The colorful walls of an exposed impact crater on Mars

Impact craters have been called the "poor geologists' drill," since they allow scientists to look beneath to the subsurface of a planet without actually digging down. It's estimated that Mars has over 600,000 craters, so ...

An ultraviolet instrument for ESA's Jupiter mission

An ultraviolet spectrograph (UVS) designed and built by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) is the first scientific instrument to be delivered for integration onto the European Space Agency's Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer (JUICE) ...

Fractured ice sheets on Mars

Where the two hemispheres of Mars meet, the planet is covered in broken-up terrain: a sign that slow-but-steady flows of icy material once forged their way through the landscape, carving out a fractured web of valleys, cliffs ...

NASA's Mars 2020 will hunt for microscopic fossils

Scientists with NASA's Mars 2020 rover have discovered what may be one of the best places to look for signs of ancient life in Jezero Crater, where the rover will land on Feb. 18, 2021.

Flying the final approach to Tranquility Base

As the Apollo 11 lunar module approached the Moon's surface for the first manned landing, commander Neil Armstrong switched off the autopilot and flew the spacecraft manually to a landing.

NASA's MRO completes 60,000 trips around Mars

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter hit a dizzying milestone this morning: It completed 60,000 loops around the Red Planet at 10:39 a.m. PDT (1:39 p.m. EDT). On average, MRO takes 112 minutes to circle Mars, whipping around ...

Five things to know about InSight's Mars landing

Every Mars landing is a knuckle-whitening feat of engineering. But each attempt has its own quirks based on where a spacecraft is going and what kind of science the mission intends to gather.

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