The global dust storm the has enveloped Mars since last May is beginning to die down and the question is, what's happened with the Opportunity rover? The solar-powered robotic explorer has been silent since June 10 and NASA is looking at whether the rover will be able to wake up again.
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NASA's Mars 2020 rover has received its nuclear power plant. The Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (MMRTG) unit will provide the robotic spacecraft with 125 W of electricity to operate the drive motors and power the onboard systems.
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Could we one day terraform Mars? According to a new NASA study, don't hold your breath. By the most generous estimate, there isn't enough material on the Red Planet to even begin to provide it with a minimal atmosphere – much less make it suitable for colonization.
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NASA's 3D Printed Habitat Challenge, which kicked off in 2015, is now well into its third and final phase. The latest stage has awarded five teams a share of US$100,000 in prize money for the best virtual models ahead of the hard part, 3D-printing scale models of their designs.
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The Hubble Space Telescope has captured fresh images of Saturn and Mars as they approach opposition – the point in their orbit when the planets are at their closest to Earth, and fully illuminated by the light of our star.
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A huge lake of liquid water has been found on Mars. The groundbreaking discovery marks the first time a significant amount of the life-giving liquid has been detected. Discovered through satellite radar readings, the lake lies beneath the ice caps at the south pole of Mars.
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Is Mars too dry support life? To find out, NASA sent a team from the Ames Research Center to the Atacama Desert in Chile to identify the limit is that divides the point where microorganisms can live, and where the best they can hope for is very temporary survival, and where Mars lands on this scale.
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Things aren't looking good for the Opportunity rover as the global dust storm socking Mars looks set to continue into September. Mission control continues a daily listening brief in hope that the unmanned explorer will radio home, but no response has been heard since June 18. recharge its batteries.
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Even though ESA's ExoMars 2020 rover is due to launch in only two years, the robotic explorer is still lacking a name. To remedy this, astronaut Tim Peake announced today at the Farnborough International Airshow that the UK Space Agency is starting a public competition to find a suitable moniker.
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ESA is working on a new robotic rover to retrieve containers of Martian rock and soil left behind by NASA's Mars 2020 rover. ESA has now awarded the initial £3.9 million (US$5.2 million) contract to design the new Fetch rover to Airbus, which will undertake the study in Stevenage, England.
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