The equipment planned to help bring samples back from Mars.
NASA/JPL
It’s not easy to collect rocks on a budget when the rocks are 140 million miles away.
The surface of Mars is cold, dry and rocky.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU
Determining whether or not life exists on another planet is an extraordinarily complicated – and expensive – scientific endeavor.
The entrance to For All Mankind’s Happy Valley.
Apple
In sci-fi depictions, extraterrestrial habitats have evolved tandem with scientific understanding of conditions on planets
An artist’s concept of an astronaut walking on Mars. But what would happen if the astronaut weren’t wearing a space helmet?
cokada/E+ via Getty Images
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and one of our closest neighbors in space. But it’s not a very welcoming place for an Earthling to visit.
NASA
NASA’s successful Mars landing will reveal yet more secrets from the red planet. But there is much we already know from Martian fragments that found their way to Earth.
Perseverance in action.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
Methane gas in the atmosphere is a tantalising hint suggesting that life could exists on Mars.
Landing on Mars is extremely difficult.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
Scientists preparing to land the Rosalind Franklin rover in a few years are nervously awaiting the landing of Nasa’s Perseverance rover.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell University/Arizona State University
Of the three probes to reach Mars this month, only two will land. But they will add to our growing knowledge of the red planet, and the search for evidence of life.
NASA
We’ve already sent probes to land on Mars. The challenge now is to get people there and bring them home again.
There seems to be a network of underground bodies of liquid water at Mars’ south pole.
NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems
New findings boost chances of finding life on Mars, but there are better candidates in the solar system.
The Perseverance Rover (Mars 2020) installed within the upper stage of the United Launch Alliance rocket that will send it to Mars from Florida this week.
Australian scientists have been working on NASA’s latest Mars mission for years.
In a clean room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., engineers observed the first driving test for the Mars rover, Perseverance. Perseverance will search for signs of past microbial life, characterize Mars’ climate and geology, and collect samples for a future return to Earth.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
This summer, NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover is taking the next giant leap in our search for signs of life beyond Earth.
Artist’s rendition of NASA’s 2020 Mars rover collecting rocks with its robotic arm.
NASA
Martian meteorites allow scientists here on Earth to decode that planet’s geology, more than a decade before the first missions are scheduled to bring rocks back home from Mars.
Mircobe-like features in a meteorite – later shown to probably be non-biological.
NASA
New research shows how rock features that look like fossilised microbes can form without life.
Much of Mars’s surface is covered by fine-grained materials that hide the bedrock. The above bedrock is mostly exposed and it is in these areas that micrometeorites likely to accumulate.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona
It’s established Mars was once a planet with surface-level water. So with multiple MARS missions starting next year, the key to seeking out martian life may instead lie in the contents of its ‘dust’.
3DStock/Shutterstock
An Israeli spacecraft carrying tardigrades crashed into the moon. Whether they will survive is irrelevant.
Relative sizes of planets that are in a zone potentially compatible with life: Kepler-22b, Kepler-69c, Kepler-62e, Kepler-62f and Earth (named left to right; except for Earth, these are artists’ renditions).
NASA
The ancient question ‘Are we alone?’ has graduated from being a philosophical musing to a testable hypothesis. We should be prepared for an answer.
Signs of life on Mars? These are the tracks of NASA’s Curiosity rover exploring the Martian landscape.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Mars has long captured our imagination, from claims of canals to Martian attacks and now our latest NASA exploration to look inside the red planet.
Once people get there, Mars will be contaminated with Earth life.
NASA/Pat Rawlings, SAIC
NASA’s InSight Mars lander touches down Nov. 26, part of a careful robotic approach to exploring the red planet. But human exploration of Mars will inevitably introduce Earth life. Are you OK with that?
Pie in the sky? Mars Ice Home concept.
NASA/Clouds AO/SEArch
Elon Musk may be disappointed by recent studies threatening his plans to go to Mars, but planetary scientists are breathing a sigh of relief.