Space is extremely dangerous, but people can still do more than robotic explorers can – in terms of technical achievements and inspiring public interest.
Articles on Mars rover
Displaying 1 - 20 of 36 articles
A planetary scientist walks through the sensors and systems that went into the recent detection of potential biosignatures.
NASA’s Curiosity rover has spotted carbon-containing minerals that can tell scientists more about what ancient Mars’ atmosphere may have looked like.
The Perseverance rover has arrived at what’s thought to be an ancient shoreline on Mars.
While NASA rovers on the surface of Mars look for hints of life, researchers back on Earth are studying ‘echoes of life’ from ancient basins – hoping that the two sites might be similar.
After the Chinese Zhurong’s successful landing, we look at the previous Mars missions that have tried, and sometimes failed.
Electronics are not the only technology to have been miniaturized. Using the strange behavior of fluids in tiny spaces, microfluidic devices are critical to medicine, science and the modern world.
On May 17 China will attempt to land its first rover on Mars.
Flying the Ingenuity helicopter on Mars is the equivalent of flying one at about 100,000 feet on Earth. Tricky, considering the highest helicopter flight ever recorded maxed out at 42,000 feet.
NASA’s successful Mars landing will reveal yet more secrets from the red planet. But there is much we already know from Martian fragments that found their way to Earth.
Perseverance follows in the tracks of Curiosity. The latter’s touchdown on Martian soil in 2012 marked the first successful use of several pioneering space technologies.
Of the three probes to reach Mars this month, only two will land. But they will add to our growing knowledge of the red planet, and the search for evidence of life.
The Perseverance rover onboard Mars
2020 is our best bet for finding life on the red planet.
Martian meteorites allow scientists here on Earth to decode that planet’s geology, more than a decade before the first missions are scheduled to bring rocks back home from Mars.
The first Martian might just be a human being.
It’s established Mars was once a planet with surface-level water. So with multiple MARS missions starting next year, the key to seeking out martian life may instead lie in the contents of its ‘dust’.
Rovers including ‘Rosalind Franklin’ will pick up where Opportunity left off – trying to answer the question of whether there is, or ever has been, life on Mars.
Mars has long captured our imagination, from claims of canals to Martian attacks and now our latest NASA exploration to look inside the red planet.
I’ve worked with NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Project for 16 years. If you got yourself a ticket to Mars, here’s how I’d advise you to prepare. And by the way, any mistake could kill you.
NASA’s InSight Mars lander touches down Nov. 26, part of a careful robotic approach to exploring the red planet. But human exploration of Mars will inevitably introduce Earth life. Are you OK with that?
Top contributors
-
Executive Dean (Engineering), Edith Cowan University
-
Senior Instrument Scientist, Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation
-
Director, Binar Space Program, Curtin University
-
Postdoctoral research associate, University of Oxford
-
Group Executive, Information Sciences, CSIRO
-
Senior Lecturer in Physics, Nottingham Trent University
-
Professor in Earth Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and Emeritus Professor of Mineral Physics, University of Cambridge
-
Associate Professor in Archaeology and Space Studies, Flinders University
-
PhD Student in Geosciences, University of Arizona
-
Postdoctoral Scholar in Electrical Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles
-
Emeritus Candler Professor of Physics, Emory University
-
Research Fellow/Reader in Planetary Physics, Lancaster University
-
PhD researcher, School of Geographical and Earth Sciences, University of Glasgow
-
Associate Deputy Vice Chancellor, Research (Interim), Curtin University
-
Professor of Astronomy, Vanderbilt University