Astro Blog

By Paul Voosen , Science.  Excerpt: After years on life support, NASA’s plan to collect martian rocks and ferry them back to Earth has died. Yesterday, Congress  released  a  compromise spending bill  for the present financial year that backs the White House’s effort to kill the Mars Sample Return (MSR) program. Although the bill must be passed by both congressional chambers and signed into law, it effectively signals the end of MSR....  Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/nasa-s-mars-sample-return-mission-dead . 

By Benjamin Thompson  &  Nick Petrić Howe , Nature.  Excerpt: The sounds of ‘micro-lightning’ have been recorded by NASA’s Perseverance rover, ending a long search for the phenomenon on Mars. ...a microphone on Perseverance ...found 55 such examples, along with signs of electrostatic interference indicative of the phenomenon. They dubbed the electric bursts ‘micro-lightning’, as they are far smaller than the lighting seen on Earth, due to the thin Martian atmosphere....  Full article at https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-03896-7 .

By Robert Sanders , UC Berkeley News.  Excerpt: UPDATE 11/13/25 : After two launch delays because of weather and a solar storm, New Glenn launched from Cape Canaveral at 3:55 p.m. EST Thursday, Nov. 13. The twin satellites successfully separated from the rocket about 33 minutes after launch, and the rocket booster made a pinpoint landing on an ocean barge about 375 miles offshore — a first for New Glenn. For more updates, check  NASA’s ESCAPADE blog . ...Takeaways: (1) NASA’s ESCAPADE is the first UC Berkeley-led planetary mission. Its two identical satellites will provide an unprecedented stereo view of Mars’ magnetosphere; (2) Mapping the ionosphere and space environment are key to understanding Mars’ evolution and safeguarding astronaut communication and survival on the planet; (3) ESCAPADE will pioneer a new trajectory to Mars that will be needed for future human settlement when we send fleets of spacecraft to the planet....  Full article at https://news.berkeley.edu/...

By Javier Barbuzano , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: In 2020, the...InSight lander...was performing spectacularly, and it had no end in sight. Then, its power began to fade. Fine Martian dust was relentlessly piling on top of its solar panels, blocking sunlight. Mission operators...hoped that occasional wind gusts or passing dust devils would sweep the panels clean... [as] had prolonged the lives of earlier robotic explorers, such as the Spirit and Opportunity rovers. But for  InSight , no such wind ever came, and its batteries slowly ran out of juice. ...Researchers still know little about how winds move across the planet’s surface and interact with dust. To help fill this gap, a group of researchers has now reviewed decades of orbital imagery from two European Space Agency (ESA) spacecraft— Mars Express  and the  ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter , operational since 2004 and 2016, respectively—looking for dust devils and using them as a proxy for surface winds. ...these orbiters have ...

By Javier Barbuzano , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Almost a decade after NASA’s InSight mission put the first working seismometer on the Martian surface, ...scientists reported seismic evidence that Mars has a solid inner core, an unexpected finding that challenges earlier studies that suggested the planet’s core was entirely molten. ...the interior of Mars has layers... [with] different densities and can be solid or liquid. As seismic waves move through the layers, they are bent or reflected, especially at boundaries where density changes sharply. ...Previous analyses of InSight data had already mapped the structure of the Martian  crust  and  mantle  and also revealed that the planet has a surprisingly  large molten metallic core , spanning nearly half its radius. ...the new finding caught InSight scientists off guard....  Full article at https://eos.org/articles/scientists-may-have-finally-detected-a-solid-inner-core-on-mars .  See also Dust devil migrat...

By David L. Chandler , Sky & Telescope.  Excerpt: The Perseverance has found compounds associated with life on Earth. But whether they indicate life on Mars awaits sample return. ...One rock,...is dotted with colored spots, ...The leopard spots, it turns out, appear to be  reaction fronts  — areas of contact between an expanding chemical reaction and surrounding rock. The material in the rings is composed of two different iron-rich minerals: vivianite (iron phosphate) and greigite (iron sulfide). Both of these minerals, on Earth, are usually associated with decaying plant matter or are products of microbial activity. ...The team cautions, however, that a non-biological formation process has not been ruled out.  Full article at https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/best-evidence-yet-for-past-life-on-mars/ .  See also New York Times article .

By Paul Voosen , Science.  Excerpt: NASA’s Curiosity rover has detected what could be a chemical relic of long-ago life on Mars: long-chain organic molecules. Found after painstaking reanalysis of data on a sample drilled from a lake that dried up billions of years ago, the molecules likely derived from fatty acids, a common building block of cell membranes on Earth. The finding,  published  today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is not a definite detection of past life; the fatty acids could also have formed without life. But it’s another in a series of tantalizing hints....  Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/curiosity-rover-detects-long-chain-carbon-molecules-mars . 

By Robert Sanders , UC Berkeley News.  Excerpt: Mars today is a cold, dry, dusty planet with its only obvious water locked up in frozen polar ice caps. But billions of years ago, it appears to have had sandy beaches lapped by waves along the shoreline of a vast ocean. The evidence for beaches on Mars comes from a Chinese rover, called Zhurong, that landed on the planet in 2021. During its short life it detected evidence of underground beach deposits in an area thought to have once been the site of an ancient sea, bolstering the idea that the planet long ago had large bodies of water. ...between May 2021 and May 2022, Zhurong traveled 1.9 kilometers (1.2 miles) roughly perpendicular to escarpments thought to be an ancient shoreline from a time — 4 billion years ago — when Mars had a thicker atmosphere and a warmer climate. Along its path, the rover used ground penetrating radar (GPR) to probe up to 80 meters (260 feet) beneath the surface. ...“The structures don’t look like sand du...

By Vashan Wright ,  Matthias Morzfeld , and  Michael Manga , PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.  Abstract: Large volumes of liquid water transiently existed on the surface of Mars more than 3 billion years ago. Much of this water is hypothesized to have been sequestered in the subsurface or lost to space. We use rock physics models and Bayesian inversion to identify combinations of lithology, liquid water saturation, porosity, and pore shape consistent with the constrained mid-crust (∼11.5 to 20 km depths) seismic velocities and gravity near the InSight lander. A mid-crust composed of fractured igneous rocks saturated with liquid water best explains the existing data. Our results have implications for understanding Mars’ water cycle, determining the fates of past surface water, searching for past or extant life, and assessing in situ resource utilization for future missions.  Full article at https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.24...

By Hannah Richter , Science.  Excerpt: One of the classic tropes of science fiction is  terraforming Mars : warming up our cold neighbor so it could support human civilization. The idea might not be so far-fetched,  research published today  in Science Advances suggests. Injecting tiny particles into Mars’s atmosphere could warm the planet by more than 10°C in a matter of months, researchers find—enough to sustain liquid water. Although the scheme would require about 2 million tons of particles per year, they could be manufactured from readily available ingredients found in martian dust....  Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/terraforming-mars-could-be-easier-scientists-thought . 

By EMILY LAKDAWALLA  , Sky & Telescope.  Excerpt: Martian gullies have been the center of a debate about whether Mars ever has flowing water. Now, a comprehensive study examines the question. Lots of Mars’s hillslopes have gullies, steep ravines that grow when we’re not looking. They look so much like Earth’s own gullies, formed when water and debris carve into steep slopes, that it’s easy to think that water must be involved on Mars, too. But physics says water shouldn’t ever be liquid anywhere on the Martian surface today. Many scientists therefore think gully formation must be triggered by some kind of dry process, involving ice (either water ice or carbon dioxide ice) that  sublimates  directly from solid to gas. In a new study, published in the August 2024 issue of  Icarus , Axel Noblet (University of Western Ontario, Canada) and colleagues amass data on nearly 8,000 gullied slopes and come up with an answer to the “wet or dry” question: It’s both, and ...

https://eos.org/articles/five-martian-mysteries-that-have-scientists-scratching-their-heads By Matthew R. Francis , Eos/AGU. Excerpt: . 1. Why Is the Southern Hemisphere So Bulgy? 2. Where Has All the Water Gone? 3. Why Is Mars an Ice Ball? 4. Is There Methane? 5. How Much Does the Planet Wobble? ....

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03271-4 By Alexandra Witze , Nature.  Excerpt: A meteorite that slammed into Mars in September 2021 has rewritten what scientists know about the planet’s interior. By analysing the seismic energy that vibrated through the planet after the impact, researchers have discovered a layer of molten rock that envelops Mars’s liquid-metal core. The finding, reported today in two papers in  Nature 1 , 2 , means that the Martian core is smaller than previously thought. It also resolves some lingering questions about how the red planet formed and evolved over billions of years. The discovery comes from NASA’s InSight mission,  which landed a craft with a seismometer on Mars’s surface . Between 2018 and 2022, that instrument  detected hundreds of ‘marsquakes’ shaking the planet . Seismic waves produced by quakes or impacts can slow down or speed up depending on what types of material they are travelling through, so seismologists can meas...

https://www.science.org/content/article/ancient-mud-cracks-mars-point-conditions-favorable-life By Phil Jacobs, Science.  Excerpt: ...the discovery of distinctive mud cracks on the planet’s surface suggest ancient Mars cycled through sustained wet and dry seasons for millions of years. Not only would the climate have been habitable, scientists say, but the cycling might have also given the basic chemistry of life a boost. The discovery, reported today in Nature, is  compelling evidence for an Earth-like climate on early Mars .... the Curiosity rover has discovered patterns of hexagon-shaped cracks in ancient rocks that add to the evidence for a sustained warm climate. They resemble patterns found on Earth in places like Death Valley, where they only form after years of wet-dry cycling.... 

https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/perseverance-finds-complex-organics-not-life-on-mars/ By Colin Stuart, Sky & Telescope Magazine.  Excerpt: Planetary scientists analyzing data from NASA’s Perseverance rover have found signs of organic molecules on Mars, hinting that the planet had a more complex geochemical cycle in the past than previously thought. If true, it shows that the building blocks of life have been present on the Red Planet for around billions of years. These new findings, published in  Nature , come from examining the floor of Jezero Crater, a 45-kilometer- (28-mile-) wide impact basin just north of the Martian equator. NASA picked it as Perseverance’s landing site due to geological signs that an ancient river flooded into the crater some 2.5 billion years ago.... 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/25/science/mars-deimos-moon-photos.html By Jonathan O’Callaghan , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Deimos, the smaller of the two moons of Mars, might be a chip off the old block — quite literally. That’s the conclusion drawn by scientists in the United Arab Emirates, whose Hope orbiter — also called the Emirates Mars Mission and the country’s first interplanetary spacecraft — just snapped the best views of Deimos ever taken by human spacecraft. ... Mars has two irregularly shaped moons , and neither is mighty. Phobos, the larger of the two, is about 17 miles in diameter at its widest, and orbits closer to the red planet at an altitude of about 3,700 miles. Deimos is just nine miles across on its longest side, and completes an orbit of Mars every 30 hours at an altitude of 15,000 miles. The moons’ small size and quirky dimensions led to suggestions that they may be asteroids captured by Mars long ago. Not so, say researchers analyzing data recorded by H...

https://www.science.org/content/article/nasa-lays-out-vision-robotic-mars-exploration By Paul Voosen, Science.  Excerpt: Rover by rover, NASA’s exploration of Mars is building to an expensive climax: a multibillion-dollar mission later this decade to collect the rock samples  currently being gathered by the Perseverance rover  and return them to Earth. But then what? NASA ...envisions a series of lower cost Mars missions, costing up to $300 million, at every 2-year launch window. The program could begin as soon as 2030, said Eric Ianson, director of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program, in a  presentation today  to the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. ...planetary scientists have been investigating what cheaper missions to Mars might look like. In 2018, Mars Cube One, a pair of small spacecraft, flew along with the InSight lander, successfully relaying its signal to Earth as they flew past the planet. And the Ingenuity helicopter o...

https://eos.org/articles/wind-could-power-future-settlements-on-mars By Alakananda Dasgupta , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Using a sophisticated global climate model adapted to Mars, space scientists explore the hidden potential of wind energy on the Red Planet. ...there’s the question of where to find a viable and steady source of energy that would be required for any  human mission to Mars . The answer to that question may be blowing in the Martian wind, according to a new study. ...with the atmospheric density of Mars being 1% that of Earth, much larger turbine blades would be needed to generate sufficient energy. ...Now, a study published in  Nature Astronomy  has suggested that wind energy could, indeed, be harnessed to power human settlements on Mars. “We were excited to find that there are many locations across the planet where winds are strong enough to provide a really stable power resource” and compensate for a shortfall in solar power using wind turbines, said...

https://www.science.org/content/article/mars-had-long-lived-magnetic-field-extending-chances-life By Zack Savitsky, Science.  Excerpt: Once upon a time, scientists believe, Mars was far from today’s cold, inhospitable desert. Rivers carved canyons, lakes filled craters, and a magnetic field may have fended off space radiation, keeping it from eating away the atmospheric moisture. As the martian interior cooled, leading theories hold, its magnetic field died out, leaving the atmosphere undefended and ending this warm and wet period, when the planet might have hosted life. But researchers can’t agree on when that happened. Now, fragments from a famous martian meteorite, studied with a new kind of quantum microscope, have yielded evidence that the planet’s field persisted until 3.9 billion years ago, hundreds of millions of years longer than many had thought. The clues in the meteorite, a Mars rock that ended up on Earth after an impact blasted it from its home planet, could extend Ma...

https://eos.org/articles/nasas-perseverance-rover-records-the-first-sounds-of-a-dust-devil-on-mars By Jon Kelvey , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: In a stroke of luck, the SuperCam microphone on Perseverance was turned on the moment a dust devil swept directly over the rover. ...