Searching for organics in a nibble of soil

You might call it a high-tech panhandler, with its design for sifting through sprinkles of dirt to find tiny specks of organic material. Or you might think of it as a soil-eating-micro-espresso machine that could potentially ...

Curiosity rover update: Sniffing Mars' atmosphere

What has Curiosity been up to lately? The rover's Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instruments makes up more than half the science payload on board MSL, and it is now searching for compounds of the element carbon—including ...

Sputtering: How mars may have lost its atmosphere

Why is Mars cold and dry? While some recent studies hint that early Mars may have never been wet or warm, many scientists think that long ago, Mars once had a denser atmosphere that supported liquid water on the surface. ...

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