Astronomy, Life On Mars | featured news

NASA scientists say tests on a Mars rock show the planet could have supported primitive life. The analysis was done by the rover Curiosity, which drilled into the rock, crushed it and tested a tiny sample. The rover was the first spacecraft sent to Mars that could collect a sample from deep inside a rock.

The NASA rover Curiosity has beamed back pictures of bedrock that suggest a fast-moving stream, possibly waist-deep, once flowed on Mars -- a find that the mission's chief scientist called exciting.

This week's arrival of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity set the stage for a potentially game-changing quest to learn whether the planet most like Earth ever had a shot at developing life, but follow-up missions exist only on drawing boards.

A NASA rover scouting for signs of past water on Mars has found the strongest evidence yet -- a vein of gypsum, a mineral deposited by water, protruding from an ancient rock.

The one-ton, car-sized Curiosity rocketed from Kennedy Space Center Saturday. The vehicle is on a two-year mission to determine whether life could have existed on Mars.

As big as a car and as well-equipped as a laboratory, NASA's newest Mars rover blows away its predecessors in size and skill. Nicknamed Curiosity and scheduled for launch on Saturday, the rover has a 7-foot arm tipped with a jackhammer and a laser to break through the Martian red rock. What really makes it stand out: It can analyze rocks and soil with unprecedented accuracy. "This is a Mars scientist's dream machine," said NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Ashwin Vasavada, the deputy project scientist. Once on the red planet, Curiosity will be on the lookout for organic, carbon-containing compounds. While the rover can't actually detect the presence of living organisms, scientists hope to learn from the $2.5 billion, nuclear-powered mission whether Mars has - or ever had - what it takes to nurture microbial life.

Scientists have found Earth's oldest fossils in Australia and say their microscopic discovery is convincing evidence that cells and bacteria were able to thrive in an oxygen-free world more than 3.4 billion years ago.

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 ...

If NASA's exploration of Mars were summed up in a bumper sticker, it would read: "Follow the water."...