NASA's Mars 2020 rover has received a key piece of equipment for the collection, containment, and eventual return to Earth of samples of the Red Planet as engineers installed the bit carousel of the Sample Caching System used to store and sort out the tools and core samples.
Continue Reading
A joint venture between the ESA and Roscosmos to place a rover and science platform on Mars has hit a stumbling block, with the parachutes needed to safely lower the ExoMars 2020 module to the surface receiving damage during the latest round of testing.
Continue Reading
With an eye to making future unmanned and manned planetary landing missions safer, NASA has installed the first components of the advanced Mars Entry, Descent and Landing Instrumentation 2 (MEDLI2) sensor suite aboard the Mars 2020 entry vehicle.
Continue Reading
NASA's Mars 2020 rover passed its first set of eye exams as engineers work on the unmanned explorer's array of cameras. The first set of cameras was installed on the front of the rover at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in July and then given the robotic equivalent of an eye-chart test.
Continue Reading
With an annual budget of US$21.5 billion, over 17,000 employees and who knows how many geniuses, you'd think NASA could pretty much solve any problem. But NASA not only needs outside help, it encourages it, announcing 19 partnerships with US businesses to benefit the entire US space sector.
Continue Reading
NASA's Mars 2020 rover got a bit of a workout recently as it flexed its mechanical muscles. Captured in a time-lapse video, the robotic arm with its 88-lb "hand" did a bit of curling as space agency engineers guided it from its deployed to its stowed configuration for launch to the Red Planet.
Continue Reading
NASA has given the green light to begin placing the plutonium-238 dioxide fuel into the nuclear Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (MMRTG) on the Mars 2020 robotic rover that will provide it with heat and electricity.
Continue Reading
Red wine may have health benefits against cancer, obesity, aging, and even cavities. Now, a new study may add muscle loss to the list. In tests on rats, a Harvard team found that a red wine compound called resveratrol could help keep astronauts toned during trips in space or life on Mars.
Continue Reading
Modern Mars is a desolate husk of a planet, as far as life is concerned. But it’s not completely uninhabitable, since microbes could be hiding in the cracks of rocks and dirt. And now a new study has found a possible food source for these organisms – space dust.
Continue Reading
Researchers from Harvard have shown that thin layers of silica aerogel could warm the surface of Mars and block UV radiation while still letting visible light through. That could be enough to keep water liquid and let plants photosynthesize within a given region.
Continue Reading
See the stories that matter in your inbox every morning