Curiosity Rover

NASA’s Curiosity rover has discovered opal on Mars. The deposits may prove to be valuable to future Martian explorers not as jewelry but as a potential source of water.

NASA’s Curiosity rover has detected high amounts of an unexpected form of carbon on Mars. That might not sound too exciting, but the kicker is that here on Earth, this chemical signature is usually associated with life.

NASA’s Curiosity rover has been exploring Gale crater for nine years, studying sediments that look an awful lot like those left behind from an ancient lake. But new research from the University of Hong Kong proposes a much drier explanation.

A team of NASA scientists may have resolved a mystery surrounding disappearing methane on Mars, that may hint at the presence of life. The gas was detectable by NASA’s Curiosity rover, but absent in readings taken by an orbiting ESA spacecraft.

NASA's Curiosity rover has captured a rare perspective of shimmering clouds on Mars at an unexpected time and location, which will help scientists better understand the reasons behind their formation.

Mars may be incredibly dry and dusty today, but evidence is piling up that it was once a watery world. Now the Curiosity rover has found signs of an ancient flood of biblical proportions, most likely kicked off by a climate-changing asteroid impact.

For over a year, NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover has been investigating the clay-bearing unit in the Gale Crater. Now the intrepid explorer is on the move, starting a summer-long journey to a higher part of Mount Sharp dubbed the "sulfate-bearing unit."

Organic compounds have been discovered on Mars in recent years. A new study examines the different ways that one type in particular, thiophene, may have formed, and intriguingly one of the most plausible scenarios involves ancient microbial life.

NASA has used Curiosity's cameras to capture many images of Mars since touching down on the Red Planet, but none quite as detailed as this, a new panorama showing the rugged Martian landscape through a grand total of 1.8 billion pixels.

Data from the Curiosity rover positioned within the Gale Crater on Mars has revealed repeating patterns of wild seasonal swings in oxygen levels, something mission scientists neither expected or are currently able to explain.

The latest methane measurements on Mars to generate some intrigue among planetary scientists stems from the largest ever reading of the gas taken during the Curiosity rover's seven-year mission, which again raises the prospect of microbial life existing at some time, some place on the Red Planet.

Curiosity has begun investigating one of the most interesting regions so far – the clay-bearing unit. After drilling two new samples last month, the rover has confirmed high amounts of clay minerals, providing further proof that ancient Mars was once much wetter.