MARS - SKY NIGHTLY

Mars InSight Lander's 'Mole' Pauses Digging

Mar 06, 2019 (JPL)

After beginning to hammer itself into the soil on Thursday, Feb. 28, the 16-inch-long (40-centimeter-long) probe - part of an instrument called the Heat and Phy...

UCF research laying groundwork for off-world colonies

Mar 05, 2019 (SPX)

University of Central Florida researchers are already laying the groundwork for the off-world jump by creating standards for extraterrestrial surfaces. Their wo...

First evidence of planet-wide groundwater system on Mars

Mar 01, 2019 (ESA)

Mars appears to be an arid world, but its surface shows compelling signs that large amounts of water once existed across the planet. We see features that would ...

InSight's Mole Starts Hammering into the Martian Soil

Mar 01, 2019 (SPX)

"On its way into the depths, the Mole seems to have hit a stone, tilted about 15 degrees and pushed it aside or past it," reports Tilman Spohn, principal invest...

So Fit for Mars It's Like Being There

Mar 01, 2019 (ESA)

The ExoFiT field campaign simulates ExoMars operations in every key aspect. During the trial, the rover drove from its landing platform and targets sites of int...

Prototype Mars Rover Gets Workout Controlled from 6,000 Miles Away

Mar 01, 2019 (SPX)

Experts at the European Space Agency's centre in Oxfordshire completed a series of tests across nearly 6,900 miles (11,000 km) in order to see how the Mars rove...

Clues to Martian Life Found in Chilean Desert

Mar 01, 2019 (SPX)

The samples contained unusual and highly specialized microbes that were distributed in patches, which researchers linked to the limited water availability, scar...

Life on Mars: my 15 amazing years with Oppy, NASA's record-breaking rover

Feb 28, 2019 (SPX)

Despite efforts to re-establish contact with its solar-powered rover "Oppy", NASA declared the mission over on February 13 2019. The little robotic geologist ha...

NASA engineers are investigating Curiosity probe's computer reset

Feb 25, 2019 (UPI)

Last week, its computer rebooted without warning. Now, NASA engineers are trying to figure out what caused the unprompted restart. During the reboot, a glitch c...

After a Reset, Curiosity Is Operating Normally

Feb 25, 2019 (JPL)

Curiosity encountered a hurdle last Friday, when a hiccup during boot-up interrupted its planned activities and triggered a protective safe mode. The rover was ...

Creating a Space Colony Cryptocurrency

Feb 22, 2019 (SPX)

Such commerce will require a financial system based on a method of payment. In the U.S. payments are based on the dollar. In Europe, the Euro is used for financ...

Signs of ancient flowing water on Mars

Feb 22, 2019 (ESA)

We see Mars as a cold, dry world, but plenty of evidence suggests that this was not always the case. Research in past years instead increasingly indicates that ...

Weather on Mars: Chilly with a chance of 'dust devils'

Feb 20, 2019 (SPX)

Starting this week, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory will provide daily weather reports for Mars, courtesy of the red planet's newest robotic resident, InSight....

InSight is the Newest Mars weather service

Feb 20, 2019 (JPL)

This public tool includes stats on temperature, wind and air pressure recorded by InSight. Sunday's weather was typical for the lander's location during late no...

Northwestern study of analog crews in isolation reveals weak spots for Mission to Mars

Feb 19, 2019 (SPX)

NASA has formalized plans to send a crewed spacecraft to Mars, a journey that could involve 250 million miles of travel. Among the worldwide teams of researcher...

DLR 'Mole' deployed on surface of Mars

Feb 14, 2019 (SPX)

Its goal is to measure the temperature and thermal conductivity of the subsurface and thus determine the heat flow from the interior of Mars. The heat flow give...

InSight Prepares to Take Mars's Temperature

Feb 14, 2019 (SPX)

Equipped with a self-hammering spike, mole, the instrument will burrow up to 16 feet (5 meters) below the surface, deeper than any previous mission to the Red P...

NASA announces demise of Opportunity rover

Feb 14, 2019 (AFP)

The robot has been missing since the US space agency lost contact during a dust storm in June last year and was declared officially dead Wednesday, ending one o...

NASA's Record-Setting Opportunity Rover Mission on Mars Comes to End

Feb 13, 2019 (JPL)

The Opportunity rover stopped communicating with Earth when a severe Mars-wide dust storm blanketed its location in June 2018. After more than a thousand comman...

Mars Rover Opportunity Ends Mission After 15 Years

Feb 13, 2019 (SPX)

Over the course of its scientific mission, led by an Earth-bound Cornell professor, Opportunity returned hundreds of thousands of images and reshaped our unders...