In 2012, NASA landed the rover Curiosity in the Gale crater on Mars because the crater was thought by many scientists to be the site of an ancient lake on Mars more than 3 billion years ago. Since that time, the rover has ...
Space Exploration
Aug 9, 2021
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6182
A team of researchers from Spain, France and the U.S. has found evidence of a glauconitic-like clay on Mars that suggests the planet once had habitable conditions. In their paper published in the journal Nature Astronomy, ...
Understanding whether Mars was once able to support life has been a major driving force for Mars research over the past 50 years. To decipher the planet's ancient climate and habitability, researchers look to the rock record—a ...
Space Exploration
Apr 22, 2021
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69
Once upon a time, seasons in Gale Crater probably felt something like those in Iceland. But nobody was there to bundle up more than 3 billion years ago.
Astronomy
Jan 21, 2021
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139
Floods of unimaginable magnitude once washed through Gale Crater on Mars' equator around 4 billion years ago—a finding that hints at the possibility that life may have existed there, according to data collected by NASA's ...
Space Exploration
Nov 20, 2020
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2132
NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has a new selfie. This latest is from a location named "Mary Anning," after a 19th-century English paleontologist whose discovery of marine-reptile fossils were ignored for generations because ...
Space Exploration
Nov 12, 2020
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5499
Presently, Earth is the only known location where life exists in the Universe. This year the Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to three astronomers who proved, almost 20 years ago, that planets are common around stars beyond ...
Astrobiology
Jan 21, 2020
3
613
Curiosity won't be NASA's only active Mars rover for much longer. Next summer, Mars 2020 will be headed for the Red Planet. While the newest rover borrows from Curiosity's design, they aren't twins: Built and managed by NASA's ...
Space Exploration
Dec 11, 2019
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569
Scientists have taken an important step towards revealing the mysterious source of methane on Mars, by refining estimates of the gas in the planet's atmosphere.
Space Exploration
Aug 21, 2019
2
652
NASA's Curiosity rover has come a long way since touching down on Mars seven years ago. It has traveled a total of 13 miles (21 kilometers) and ascended 1,207 feet (368 meters) to its current location. Along the way, Curiosity ...
Space Exploration
Aug 6, 2019
1
929
