Mars

NASA is continuing to prepare its freshly named Mars 2020 rover for launch later this year, with the team successfully attaching the sampling components that Perseverance will use to collect Martian rock and dust after touchdown.

Europe's ExoMars mission has suffered a setback and will not launch until 2022. The mission has been pushed back from its 2020 launch date due to the need for further component testing and the disruption caused by the COVID-19 outbreak.

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's Mars 2020 rover finally has a name: Perseverance. The result of a nationwide "Name the Rover" essay contest, the winning moniker was submitted by 13-year-old Alexander Mather of Lake Braddock Secondary School in Burke, Virginia.

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.

The Insight lander's primary sensor has pulled in the first ever direct measurements of seismic activity on Mars, which mission scientists can use as window to better understand the planet’s insides and its potential to harbor life.

Shipping fertilizer to colonies on Mars could be quite a hassle – it would be better if the colonists could grow crops using whatever's on hand. The continuation of an existing study now indicates that urine might in fact serve as a good fertilizer.

Japan is moving ahead with a first-of-a-kind mission to explore the two moons of the Mars system. All going to plan, the Martian Moon Exploration mission will return to Earth with the first ever samples of a Martian moon by the end of the decade.

Science stands still for no one, and with a new year comes a new calendar of exciting events in spaceflight and exploration. New Atlas rounds up some of the most important milestones to look forward to in 2020.

NASA has revealed the nine finalist names for the space agency's Mars 2020 rover – and none of them are "Rovy McRoverface." Selected from 28,000 essays submitted by US elementary and high school students, the nine names will now go to a public poll.

NASA's myco-architecture project at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley is exploring the possibility that future inhabitants of the Moon and Mars, not to mention the Earth, may live in homes grown from fungus.

The cosmic beauty of space never ceases to impress. New Atlas rounds up some of the most incredible space photos of 2019, including historic firsts, stunning starscapes, gorgeous galaxies and some new angles on our own solar system.