Space, Mars | featured news

Think Mars today is a hostile place? It was worse 600,000 years ago, according to new research that suggests the planet had a dustier, stormier atmosphere. “It was an unpleasant place to hang out,” said lead researcher Roger Phillips of the Southwest Research Institute. He said Mars’ climate was probably a lot like the American Dust Bowl of the 1930s — but a lot worse.

Towards the end of 2011 a large and hugely expensive robotic rover called Curiosity is due to blast off for Mars from Cape Canaveral. If it makes it safely to the planet’s surface in August 2012 one of the first things it will do is sniff the air. Its creators, back on Earth, will be straining to see if that air carries a whiff of methane.

Jupiter and Mars aren't the only recent impact victims in our solar system. In two talks today at the Division for Planetary Sciences in Pasadena, California, astronomers report that a small asteroid located in the inner asteroid belt between those two planets took a major hit early last year.

Thirty-four years after NASA's Viking missions to Mars sent back results interpreted to mean there was no organic material - and consequently no life - on the planet, new research has concluded that organic material was found after all.

A vast ocean likely covered one-third of the surface of Mars some 3.5 billion years ago, according to a new study. While the notion of a large, ancient ocean on Mars has been repeatedly proposed and challenged over the past two decades, the research provides further support for the idea of a sustained sea on the Red Planet more than 3 billion years ...

An international team of researchers on Thursday launched a grueling simulation of a flight to Mars that will keep them locked in a cascade of ...

NASA is considering a plan to get around limited budgets set in Washington by stretching out missions to bring back samples from Mars, a researcher said on Wednesday.

Scientists have found lots of life-essential water – frozen as ice – in an unexpected place in our solar system: an asteroid between Mars and Jupiter.

President Barack Obama predicted Thursday his new space exploration plans would lead American astronauts to Mars and back in his lifetime, a bold forecast relying on rockets and propulsion still to be imagined and built.

A journey from Earth to Mars could soon take just 39 days -- cutting current travel time nearly six times -- according to a rocket scientist who has the ear of the US space agency.