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22 stories from Planck Standard. Latest: September 11, 2026.
A Paris-Saclay team used Mars Express and MRO spectrometers to rule out liquid water and CO2 geysers at Sisyphi Cavi. The timing points to slabs of carbon dioxide frost sliding downhill on a cushion of sublimating gas, like an air-hockey puck.
Gypsum shaped like cabbage leaves and Christmas trees does not form from frost or vapor. It needs pooled brine — on a planet most models say froze solid three billion years ago.
NWA 13441 dates to 1.273 billion years, an age no other Martian meteorite occupies. Its chemistry says it came from a piece of Mars that has sat untouched since the solar system formed.
Two spacecraft — NASA's MAVEN and China's Tianwen-1 — watched at the same time and caught Kelvin-Helmholtz waves dumping bulk plasma into space.
The polygonal fractures in Valle Grande measure two to three inches across and climb a 20-foot butte. Scientists have three competing explanations and no answer yet.
The spacecraft skimmed 2,864 miles above Mars on May 15 to steal speed for its trip to a metal asteroid. The flyby doubled as a full dress rehearsal — and produced a timelapse of the Red Planet.
Individual readings from the rover's Mössbauer spectrometer were too noisy to show it. Combined into one composite spectrum, they revealed crystalline hematite sitting in ordinary Martian soil.
A camera built to shoot the bright surface of Mars was pushed far beyond its design limits to capture a visitor from another star system, tail and all.
From compact power for the Moon's shadowed craters to systems for servicing spacecraft in orbit, the agency is pairing its labs and expertise with private industry in a $60 million-plus collaboration.
The car-sized rover crossed the 42.195-kilometer mark on its 1,890th Martian day while exploring ancient terrain west of Jezero Crater, shattering the pace set by its predecessor Opportunity.
Revolutionary propulsion system combines chemical and electric thrusters using single fuel, potentially transforming small satellite capabilities with NASA-supported mission testing technology in orbit.
A routine drill into a sandstone slab nicknamed 'Atacama' lifted the entire chunk out of Gale Crater and stuck it to the rover's drill sleeve — an annoying first that handed scientists their first ever look at pristine, unweathered Martian bedrock from below.
The magnetoplasmadynamic engine ran 25 times more powerful than the thrusters now flying on the Psyche mission, hitting tungsten temperatures above 5,000°F and marking the highest-power electric propulsion test ever conducted in the United States.
JPL says its High-Performance Spaceflight Computing processor, built jointly with Microchip Technology, has cleared early radiation testing well beyond its 100x design target and is on track to fly on Artemis lunar missions and Mars Sample Return.
Shalbatana Vallis stretches 1,300 kilometers across Mars, carved by ancient floods that may hint at a lost ocean near the planet's equator.
A revolutionary electromagnetic engine reached record-breaking power levels at JPL, firing hotter than molten lava while demonstrating technology that could transform space travel.
The rover detected compounds resembling DNA building blocks in 3.5-billion-year-old rocks, suggesting Mars may have once been far more biologically promising than previously thought.
Scientists describe the complex organic molecules found in Jezero Crater sediments as the most compelling evidence yet for past life — or conditions favorable to it — on Mars.
Unique sedimentary formations in Gale Crater, 3.6 billion years old, suggest Mars once had a denser atmosphere capable of generating intense storm events lasting only minutes.
A team from Imperial College London found 'supercritical climbing wind ripples' in Gale Crater — structures never before seen on Mars that could only form when sustained high winds moved enormous quantities of sand.
Electrical discharges from Martian dust devils and storms create chemical reactions that reshape planet's surface and atmosphere
Six months into exploring an expanse of web-like mineral ridges in Gale Crater, Curiosity has drilled rock samples revealing clay and carbonate minerals that could only form in long-lived liquid water, suggesting Mars remained hospitable far longer and higher up its geology than scientists previously believed.