Every Mars landing is a knuckle-whitening feat of engineering. But each attempt has its own quirks based on where a spacecraft is going and what kind of science the mission intends to gather. On Nov. 26, NASA will try to safely set a new spacecraft on Mars. InSight is a lander dedicated to studying the […]
The Hubble Space Telescope captured images of Phobos, one of the moons of Mars in orbit around the red planet. Image-NASA The sharp eye of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has captured the tiny moon Phobos during its orbital trek around Mars. Because the moon is so small, it appears star-like in the Hubble pictures. Over […]
A new observation from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) captures the landing platform that the rover Opportunity left behind in Eagle Crater more than 13 years and 27 miles (or 44 kilometers) ago. A series of bounces and tumbles after initial touchdown plunked the airbag-cushioned lander into the crater, a mere 72 feet (22 meters) […]
Mars may have been a wetter place than previously thought, according to research on simulated Martian meteorites conducted, in part, at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). In a study published today in the journal Nature Communications, researchers found evidence that a mineral found in Martian meteorites—which had been considered as […]