Researchers analyzing pulverized rock onboard NASA’s Curiosity rover have found the largest organic compounds on the Red Planet to date. The finding, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests prebiotic chemistry may have advanced further on Mars than previously observed. Scientists probed an existing rock sample inside Curiosity’s Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) mini-lab and found the molecules decane, undecane, and dodecane. These compounds, which are made up of 10, 11, and 12 carbons, respectively, are thought to be the fragments of fatty acids that…
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Life on Mars? It probably looks like something you’d find in your stomach
This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. María Rosa Pino Otín is a Professor and researcher of Microbiology, Universidad San Jorge We often forget how wonderful it is that life exists, and what a special and unique phenomenon it is. As far as we know, ours is the only planet capable of supporting life, and it seems to have arisen in the form of something like today’s single-celled prokaryotic organisms. However, scientists have not given up hope…
Read MoreIs it time to revisit what NASA’s Viking lander found on Mars in 1976?
Back in 1976, the dual NASA Viking landers came to full stop on the Red Planet. Their life detection experimental findings still reverberate within the scientific community – fueling the on-going discussion on a key question: Is there life on Mars? Fast forward to today, a new paper tackles and reconsiders the results of the Viking Biology experiments. Perchlorate finding The most significant change since those 1970’s experiments were conducted was the discovery of high levels of perchlorate on Mars. Perchlorate, plus abiotic oxidants, explains the Viking results and there…
Read MoreA Rainbow-colored “Feather” in the Martian Sky
NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover captured this feather-shaped iridescent cloud just after sunset on Jan. 27, 2023. Studying the colors in iridescent clouds tells scientists something about particle size within the clouds and how they grow over time. These clouds were captured as part of a seasonal imaging campaign to study noctilucent, or “night-shining” clouds. A new campaign in January 2025 led to Curiosity capturing this video of red- and green-tinged clouds drifting through the Martian sky. Learn more about iridescent twilight clouds on Mars. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Read More‘Marsquakes’ may solve 50-year-old mystery about the Red Planet
Recordings of Martian earthquakes, or “marsquakes,” collected by a robot on the Red Planet may have finally solved a 50-year-old mystery: why one half of Mars is so drastically different from the other. Since the 1970s, researchers have known that Mars is split into two main areas. The northern lowlands cover around two-thirds of the planet’s northern hemisphere, while the southern highlands cover the rest of the planet and have an average elevation roughly 3 miles (5 kilometers) higher than that of the northern lowlands. Mars’ crust, which sits on…
Read MoreMars was hot then cold then hot again. Could life have really survived there?
New research suggests that temperatures on ancient Mars may have fluctuated between hot and cold periods through a relatively short period during its lifetime of billions of years. But these hot and cold spells may have been detrimental to life if it existed on the Red Planet. Mars may be a dry and arid planet today, but scientists know that Earth’s neighbor was much wetter and much more like our planet in its ancient past. These new findings from a team of researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School…
Read MoreMysterious Mars mounds may bolster case for ancient Red Planet ocean
Thousands of hills and mounds on Mars have been found to contain layers of clay minerals, which formed when running water interacted with the rocks during a period when Mars’ northern reaches were flooded. “This research shows us that Mars’ climate was dramatically different in the distant past,” Joe McNeil of the Natural History Museum in London said in a statement. “The mounds are rich in clay minerals, meaning liquid water must have been present at the surface in large quantities nearly four billion years ago.” Mars is a planet…
Read MoreSpringtime on Mars brings frost avalanches, gas geysers and explosions (photos)
Instead of chilled glasses and champagne bubbles to ring in the New Year, how about gassy geysers and frosty avalanches? That’s exactly what you can expect as the Martian New Year begins on the Red Planet with the onset of spring across its Northern Hemisphere. The term “walking in a winter wonderland” on Mars consists more like sprinting across the surface, having to dodge the crash of cliffsides and explosions of carbon dioxide. Unlike our northern hemisphere on Earth, on the Red Planet, the new year starts off with the…
Read MoreJanuary’s Night Sky Notes: The Red Planet
3 min read January’s Night Sky Notes: The Red Planet by Kat Troche of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific Have you looked up at the night sky this season and noticed a bright object sporting a reddish hue to the left of Orion? This is none other than the planet Mars! January will be an excellent opportunity to spot this planet and some of its details with a medium-sized telescope. Be sure to catch these three events this month. Martian Retrograde Mars entered retrograde (or backward movement relative to…
Read MoreMars orbiters witness a ‘winter wonderland’ on the Red Planet (photos)
Hoping for a white Christmas this year? Well, even if there’s no snow where you live, at least you can enjoy these images of a “winter” wonderland on Mars. Taken by the German-built High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Mars Express orbiter in June 2022, and by NASA’s NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter using its High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on September 2022, these images showcase what appears to be a snowy landscape in the Australe Scopuli region of Mars, near the planet’s south pole.…
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