Curiosity finds a curiosity: What is that?
The Mars Curiosity rover took the following image on Sol 173, which in Earth-speak means January 30. Now the image doesn’t look like much until one zooms in on the upper, central portion of the photo....
View ArticleNew poll finds Americans hopelessly optimistic about going to Mars
Last summer a group promoting the exploration of Mars — named, well, Explore Mars — dropped a large red rock in front of Houston’s city hall. Designed the look like a Martian boulder, the fake rock...
View ArticleCuriosity findings: At one time Mars was suitable to life
When NASA invested a couple of billion dollars in the Curiosity rover and sent it to Mars, a key question scientists hoped to answer was: Has Mars ever had a habitable environment for life as we know...
View ArticleHow significant would the discovery of life on Mars be?
The rover Curiosity recently found that, in the distant past of Mars, conditions were entirely suitable to microbial life as we know it. This increases the likelihood that life once might have existed...
View ArticleWill NASA’s married astronauts be considered for the private Mars mission?
Back in late February U.S. businessman Dennis Tito announced a plan to send a married couple to within 100 miles of the surface of Mars in the year 2018. Although he did express a preference for a...
View ArticleMars to get a comet fly-by, and maybe even a collision, next year
The last thing our world needs is a collision with a large, fast-moving comet. But Mars? That might be interesting. And NASA scientists say a large comet could collide with Mars in October 2014. The...
View ArticleRounding up a bombardment of space news
Yesterday was a busy one for me, because I had a couple of stories to write for the print edition of the Chronicle. Don’t get me wrong, I love the paper and those of you wonderful people who subscribe...
View ArticleDrill baby, drill: Curiosity passes tests on Mars, now ready to hit full stride
Humans have been drilling into planet Earth for centuries. But now we’re doing it on other worlds, as the video below attests to. It shows the Mars Curiosity rover drilling into the Martian surface a...
View Article22nd Century sport: Grab you dry ice surf board and ride the dunes on Mars
In the past most scientists have said that long, narrow grooves in the slopes of Martian sand dunes offer evidence of liquid water on the surface of the red planet. This is because, planetary...
View ArticleFrom panoramas to selfies, Curiosity’s cameras can do it all
Curiousity has taken a plethora — yes, a plethora — of wonderful images from the surface of Mars. You can see more of Curiosity’s greatest hits, so far, in the slideshow below. In response to questions...
View ArticleEver wonder what it would be like to fly through Mars’ grand canyon?
Mars Express, a satellite that arrived in orbit around Mars nearly a decade ago, has the ability to image the surface of the planet at a resolution of 2 meters per pixel. This high resolution camera...
View ArticleSciGuy video: In which I go surfing on Mars
Below is the new episode of my new video series.
View ArticleScientists find ancient lake bed on Mars that may have been an oasis for life
There’s some incredible news about the planet Mars today. The journal Science has published a trove of papers that characterize samples taken from mudstones — rocks made of mud and clay — that formed...
View ArticleAre there Tusken Raiders on Mars?
During the movie Star Wars there’s an iconic scene involving Tusken Raiders set in the Jundland Wastes. According to Obi-Wan Kenobi, ”The Jundland Wastes are not to be traveled lightly.” Perhaps...
View ArticleA spectacular new crater appears on Mars
Sometime between July 2010 and May 2012 an asteroid slammed into Mars and left this: The image was captured by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance...
View ArticleForget Mars, I want to explore these two worlds in my lifetime
Mars is interesting, and it’s certainly the most colonizable world in our solar system. But at the end of the day, it’s a dead world. Not so with one of Jupiter’s moons, Europa, and one of Saturn’s,...
View ArticleFeast your eyes on the skies: A lunar eclipse and shiny god of war
There’s two cool things to look for in the skies this month. The first, a lunar eclipse, will occur early on the morning of April 15th. The second, a nearby Mars, will be visible for most of the month....
View ArticleNew report: NASA Mars goal is not viable
The National Research Council released a new report today that reviews America’s human spaceflight goals and the direction of NASA’s programs. As I have been investigating many of these same themes for...
View ArticleNASA’s new rocket is big, beautiful and probably not sustainable.
As I report in the second part of my Adrift series on America’s human spaceflight program, work is well underway on NASA’s first heavy lift rocket in four decades, the Space Launch System. Whatever you...
View ArticleThe many strange things spotted on Mars by citizen astrobiologists
Everyone is looking for life or signs of it on Mars, and no one is looking harder than the “amateur” sleuths combing through the many thousands of high-res photos sent back from Mars by rovers and...
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