates 

Some NASA missions to Mars have run on solar energy, of course — the InSight lander currently operating on the Red Planet bears solar panels, as did the twin Spirit and Opportunity rovers earlier this century. But Opportunity is a mascot for the weaknesses of solar energy at Mars, since the rover's end came when a massive global dust storm blocked it from tapping into the sun's light. Run a rover on nuclear power and you don't have to worry about that scenario.

So for the Perseverance rover, NASA turned to plutonium in a system called a Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (MMRTG), which should be able to power the spacecraft for about 14 years.

"You don't have extension cords, you can't run out for a repairman," Bob Wham, a nuclear fuel expert at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, said in the same podcast. "You have to be totally reliable."

Like the rest of the Perseverance rover, the MMRTG is based heavily on that of the Curiosity rover, which launched in 2011, landed on the Red Planet in 2012, and has been steadily chugging along ever since. Perseverance's MMRTG has been in the works for seven years, nearly as long as its predecessor has been powering Curiosity, and carries a price tag of $75 million, according to the DOE.

(Nuclear power sources of other varieties have also traveled to deep space on missions like the forty-year-old twin Voyager probes and the Cassini spacecraft that dived through Saturn's rings.) 

Perseverance's MMRTG is designed to produce 110 watts of power, about the same as is used by a light bulb. The plutonium will decay, emitting heat that a generator converts into energy to power all of the rover's instruments, plus producing enough heat to protect the spacecraft from the freezing nights and winters on Mars.

The plutonium began as a different element entirely, neptunium, which scientists irradiated with neutrons in a nuclear reactor for nearly two months to convert it to the plutonium form needed for the MMRTG. The plutonium is then combined with ceramic, making a safer compound than is used in weapons.

Nevertheless, putting a nuclear power source at the tip of a rocket still prompts some cautionary measures. Most importantly, each pellet of plutonium is encased in iridium, which would contain the radioactive material if it fell back to Earth. According to NASA and the DOE, that's happened to space-bound nuclear power sources on three occasions, none of which caused any damage, with one of the power sources even being fished out of the ocean for later use on another mission.

In photos: NASA's Mars Perseverance rover mission to the Red Planet

NASA beefs up the mission control teams for such launches with additional personnel to coordinate any necessary response to the nuclear aspect of the mission. For the Perseverance launch, the government modeled a whole host of things that could go wrong on launch day — covering everything from an issue before liftoff that would have relatively compact geographic impact to a problem in Earth orbit that keeps the spacecraft from leaving for Mars.

Both of these scenarios had a probability below 0.1%, according to the government's models, and if an issue had occurred during launch, those calculations suggested that even the most concentrated radiation exposure would have been equivalent to about eight months of background radiation experienced by people living in the U.S.

And so Perseverance was loaded with an MMRTG containing 32 hot, silvery lumps of fuel, before it blasted off toward the Red Planet.

Unlike Curiosity's plutonium, some of that aboard Perseverance is relatively fresh and U.S.-made. The form of plutonium used on these missions began as a byproduct of nuclear weapon production processes, according to reporting by Slate after Curiosity's landing, and the U.S. government stopped creating its own supply of this plutonium in the 1980s, having decided it could access enough for its needs.

But lately, NASA has been stuck rationing out the power sources, which is why the DOE decided in 2015 to get back in the business of making plutonium — up to 14 ounces (400 grams) each year right now, with an eye on being able to make 3.3 lbs. (1.5 kilograms) each year by 2026, according to the DOE.

As to where that plutonium will go, one future nuclear-powered NASA mission is already in the works. The agency's Dragonfly mission, a drone bound for Saturn's strange large moon, Titan, will be powered by an MMRTG. That spacecraft is scheduled to launch in 2026.

Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her on Twitter @meghanbartels. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

A piece of Mars that fell to Earth decades ago is heading back to the Red Planet.

When NASA's Perseverance rover mission lifts off on Thursday (July 30) — if all goes according to schedule — one object on board won't be visiting Mars for the first time; it'll be going home. A Martian meteorite that was discovered in Oman in 1999 has been part of the collection of the Natural History Museum (NHM) in London since 2000. Known as Sayh al Uhamiyr 008 or SaU 008, the space rock is thought to have been blasted off Mars by an impact between 600,000 and 700,000 years ago.

For hundreds of thousands of years, that hunk of Martian rock roamed our solar system, until a bit of it landed on Earth. And now, NASA's Mars 2020 launch will carry part of the precious meteorite back to Mars, where it will be used by the rover's instrument SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals) as test material for on-site calibration, NHM representatives said in a statement.

Related: 6 reasons astrobiologists are holding out hope for life on Mars

While meteorites in the NHM collection often travel around the world for scientific study, this is the first time that one of their specimens will leave the planet, said NHM Head of Earth Sciences Collections and Principal Curator of Meteorites Caroline Smith, a member of the Mars 2020 mission's science team.

SHERLOC is mounted on a turret at the end of the rover's robotic arm. The instrument  combines a camera, a fluorescence spectrometer and a high-precision laser to identify organic molecules, minerals and potential signs of life in rock samples on the Martian surface and near subsurface, according to NASA.

Calibrating SHERLOC with the SaU 008 meteorite once the rover is on Mars will confirm that the instrument is functional before it analyzes Martian rock samples, according to the NHM statement.

"The piece that we are sending was specifically chosen because it is the right material in terms of chemistry, but also it is a very tough rock. Some of the Martian meteorites we have are very fragile. This meteorite is as tough as old boots," Smith said. 

"In addition, studying this sample over the course of the mission will help us to understand the chemical interactions between the Martian surface and its atmosphere," Smith said.

Liftoff for the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover is scheduled for 7:50 a.m. ET on July 30, live coverage begins at 7 a.m. ET on NASA TV and on the agency's website. 

Originally published on Live Science.

The Mars rover Curiosity has uncovered a potential sign of life on the Red Planet — the planet's highest-ever measurement of a natural gas called methane.

On Earth, methane primarily comes from microbes, who breathe out the gas. It's possible that life-forms hiding under Mars' crust are also responsible for this latest measurement, according to NASA. But don't get too excited — yet. Life isn't the only potential explanation for the finding. Methane is also created by chemical reactions between rocks and water, according to NASA. [9 Strange, Scientific Excuses for Why Humans Haven't Found Aliens Yet]

"With our current measurements, we have no way of telling if the methane source is biology or geology," principal investigator Paul Mahaffy of NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said in a statement.

Plus, even this record-high methane measurement pales in comparison with average methane levels on Earth. Curiosity measured methane concentrations of 21 parts per billion (ppb) on Mars. In comparison, Earth's methane concentrations are close to 1,860 ppb.

Curiosity has detected methane in the past, albeit at much lower concentrations. The average level on Mars is close to 7 ppm. But methane levels do appear to rise and fall seasonally, according to NASA. And this pattern offers a potential clue about the source of the methane. During the Martian winter, concentrations fall. In the summer, they rise once more. Scientists know that beneath the Red Planet's crust lies a layer of ice. Perhaps, in summer, ice thaws, releasing trapped bubbles of methane into the atmosphere (similar to the way Earth's arctic permafrost releases methane into the atmosphere as it melts). These methane pockets could be a relic of ancient life, according to NASA.

Methane isn't the only evidence that Mars was once hospitable to ancient life. In 2012, Curiosity identified chemical traces of 3 billion-year-old water in a Martian streambed. The following year, scientists identified some of the chemical building blocks of life in a rock sample collected by Curiosity near that same site.

The European Space Agency's Trace Gas Orbiter has been in orbit around Mars for over a year and has yet to measure any methane. By partnering with the Trace Gas Orbiter team, NASA scientists hope to eventually solve the Mars methane mystery and find the source of the natural gas.

• Interstellar Space Travel: 7 Futuristic Spacecraft to Explore the ...
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Originally published on Live Science.

NASA's Opportunity Rover has died on Mars. The little solar-paneled robot apparently ran out of battery power during the Red Planet's awesome 2018 dust storm, and after one last attempt to contact it, NASA concluded yesterday (Feb. 13) that the far-off explorer is no more.

Which raises the question: What's going to happen to its body?

Many human artifacts wouldn't last very long beyond our protective biosphere. As Live Science reported previously, solar radiation has likely shredded the Tesla Roadster Elon Musk launched into space last year.

But Tesla Roadsters have lots of organic fibers and plastics in their bodies. Mars rovers are made of tougher stuff. [Voyager to Mars Rover: NASA's 10 Greatest Innovations]

Jeff Moersch, a professor of planetary science at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and a member of the Opportunity team, cautioned that he's not an expert in the rover's engineering. But he said that Opportunity does have some plastic bits that might eventually break down under the glare of the sun — its insulation, for example.

"But, by and large, I think it'll look pretty much as we left it," when and if astronauts ever do come across its resting place, Moersch told Live Science. It'll probably be pretty dusty, though, he added.

That's assuming that astronauts do make it to Mars in the relatively near future — the next century or two, for example.

Over much longer periods, Moersch said, dust will settle on the rover. Opportunity functioned as long as it did because regular Martian winds tended to routinely blow dust off its body. But over longer periods, it's a bit of an open question whether the dust or the wind will win out.

"I doubt it will end up buried in a mound, though," he added.

What about millions of years in the future? On Earth, anything old and dead and sitting in one place on the surface tends to eventually end up underground. But that's thanks to the effects of water and plate tectonics, Moersch said — factors that aren't present in the same way on Mars.

"Over the very long-term, you're going to get impacts that knock up ejecta [airborne Mars dirt] from where they hit, and that ejecta will very gradually resurface [on] the planet and bury things that were on the surface," he said.

If Opportunity were to be left on Mars, aliens who landed there millions and millions of years from now would find the rover somewhere in the rock record — much like how paleontologists find dinosaur fossils here on Earth.

But NASA is hoping to send humans to Mars one day. And there are dreams of establishing some sort of human settlement there. Steve Squyres, a professor of astronomy at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and head of the Opportunity science mission, made clear during NASA's press conference announcing the rover's death that the agency has no plans to bring the rover back to Earth. (Why would we spend the money bringing material back from Mars when we already know exactly what it's made of? he asked.)

That said, Moersch added, when humans do settle Mars, it's not unreasonable to imagine they might make some effort to recover and preserve Opportunity. Perhaps it could end up in museum, or the region explored by the rover might end up as a national park.

Of course, if humans never get there, Opportunity might not make it into the fossil record at all. It's at least plausible that, given millions of years, a meteor could strike it directly and smash it to bits.

• 5 Mars Myths and Misconceptions
• Mars InSight Photos: A Timeline to Landing on the Red Planet
• Ancient Mars Could Have Supported Life (Photos)

Originally published on Live Science.

The European Space Agency (ESA) announced today (Feb. 7) that its next Mars rover will be named for Rosalind Franklin, the late British scientist, who was behind the discovery of DNA's double-helix structure.

ESA's ExoMars rover, "Rosalind the rover," is scheduled to launch to the Red Planet in 2020 and then land in 2021 on a mission to look for signs of life, or extinct life.

Chosen from 36,000 suggestions, the name was revealed at the Airbus facility in Stevenage, in the United Kingdom, where the rover is being assembled. [12 Amazing Women Who Totally Rocked at Science]

"This rover will scout the Martian surface equipped with next-generation instruments — a fully fledged automated laboratory on Mars," ESA astronaut Tim Peake, who is from the U.K., said during the announcement.

Today, Franklin is regarded as one of the 20th century's most overlooked scientists. While she was a biophysicist at King's College London, she captured "Photo 51"— an X-ray image of a strand of DNA extracted from human calf tissue. At that time, hers was the best shot of the double helix. Without her knowledge, her colleague Maurice Wilkins showed the image to his American collaborators James Watson and Francis Crick. Franklin's work was integral to their discovery of the correct structure of DNA.

Franklin died of ovarian cancer in 1958, at age 37, without receiving the public recognition for her work in DNA that would be heaped on her male peers. In 1962, Watson, Crick and Wilkins shared the Nobel Prize for the double-helix discovery. Nobel Prizes cannot be awarded posthumously, but it's unclear if Franklin would have been given credit at the time, anyway. (Watson wrote in his 1968 book on the discovery that Franklin was a "belligerent, emotional woman unable to interpret her own data.")

"This name reminds us that it is in the human genes to explore. Science is in our DNA, and in everything we do at ESA," the agency's director general Jan Woerner said in the announcement. "Rosalind the rover captures this spirit and carries us all to the forefront of space exploration."

The ExoMars mission is already underway, and Rosalind the rover will join other spacecraft that have been deployed to the Red Planet. In 2016, the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) successfully entered orbit around Mars. The ExoMars Schiaparelli lander collected data during its descent but failed on landing. Rosalind the rover will relay its data to Earth through communication with the TGO.

• The 7 Most Mars-Like Places on Earth
• Female Firsts: 7 Women Who Broke Barriers in Science and Tech
• Mars InSight Photos: A Timeline to Landing on the Red Planet

Original article on Live Science.

Don't worry: NASA's Mars rover Curiosity isn't falling apart.

On Monday (Aug. 13), Curiosity photographed an odd, flat object that mission team members initially thought might have fallen off the car-size robot. Indeed, they dubbed the weirdly shaped target the "Pettegrove Point Foreign Object Debris," or PPFOD in NASA-speak. (Pettegrove Point is a section of Vera Rubin Ridge, the landform Curiosity has been exploring for the last 11 months or so.)

But Curiosity's observations soon revealed that the PPFOD isn't foreign at all. [Mars Illusion Photos: Seeing Things on Mars]

"In fact, it was found to be a very thin flake of rock, so we can all rest easy tonight — Curiosity has not begun to shed its skin!" mission team member Brittney Cooper, an atmospheric scientist based at York University in Toronto, wrote in an update Thursday (Aug. 16).

"Perhaps the target should have been given a different name befitting the theme of the current quadrangle in which Curiosity resides: 'Rabhadh Ceàrr,' or 'False Alarm' in Scottish Gaelic," she added.

Curiosity recently drilled a Pettegrove Point rock dubbed Stoer, and the rover has begun analyzing the snagged samples, Cooper wrote in the update. The 1-ton rover has also been measuring the opacity of the Martian atmosphere of late, helping researchers monitor the global dust storm that has been raging on the Red Planet for the past two months.

The storm has begun dying down, but there's still apparently so much dust in the air that Curiosity's older, smaller, solar-powered cousin, Opportunity, cannot harvest enough sunlight to recharge its batteries. Opportunity has been silent since June 10, and NASA officials think the long-lived robot put itself in a sort of hibernation.

Curiosity is nuclear powered, so it's not terribly bothered by dust storms and darkness.

The $2.5 billion Curiosity mission, known formally as the Mars Science Laboratory, launched in November 2011 and landed inside the Red Planet's 96-mile-wide (154 kilometers) Gale Crater in August 2012. 

Curiosity was tasked with determining if Gale has ever been capable of supporting microbial life. The rover quickly answered that question, finding that the crater's floor hosted a long-lasting lake-and-stream system billions of years ago.

Since September 2014, the rover has been exploring the foothills of Mount Sharp, the 3.4-mile-high (5.5 km) massif that rises from Gale's Center. Curiosity is reading the rock layers as it climbs, hunting for clues about when and why Mars shifted from a relatively warm world to the frigid desert it is today. 

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com. 

A United Kingdom-based researcher claims he's seen evidence of ancient animal tracks on Mars, but don't get too excited. The features he's talking about are widely documented by NASA as interesting crystal shapes that likely formed in water long ago.

A media frenzy ensued after the scientist said he saw evidence of branching, twisting features in pictures from NASA's Mars Curiosity rover. "If you look at the images more closely ... this actually has features in it that are reminiscent of trace fossils," said Barry DiGregorio, a research fellow at the University of Buckingham, in an interview with the Daily Star published Sunday (March 4).

DiGregorio wrote the books "Mars: The Living Planet" (Frog Books, 1997) and "The Microbes of Mars" (Amazon Digital Services LLC, 2011), both of which claim to show evidence of Mars life. It's not the first time he's made these claims. He told Space.com in January that some of Curiosity's pictures of the structures remind him of Ordovician trace fossils. At the time, Curiosity was looking at strange tubular structures. Some people claimed these formations came from burrowing creatures. 

NASA, however, attributed the shapes to crystal growth. [The Search for Life on Mars (A Photo Timeline)]

Curiosity found the features on Mount Sharp, in a zone more than 1,000 vertical feet (300 meters) above the rover's landing site on the floor of Gale Crater.

"When we looked at these things close up, they're linear, but they're not tubular in the sense of being cylinders; they're actually quite angular," said Curiosity mission scientist Ashwin Vasavada, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, in a Space.com interview in January.

"They have kind of a square or a parallelogram sort of cross section and form at angles to each other when there's multiple of them together," he added. "And all of that's pretty reminiscent of crystalline growth."

The crystals' history likely does include liquid water, Vasavada said. He added that the team was considering two scenarios, both of which require water. The first suggests that the tubes are crystals themselves, and the second says that the crystals created a mold in the rock that sedimentary materials later filled.

In a separate interview in January, Vasavada added that it is difficult to definitively say if the features are biological in origin, but that is not a conclusion NASA would jump to quickly. "That's pretty challenging on Earth to distinguish those two things without being able to put these things into a lab to look for the presence of organics," Vasavada said. "We have a very limited capability overall to understand whether something is biological or not."

In mid-February, NASA said Curiosity discovered tiny, dark bumps that look similar to features that form around gypsum crystals in drying lakes on Earth. "These [types of features] can form when salts become concentrated in water, such as in an evaporating lake," Sanjeev Gupta, a Curiosity science team member at Imperial College London, said in a statement from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. 

NASA is still trying to learn when the crystal features formed, in relation to when sediments around them piled up. The crystals might have formed underground (after the sediments were hard rock) or in wet sediment, while the lake was drying.

It's unclear if life exists on Mars today or if it ever did. Some researchers are excited about features such as recurring slope lineae, which are dark streaks that appear on the sides of craters — predominantly during warmer months. But it's unclear if the streaks are due to briny water or dry soil flow.

There are several missions at Mars trying to determine how habitable the planet was in the ancient past. Pictures from orbit clearly show ancient water channels, while rovers on the ground have seen many types of rocks altered by water. But eons ago, the extensive running water diminished and Mars became a dusty, windy planet. 

Some investigators suggest that Mars had a thicker atmosphere in the ancient past and that the atmosphere thinned as the sun pushed lighter particles out into space, drying up the surface. NASA's MAVEN mission is investigating atmospheric loss on Mars.

The Curiosity rover is on a hunt for ancient habitable environments. NASA and the European Space Agency also have newer Mars rovers on the way to seek signs of habitability; NASA's Mars 2020 will cache promising samples, while ESA's ExoMars rover can drill below the surface.

Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

Have trace fossils been found on Mars?

In browsing the first new batch of 2018 photos taken by the Curiosity rover's Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), researcher Barry DiGregorio speculated on whether the Red Planet robot found trace fossils on Mars. DiGregorio is a research fellow for the Buckingham Centre for Astrobiology in the United Kingdom and author of the nonfiction books "Mars: The Living Planet" and "The Microbes of Mars."

"They look remarkably similar to Ordovician trace fossils I have studied and photographed here on Earth," DiGregorio told Inside Outer Space. "If not trace fossils, what other geological explanations will NASA come up with?" [5 Bold Claims of Alien Life]

Tiny features

I posed that question to Curiosity project scientist Ashwin Vasavada, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

Vasavada reported that the eye-catching features are very small, probably on the order of a millimeter or two (0.04 to 0.08 inches) in width, with the longest of the features stretching to roughly 5 millimeters (0.2 inches). "So, they are tiny," he told Inside Outer Space.

Serendipitously, they were first spotted in black and white imagery. The features were compelling enough for the science team to roll Curiosityback to examine them further, making use of MAHLI — a focusable color camera mounted on the rover's arm, Vasavada said.

"These were unique enough, given the fact that we didn't know they were there … [that] we thought we should go back," Vasavada explained.

Curiosity team member Christopher Edwards, a planetary geologist at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, also made note of the plan to wheel Curiosity back to study the dark-toned "stick-like" features.

"This site was so interesting that we backtracked to get to where the rover was parked for this plan," Edwards wrote in a Jan. 3 mission update. "In the work space in front of the rover, we have some very peculiar targets that warranted some additional interrogation."

Geological or biological processes?

The origin of these odd features — geological or biological processes — is in TBD limbo at the moment.

Regarding trace fossils on Mars, "we don't rule it out," Vasavada said, "but we certainly won't jump to that as our first interpretation."

Close-up looks at these features show them to be angular in multiple dimensions. That could mean that they are related to crystals in the rock, perhaps "crystal molds" that are also found here on Earth, Vasavada added. Crystals in rock that are dissolved away leave crystal molds, he said.

Still, that's just one of a few possibilities, Vasavada explained. "If we see more of them … then we begin to say that this is an important process that's going on at Vera Rubin Ridge," he said. [The Search for Life on Mars (A Photo Timeline)]

Mission impossible?

Curiosity scientists have been discussing the newly found and novel features, attempting to figure out just what they signify, Vasavada said.

In the end, however, can the Mars robot differentiate a crystallization process from a biological one?

"That's pretty challenging on Earth to distinguish those two things without being able to put these things into a lab to look for the presence of organics," Vasavada said. "We have a very limited capability overall to understand whether something is biological or not."

Meanwhile, along with new MAHLI imagery, Curiosity's Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) and its Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) are also inspecting the features for clues as to their nature.

Bioturbation?

"The Curiosity images really pique our curiosity," said Pascal Lee, a planetary scientist at the Mars Institute and SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute in Mountain View, California. Still, given the imagery, "it's hard to tell what the wiggly sticks are," he said, "and a strictly mineral origin is, of course, the most plausible."

But on first view of the features, Lee said that as a field geologist, "the immediate thought that came to my mind is bioturbation." This is the process through which organisms living in sediments can disturb the structure of these sediments.

"A common example of bioturbation is the formation of worm burrows. The burrows, once refilled with sediments, fossilized and then exposed by erosion, can end up looking like wiggly sticks," Lee told Inside Outer Space.

Implications

Is any of this relevant to Mars?

"Well, bioturbation at the scale of the features seen in the Curiosity imagery would imply macroscopic multicellular organisms at work, so something that would have evolved far beyond unicellular life," Lee said. "To claim that we're seeing bioturbation on Mars — which I did not say — would be an extraordinary claim."

Lee added that he's reminded of what famed astronomer Carl Sagan used to say: "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

The upshot of the Curiosity observations is the need for a lot more evidence to make any such claim, Lee said — including evidence that allows ruling out less-extraordinary claims.

"But I have to say, the imagery is really intriguing, and I hope Curiosity spends more time in the area to get to the bottom of this," Lee concluded. "This is exciting!"

Concretions?

Another physical process could also explain the existence of structures that look like bioturbation, said astrobiologist Dirk Schulze-Makuch, a professor at Technical University of Berlin in Germany and an adjunct professor at Arizona State University and Washington State University.

"Cool, looks like bioturbation and would likely be as such identified if the image would be from Earth," said Schulze-Makuch, whose latest book, co-authored with MIT researcher William Bains, is "The Cosmic Zoo: Complex Life on Many Worlds" (Springer, 2017).

"But concretions can look quite similar, and, in [the] case of Mars, it's … more likely concretions," he added, referring to formations of precipitated minerals.

Leonard David is author of "Mars: Our Future on the Red Planet," published by National Geographic. The book is a companion to the National Geographic Channel series "Mars." A longtime writer for Space.com, David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. This version of the story published on Space.com.

NASA's sharp-eyed Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has now circled the Red Planet 50,000 times.

The milestone came on Monday (March 27), about 11 years after MRO arrived at the Red Planet — and the spacecraft is still going strong, mission officials said.

"It's a marvelous vehicle that we expect will serve the Mars Exploration Program and Mars science for many more years to come," MRO project manager Dan Johnston, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in a statement. [Latest Photos from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter]

The $720 million MRO mission launched in August 2005 and slipped into Mars' orbit in March 2006. The probe then spent some time refining its orbit before beginning science operations in November 2006.

MRO's work has been varied and voluminous. The probe has been searching for signs of past water activity on the Red Planet; scouting out possible landing locations for future robotic and crewed missions; studying the Martian climate and geology; and serving as a data-relay link for surface robots such as the Opportunity and Curiosity rovers, among other activities.

To date, MRO has beamed more than 300 terabits of science data back to Earth, NASA officials said.

MRO carries six science instruments, three of which are cameras. One of these imagers, the Context Camera (CTX), has taken about 90,000 photos covering 99.1 percent of the Martian surface — roughly equivalent to all of Earth's land area, NASA officials said.

"Reaching 99.1 percent coverage has been tricky because a number of factors — including weather conditions, coordination with other instruments, downlink limitations and orbital constraints — tend to limit where we can image and when," Context Camera team leader Michael Malin, of Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, said in the same statement.

CTX has a resolution of about 20 feet (6 meters) per pixel. Another MRO camera, the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) can pick out features just 4 to 8 feet (1.2 to 2.4 m) across on the Martian surface. But this higher resolution results in more limited coverage; HiRISE has imaged about 3 percent of the Red Planet, NASA officials said.

Since November 2006, MRO has been flying in a near-polar, roughly 2-hour-long orbit whose altitude has ranged from 155 to 196 miles (250 to 316 kilometers). 

On March 22, the probe performed a 45-second engine burn to help prepare for the Nov. 26, 2018, arrival of NASA's InSight Mars lander. MRO needs to be in the right position to relay data from InSight to its handlers during entry, descent and landing operations, NASA officials said. 

InSight is currently scheduled to launch in May 2018.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has stumbled onto another rock that likely fell from space.

The object is a small, dark-gray spot among the reddish rock and dirt that make up the Martian surface, so it caught mission scientists' eyes. They named the mysterious rock Ames Knob and zapped it with Curiosity's laser-firing spectrometer, known as ChemCam, to determine its composition.

"You can even see the three spots in the image of Ames Knob where the ChemCam laser zapped the target," NASA spokesman Guy Webster, from the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, told Space.com via email. (JPL manages Curiosity's $2.5 billion mission.) [Amazing Mars Photos by NASA's Curiosity Rover (Latest Images)]

ChemCam's results suggest that Ames Knob is an iron-nickel meteorite, Webster said. The object's moniker comes from a list of places around Bar Harbor, Maine — the naming convention for the region where Curiosity is currently working, he added.

Ames Knob is about 4 inches wide by 5.5 inches long (10 by 14 centimeters). It's the fourth space rock Curiosity has found on Mars, mission team members said. In May 2014, the rover rolled up on two large iron meteorites known as Littleton and Lebanon; the latter is about 7 feet (2 meters) wide. And late last year, Curiosity studied a golf-ball-size space rock called Egg Rock.

The SUV-size Curiosity landed inside Mars' 96-mile-wide (154 kilometers) Gale Crater in August 2012. The rover's observations soon showed that Gale hosted a long-lasting, potentially habitable lake-and-stream system in the ancient past.

Curiosity reached the base of the 3.4-mile-high (5.5 km) Mount Sharp, which rises from Gale Crater's center, in September 2014 after a 14-month trek. Ever since, the six-wheeled robot has been working its way up the mountain's foothills, reading the rock layers for clues about the ancient Martian environment.

Mission scientists hope this slow ascent will help them understand how the Red Planet changed so dramatically over the eons, from a relatively warm and wet world long ago to the cold and dry place it is today.

The meteorites found by Curiosity — and by the rover's smaller, older cousins, Spirit and Opportunity — could aid in this quest, said ChemCam principal investigator Roger Wiens, of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

"We hope that the meteorites will be able to tell us some information about the Mars environment, such as whether they fell on land or in water, or how dense the atmosphere was when they fell," Wiens told Space.com via email.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 3 p.m. EST to include more details on the size of the Ames Knob meteorite on Mars from NASA.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has taken a gorgeous selfie that shows the rugged, mountainous landscape the six-wheeled robot will be exploring during its newly begun extended mission.

The selfie is composed of about 60 images Curiosity took on Sept. 17 and Sept. 20 while it was drilling into Martian rock and performing other activities at a site dubbed Quela. That site is located in the foothills of the 3-mile-high (5 kilometers) Mount Sharp. 

Quela is about halfway up a 600-foot-thick (180 meters) layer of rock known as the Murray formation. Curiosity's work in the lower parts of this formation indicated that billions of years ago, the area hosted a system of lakes that lasted a long time — perhaps tens of millions of years, mission scientists have said. [Curiosity Team Highlights 4th Year on Mars (Video)]

Over the next year or so, the Curiosity team plans to drive the car-size rover through the Murray formation's upper half.

"We will see whether that record of lakes continues further," Curiosity project scientist Ashwin Vasavada, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in a statement. "The more vertical thickness we see, the longer the lakes were present, and the longer habitable conditions existed here. Did the ancient environment change over time? Will the type of evidence we've found so far transition to something else?"

The $2.5 billion Curiosity mission touched down inside Mars' 96-mile-wide (154 km) Gale Crater in August 2012, to search for evidence that the region could once have hosted life as we know it.

Curiosity quickly determined that the area near its landing site harbored a potentially habitable lake-and-stream system in the ancient past, fulfilling the chief mission goal. In September 2014, after a 14-month trip, the rover reached the foothills of the towering Mount Sharp, whose many layers hold a history of Mars' transition from a relatively warm and wet world to the cold, dry planet it is today.

Curiosity has been slowly climbing up through these layers for the last two years. And it should continue that work for at least two more years, provided nothing goes wrong; on Saturday (Oct. 1), the rover officially began a two-year extended mission, the second such extension NASA has granted Curiosity.

"This mission, as it explores the succession of rock layers, is reading the 'pages' of Martian history — changing our understanding of Mars and how the planet has evolved," Curiosity program scientist Michael Meyer, who's based at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., said in the same statement. "Curiosity has been and will be a cornerstone in our plans for future missions."

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

Look out, Mars: NASA's Curiosity rover can now fire its onboard laser all by itself.

The car-size Curiosity rover recently began autonomously choosing some of the targets for its ChemCam instrument, which blasts Martian rocks or soil with a laser and analyzes the composition of the resulting vapor.

Mission scientists here on Earth still select most ChemCam targets, after poring over images captured by the rover, NASA officials said. But Curiosity's increased independence comes in handy.

"This autonomy is particularly useful at times when getting the science team in the loop is difficult or impossible — in the middle of a long drive, perhaps, or when the schedules of Earth, Mars and spacecraft activities lead to delays in sharing information between the planets," robotics engineer Tara Estlin, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in a statement.

Estlin led the development of the software that allows Curiosity to pull ChemCam's trigger automatically, which is called Autonomous Exploration for Gathering Increased Science (AEGIS).

"To select a target autonomously, the software's analysis of images uses adjustable criteria specified by scientists, such as identifying rocks based on their size or brightness," NASA officials wrote in the same statement. "The criteria can be changed depending on the rover's surroundings and the scientific goals of the measurements."

ChemCam sits atop Curiosity's head-like mast. The instrument can investigate the composition of a target that is up to 23 feet (7 meters) away from the rover.

The $2.5-billion Curiosity mission touched down inside Mars' 96-mile-wide (154 kilometers) Gale Crater in August 2012, tasked with determining if the area had ever been capable of supporting microbial life. Using a suite of different instruments, the rover quickly found evidence that Gale was a potentially habitable lake-and-stream system billions of years ago.

During its nearly four years on Mars, Curiosity has used ChemCam to analyze more than 1,400 targets, firing off more than 350,000 laser blasts in the process, NASA officials said.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

An epic Mars panorama shows the snaking valley that NASA's long-lived Opportunity rover has been exploring for the last year — and will likely soon leave behind.

The newly released photo — a composite of many images Opportunity captured in April and May — depicts Marathon Valley, a feature that cuts across the western rim of the 14-mile-wide (22 kilometers) Endeavour Crater.

Opportunity arrived in the valley in July 2015 to hunt for clay minerals, signs of which had been spotted from above by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. (Clay minerals form via the interaction of liquid water with rock, which makes them of special interest to the Opportunity team; the rover's mission aims to help tease out the history of liquid water on Mars.) [Latest Mars Rover Photos by Opportunity]

While doing this work in Marathon Valley, the rover encountered some curious red crumbly material. Opportunity's handlers used one of the robot's six wheels to scuff the stuff, exposing some fresh samples for study.

The results were intriguing, mission team members said.

"In the scuff, we found one of the highest sulfur contents that's been seen anywhere on Mars," Opportunity principal investigator Steve Squyres, of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, said in a statement.

"There's strong evidence that, among other things, these altered zones have a lot of magnesium sulfate," Squyres added. "We don't think these altered zones are where the clay is, but magnesium sulfate is something you would expect to find precipitating from water. Fractures running through the bedrock, forming conduits through which water could flow and transport soluble materials, could alter the rock and create the pattern of red zones that we see."

Such analyses may be some of the last work Opportunity does in Marathon Valley; it's about time for the rover to move along, Squyres said.

"We are wrapping up our last few activities in Marathon Valley, and before long we'll drive away, exiting along the southern wall of the valley and heading southeast," he said.

Marathon Valley got its name because Opportunity rolled into the region shortly after its odometer ticked past 26.219 miles (42.195 km) — the length of a marathon race.

As of Tuesday (June 14), the rover had covered a total of 26.59 miles (42.79 km) on the Red Planet, NASA officials said. No other vehicle has ever traveled farther on the surface of a world beyond Earth.

The golf-cart-size Opportunity landed on Mars in January 2004, a few weeks after its twin, Spirit. Both robots were tasked with three-month missions, but they kept exploring long after their warranties expired. Spirit was declared dead in March 2011, and Opportunity is still going strong today.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has snapped a selfie featuring sunshine and lots of sand, but it's no vacation pic.

The car-size Curiosity rover was hard at work investigating Namib Dune — part of a larger complex of shifting dark Martian sand called Bagnold Dunes — when it captured the photo on Jan. 19.

Curiosity has been studying Bagnold Dunes for about two months now, helping mission scientists better understand how the wind creates and shapes dune fields on Mars. [The Top 10 Space Robot Selfies]

As part of this work — the first up-close examinations of dunes on a world beyond Earth — the six-wheeled robot has scooped up three samples of Namib Dune for analysis by its onboard instruments, grabbing two on Jan. 19, and another one on Jan. 22, NASA officials said.

Processing of the third sample did not go according to plan, however. An actuator in the processing device on Curiosity's 7-foot-long (2.1 meters) robotic arm failed to function properly, leaving part of the sample trapped inside a sort of tunnel, NASA officials said.

"The rover responded properly to this unexpected event," Curiosity deputy project manager Steve Lee, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in a statement. "It stopped moving the actuator and halted further use of the arm and sampling system."

The incident, which will prohibit analysis of the third sample, is under investigation. (The rover's onboard instrument suite will still study the second sample scooped from Namib Dune, NASA officials said.)

The Bagnold Dunes lie on the northwestern flank of Mount Sharp, a 3-mile-high (5 kilometers) mountain at whose base Curiosity arrived in September 2014. The rover is steadily climbing up through Mount Sharp's lower reaches, studying the many rock layers for clues about how and why Mars shifted from a relatively warm and wet world in the ancient past to the cold, dry planet it is today.

The new Curiosity sand-dune selfie is actually a composite of 57 separate images captured by the Mars Hand Lens Imager camera at the end of the rover's arm. The arm was not visible in the photos (or portions of photos) used to construct the selfie, NASA officials said.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has snapped some beautiful photos of a blue-tinged sunset on the Red Planet.

Curiosity captured the images, which mission team members combined into a brief video of the Martian sunset, with the rover's Mast Camera between dust storms on April 15, NASA officials said. The photographs record the first sunset Curiosity has observed in color on the Red Planet, they added.

"The colors come from the fact that the very fine dust is the right size so that blue light penetrates the atmosphere slightly more efficiently," Curiosity science team member Mark Lemmon, of Texas A&M University, said in a statement.

"When the blue light scatters off the dust, it stays closer to the direction of the sun than light of other colors does," Lemmon added. "The rest of the sky is yellow to orange, as yellow and red light scatter all over the sky instead of being absorbed or staying close to the sun."

The images are helping scientists better understand how dust is distributed throughout the Martian atmosphere, NASA officials said.

The 1-ton Curiosity rover landed inside Mars' huge Gale Crater in August 2012, on a mission to determine if the Red Planet could ever have supported microbial life.

The six-wheeled robot succeeded early, gathering evidence that allowed mission scientists to conclude that an area near its landing site was once a potentially habitable lake-and-stream system billions of years ago.

Curiosity is now exploring the foothills of the towering Mt. Sharp, which rises 3.4 miles (5.5 kilometers) into the Martian sky from Gale's Center.

Mt. Sharp's many rock layers preserve a history of Mars' changing environmental conditions over time, so the observations Curiosity makes as it climbs should reveal insights about how the Red Planet shifted from a relatively warm and wet world long ago to the cold, dry desert world it is today, mission scientists say.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

A giant crater on Mars may have been able to support microbial life for millions of years in the ancient past because it was once a huge lake of water, new results from NASA's Curiosity rover suggest.

Curiosity found evidence for the crater lake on Mars in the 96-mile-wide (154 kilometers) Gale Crater, which the rover has been exploring since its August 2012 touchdown. Today, Gale Crater is a dry, stark landscape, but in the ancient past, runoff from the crater rim created a lake in which deposited sediments gradually built up Mount Sharp, a mountain that rises about 3.4 miles (5.5 km) high from the crater's center, mission scientists added.

"This lake was large enough it could have lasted millions of years — sufficient time for life to get started and thrive, sufficient time for lake sediments to build up and form Mount Sharp," Michael Meyer, Mars Exploration Program lead scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said during a press conference today (Dec. 8). [Ancient Mars Could Have Supported Life: Photos]

Building a mysterious mountain

The origin and evolution of Mount Sharp have puzzled mission scientists since before Curiosity's November 2011 launch. But the rover's recent observations at and near the mountain's base have brought the picture into much clearer focus, researchers said.

At multiple locations, Curiosity noticed beds of sandstone sloping toward Mount Sharp. On Earth, such "inclined beds" are seen at deltas where rivers once emptied into lakes, said Curiosity science team member Sanjeev Gupta of Imperial College London. And that's likely what created the features on Mars, he added.

"These are likely to be quite small, maybe a couple of meters water depth — so very, very small deltas, but certainly clear evidence that we're building out, likely, into a standing body of water," Gupta said.

The deposits were observed at multiple elevations, suggesting that they were laid down in multiple cycles, he added.

Curiosity also spotted rocks with rhythmic, millimeter-scale banding at an outcrop at Mount Sharp's base called Pahrump Hills — something the robot had not seen before on Mars. Here on Earth, such finely banded rocks form when sediment rains down softly, so they're strong evidence for standing water, said Curiosity project scientist John Grotzinger, of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

Also at Pahrump Hills, Curiosity saw crystals in a rock that appear to be salts left behind after the evaporation of water, Grotzinger added.

"We don't imagine that this environment was just a single lake that stood for millions of years, but rather a system of alluvial fans, deltas and lakes and dry deserts that alternated for millions, if not tens of millions, of years as a connected system," Grotzinger said.

The lake, when it existed, was probably not particularly deep, Gupta said. (While depths at the delta locations are just a few meters or so, it's difficult to estimate the depth of the overall lake.)

Further, the southward inclination of the deposits is tough to explain if Mount Sharp had been present when they were laid down, reseachers said: Water should have flowed downhill, to the north, off Mount Sharp in these locations.

"The resolution of the paradox is to acknowledge that the layers represent a time when water was flowing from the crater rim toward the crater interior, and it filled up a series of stacks, and then subsequently those stacks of layers were eroded" to form Mount Sharp, Grotzinger said.

So, sediment suspended in runoff water probably filled in much of Gale Crater over thousands or millions of years. Wind then carved away much of this material, leaving behind the enormous mound known as Mount Sharp, researchers said.

A warmer, wetter Mars

Mars must have been a very different place about 3.5 billion years ago than it is today to support the Gale Crater lake, said Curiosity deputy project scientist Ashwin Vasavada, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena: It had to have been warmer, wetter and with a much thicker atmosphere.

But climate models have a hard time explaining how such conditions could have persisted for long stretches on ancient Mars, Vasavada said. So perhaps a rethink is required.

"Maybe what we see can be explained as a result of shorter-lived warm and wet climates, created either by volcanism, orbital changes [or] large asteorid impacts, all of which were active at the time Mount Sharp was forming," Vasavada said. "Each event may have created warm and wet conditions for hundreds or maybe thousands of years, perhaps enough to fill Gale Crater with one more layer of sediment."

The Curiosity rover reached Mount Sharp's base in September of this year after a 14-month trek. The rover spent its first year on Mars near its landing site, where it found strong evidence for an ancient lake-and-stream system that could possibly have supported microbial life long ago. The latest results strengthen and extend those original conclusions.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

NASA's Curiosity rover the centerpiece of NASA's $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission is slated to land on Mars Aug. 5. How much do you know about Curiosity and its mission?

A 'Curiosity' Quiz: How Well Do You Know NASA's Next Mars Rover?

This story was updated at 7:55 p.m. EDT.

Scientists are throwing cold water on yet another purported "alien" sighting by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity.

Though UFO enthusiasts may beg to differ, mission team members say bright flashes of light visible in Mars photos taken by the Curiosity rover on April 2 and April 3 almost certainly have a perfectly ordinary explanation.

"One possibility is that the light is the glint from a rock surface reflecting the sun. When these images were taken each day, the sun was in the same direction as the bright spot, west-northwest from the rover, and relatively low in the sky," Justin Maki, the lead for Curiosity's engineering cameras, told Space.com via email. [Mars Illusions: Photos of the "Face on Mars" and Other Martian Tricks]

"The rover science team is also looking at the possibility that the bright spots could be sunlight reaching the camera's CCD [charge-coupled device] directly through a vent hole in the camera housing, which has happened previously on other cameras on Curiosity and other Mars rovers when the geometry of the incoming sunlight relative to the camera is precisely aligned," added Maki, who is based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "We think it's either a vent-hole light leak or a glinty rock."

It's also possible that the flashes resulted from the impact of fast-moving cosmic rays with the camera, Maki said in a statement released by NASA today (April 8). Whatever the cause, the phenomenon is far from rare.

"In the thousands of images we've received from Curiosity, we see ones with bright spots nearly every week," Maki said in the NASA statement.

The two black-and-white photos, which were snapped by Curiosity's right-side navigation camera, appear to show a small flash of light gleaming in the distance, in front of a crater rim that dominates the horizon. UFO buffs jumped on the images, touting them as possible evidence of advanced life on Mars.

"An artificial light source was seen this week in this NASA photo which shows light shining upward from...the ground," Scott Waring wrote at UFO Sightings Daily Monday (April 7). "This could indicate there there [sic] is intelligent life below the ground and uses light as we do."

Waring has found other peculiarities in Curiosity's photos. For example, back in December, he suggested that a panoramic picture snapped by the rover captured a "Mars rat" crouching between two rocks.

The supposed Mars rodent is an example of a psychological phenomenon called pareidolia, which refers to the tendency of the human brain to perceive familiar shapes in vague or random images, experts say. Another example of pareidolia is the famous "face on Mars" supposedly visible in pictures taken by NASA's Viking 1 orbiter in 1976.

The "Mars light" is something different, since it's not a product of anyone's imagination. But the odds are pretty slim that the light is a sign of Martian life, researchers say, especially since the flash is not visible in images of the same spot taken nearly simultaneously on April 2 and April 3 by Curiosity's left-side navigation camera. (The two navcams sit side-by-side on the rover's headlike "mast" and return images that help the mission team plan out Curiosity's routes.)

All of this is not to say that life has never existed on Mars, of course. Curiosity has already found evidence of an ancient stream-and-lake system, suggesting that the Red Planet could have supported microbial life billions of years ago.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

After a long stretch of pedal-to-the-metal driving, NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has its next science target in sight.

The 1-ton Curiosity rover is just 282 feet (86 meters) north of a site called "the Kimberley," where four different types of terrain intersect. The rover's handlers are keen to study the Kimberley rocks and may even break out Curiosity's sample-collecting drill at the site, NASA officials said.

"The orbital images didn't tell us what those rocks are, but now that Curiosity is getting closer, we're seeing a preview," Curiosity deputy project scientist Ashwin Vasavada, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., said in a statement. [Latest Amazing Photos From the Curiosity Rover]

"The contrasting textures and durabilities of sandstones in this area are fascinating," Vasavada added. "While superficially similar, the rocks likely formed and evolved quite differently from each other."

The Kimberley sandstones represent a different type of rock for Curiosity to examine. Since touching down inside Mars' huge Gale Crater in August 2012, the rover has primarily scrutinized finer-grained mudstones, researchers said.

Some of those mudstones, at a site called Yellowknife Bay, preserved evidence of an ancient stream-and-lake system, leading mission scientists to announce last year that Mars could have supported microbial life billions of years ago.

Understanding variations in Martian sandstones — such as why some are harder than others — could help scientists piece together parts of the Red Planet's past and explain the large-scale contours of Gale Crater, researchers said.

"A major issue for us now is to understand why some rocks resist erosion more than other rocks, epecially when they are so close to each other and are both likely to be sandstones," said Michael Malin, of Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego. Malin is the principal investigator for Curiosity's Mast Camera and Mars Descent Camera.

Curiosity is currently en route to the base of Mount Sharp, which rises 3.4 miles (5.5 kilometers) into the sky from Gale Crater's center. The rover's handlers want Curiosity to climb up Mount Sharp's foothills, reading a history of Mars' changing environmental conditions as it goes.

Curiosity left the Yellowknife Bay area last July. While the six-wheeled robot has stopped occasionally since then to examine rocks, the mission team has mainly prioritized making tracks. The road to Mount Sharp covers more than 5 miles (8 km); Curiosity should get there around the middle of this year, officials have said.

The long journey has been hard on Curiosity's metal wheels, spurring the rover team devise ways to minimize wear and tear. Their strategies — which include driving Curiosity backward for stretches and choosing a less punishing route — appear to be paying off, with the wheel-puncture rate dropping to just 10 percent of what it was a few months ago.

"The wheel damage rate appears to have leveled off, thanks to a combination of route selection and careful driving," said JPL's Richard Rainen, mechanical engineering team leader for Curiosity. "We're optimistic that we're doing OK now, though we know there will be challenging terrain to cross in the future."

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has taken some dazzling new photos of the Red Planet landscape, showing in sharp detail where it's been and the long road that lies ahead.

One of the new images, which the 1-ton Curiosity rover snapped on Feb. 19, depicts rows of rocks in the foreground and the towering Mount Sharp looming in the distance. The base of the 3.4-mile-high (5.5 kilometers) mountain is Curiosity's ultimate science destination, and mission scientists hope to reach it by the middle of this year.

"Images taken from orbit and used in planning the rover's route toward lower slopes of Mount Sharp had piqued researchers' interest in the striations on the ground that are formed by these rows of rocks," NASA officials wrote in a description of the image, which was released Wednesday (Feb. 26). "This particular outcrop is called 'Junda.' Similar striations are apparent on other patches of ground along the planned route." [See more amazing Mars photos by the Curiosity rover]

Another photo, also taken on Feb. 19, provides another perspective on the Junda striations, showing them receding into the distance as Curiosity rumbles by. And a third image, which the rover captured on Feb. 10, also looks back, showing Curiosity's tracks going up and over a small sand dune at a location that mission scientists dubbed "Dingo Gap."

The dune crossing allowed Curiosity to enter a valley with relatively smooth and soft ground — a priority for the rover's handlers, who want to minimize the wear and tear on the robot's six metal wheels. Team members also drove Curiosity backward over long stretches for the first time last week, testing out a strategy that could give the wheels more of a break.

When Curiosity reaches Mount Sharp, it will climb up through the mountain's foothills, reading the record of the Red Planet's changing environmental conditions that is preserved in the rocks there. Mission scientists hope to gain a better understanding of how and why Mars shifted from a relatively warm and wet world billions of years ago to the cold, dry world it is today.

The rover, which touched down on Mars in August 2012, will do some science work on the long trek to Mount Sharp. It will study, and perhaps drill into, rocks at an outcrop dubbed Kimberley, which lies along the route and also features some Junda-like striations, researchers said.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has put it in reverse, completing its first-ever long backward drive.

The 1-ton Curiosity rover covered 329 feet (100 meters) in reverse on Tuesday (Feb. 18). The maneuver — carried out over relatively smooth and benign ground — was designed to test out a strategy for reducing wear on the robot's six metal wheels, which have accumulated dings and holes at an increasing rate over the last few months, NASA officials said.

"We wanted to have backwards driving in our validated toolkit because there will be parts of our route that will be more challenging," Curiosity project manager Jim Erickson, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a statement. [Curiosity Passes 5K Mark, Seeks Gentler Terrain (Video)]

Curiosity is currently embarked on a long trek to the base of Mount Sharp, which rises 3.4 miles (5.5 kilometers) into the Martian sky. The rover recently crossed a sand dune to enter a region called Moonlight Valley, which photos taken from orbit suggested would give Curiosity's wheels a bit of a break.

That landscape assessment appears to be on the money, team members said.

"After we got over the dune, we began driving in terrain that looks like what we expected based on the orbital data," Erickson said. "There are fewer sharp rocks, many of them are loose, and in most places there's a little bit of sand cushioning the vehicle."

Curiosity is expected to arrive at the base of Mount Sharp around June or so. Once there, it will climb up through the mountain's lower reaches, which contain a history of Mars' changing environmental conditions over the eons.

But the rover will stop to do some science work along the way to Mount Sharp. The mission team plans to study — and possibly drill into — rocks at a site they've dubbed Kimberley, which lies about 0.67 miles (1.1 km) ahead on the route.

Curiosity's handlers will further refine the rover's path while it's conducting science work at Kimberley, using orbital imagery to pick the best way forward.

"We have changed our focus to look at the big picture for getting to the slopes of Mount Sharp, assessing different potential routes and different entry points to the destination area," Erickson said. "No route will be perfect; we need to figure out the best of the imperfect ones."

Curiosity landed in August 2012 to determine if the Red Planet has ever been capable of supporting microbial life. Mission scientists have already answered this question in the affirmative, announcing last year that an area near the rover's landing site called Yellowknife Bay was indeed habitable billions of years ago.

Curiosity has now put a total of 3.24 miles (5.21 km) on its odometer since touching down. Its older, smaller cousin Opportunity, by comparison, has driven 24.07 miles (38.74 km) during its 10 years on Mars.

Opportunity holds the American distance record for off-planet driving. The overall mark was set by the Soviet Union's Lunokhod 2 rover, which travelled 26 miles (42 km) on the moon in 1973.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

New photos of the Martian landscape further rule out a meteorite impact as the culprit behind the "jelly doughnut" rock that mysteriously appeared in front of one of NASA's Mars rovers last month.

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter snapped pictures as it flew above the Opportunity rover on Feb. 14, and this week, the space agency released a photo from that flyover campaign. In a view that covers a patch about 0.25 miles (0.4 kilometers) wide, Opportunity looks like a speck and some of the rover's faint tracks are visible, but there are no new impact craters in sight, NASA officials say.

A fresh meteorite scar might have explained how a rock got tossed in front of Opportunity last month. The rock was dubbed "Pinnacle Island," and Steve Squyres, the rover's lead scientist at Cornell University, had noted its resemblance to a jelly doughnut. The strange feature materialized in Opportunity's field of view on Jan. 8, and it was absent in pictures of the same place just days before.

NASA scientists had already concluded that the rock was most likely kicked up by one of Opportunity's wheels. Using further observations from the rover, researchers said they could trace where the rock had been struck, cracked and moved.

But that conclusion hasn't stopped fringe theories from cropping up. One person has even filed a lawsuit against the space agency, alleging that NASA has failed to properly investigate what is likely a mushroom-like fungus growing on the Red Planet.

Opportunity, which recently celebrated its 10th anniversary on Mars, is now exploring Murray Ridge, a spot on the western wall of Endeavour Crater, which spans about 14 miles (22 km) in diameter. With the Pinnacle Island enigma behind it, Opportunity is being steered uphill to check out exposed rock layers on the slope of the ridge.

Follow Megan Gannon on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @SPACEdotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.