(This July 30 story refiles to add details on previous NASA rovers, landers) By Joey Roulette (Reuters) – NASA’s next-generation Mars rover Perseverance blasted off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral on Thursday atop an Atlas 5 rocket on a $2.4 billion mission to s... More »
(Reuters) – NASA is set to launch an ambitious mission to Mars on Thursday with the liftoff of its next-generation Perseverance rover, a six-wheeled robot tasked with deploying a mini helicopter, testing out equipment for future human missions and searching fo... More »
BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s space agency on Friday unveiled the name of its first Mars exploration mission, coinciding with China’s annual Space Day and the 50th anniversary of the launch of its first satellite. The Mars mission has been named Tianwen-1, the o... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – NASA’s robotic InSight lander has for the first time established that Mars is seismically active, but do not call the shaking, rattling and rolling taking place on the Red Planet earthquakes. The proper term, fittingly, is marsquakes. Sc... More »
PASADENA, Calif. (Reuters) – A NASA robotic rover is nearing completion ahead of a journey next year to search for evidence of past life on Mars and lay the groundwork for the space agency’s mission to send humans into deep space. The U.S. space agency on Frid... More »
HUAILAI, China (Reuters) – China on Thursday successfully completed a crucial landing test in northern Hebei province ahead of a historic unmanned exploration mission to Mars next year. China is on track to launch its Mars mission, Zhang Kejian, head of the Ch... More »
PRAGUE (Reuters) – Czech scientists have opened a lab to experiment growing food for environments with extreme conditions and lack of water, such as Mars. The “Marsonaut” experiment by scientist Jan Lukacevic, 29, and his team at the Prague University of Life ... More »
JINCHANG, China (Reuters) – About 100 excited Chinese teenagers completed a five-hour tour of a space colony against a desolate backdrop not unlike the desert planet of Tatooine, the home world of Luke Skywalker. They were not on the set of Star Wars, but at a... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Using a radar instrument on an orbiting spacecraft, scientists have spotted what they said on Wednesday appears to be a sizable salt-laden lake under ice on the southern polar plain of Mars, a body of water they called a possible habitat... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – An immense dust storm that may soon encircle Mars is threatening one of NASA’s rovers on the planet’s surface, with the vehicle becoming dormant and unresponsive at a site called Perseverance Valley, U.S. space agency officials said on W... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A NASA rover has detected a bonanza of organic compounds on the surface of Mars and seasonal fluctuations of atmospheric methane in findings released on Thursday that mark some of the strongest evidence ever that Earth’s neighbor may hav... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – NASA said on Friday it will send a small helicopter to Mars as part of the U.S. space agency’s 2020 mission to place a next-generation rover on the Martian surface, marking the first time such an aircraft will be used on another world. T... More »
VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (Reuters) – An Atlas 5 rocket soared into space early on Saturday from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, carrying NASA’s first robotic lander designed for exploring the deep interior of another planet on its voyage to M... More »
VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (Reuters) – A powerful Atlas 5 rocket was poised for liftoff early on Saturday from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, carrying to Mars the first robotic NASA lander designed entirely for exploring the deep interior of t... More »
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – After decades exploring the surface of Mars, NASA is set for the weekend launch of its first robotic lander dedicated to studying the red planet’s deep interior, with instruments to detect planetary seismic rumblings never measured anyw... More »
(Reuters) – A heat shield used in a NASA spacecraft designed to send a six-wheeled rover vehicle to Mars in 2020 suffered an “unexpected” fracture during a structural test this month, causing the space agency to build a replacement, the space agency said. “The... More »
STEVENAGE, England (Reuters) – The European Space Agency’s mission to search for life on Mars has reached an important milestone with its six-wheeled surface rover prototype ready for its “shake and bake”. Built by Airbus Defence and Space just north of London... More »
Israeli scientists participate in an experiment simulating a mission to Mars, at the D-MARS Desert Mars Analog Ramon Station project of Israel’s Space Agency, Ministry of Science, near Mitzpe Ramon, Israel, February 18, 2018. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun RAMON CRATER,... More »
FILE PHOTO – M&M candies are on display at a store in suburban Chicago, Illinois April 28, 2008. REUTERS/Frank Polich NEW YORK (Reuters) – Mars Inc, which makes M&M’s candy and Wrigley’s gum, on Monday published its policies on conducting and funding scientifi... More »
A cross-section of a thick sheet of underground ice is exposed at the steep slope that appears bright blue in this enhanced-color view of Mars from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in this ima... More »
Silicon Valley billionaire Elon Musk on Friday outlined ambitious plans for a manned mission to Mars and a rocket capable of carrying passengers from one continent to another on Earth. More »
To cut costs, Elon Musk's SpaceX company has shrunk the size of the rocket ship it is developing to go to Mars, aiming to start construction on the first spaceship in the first half of next year, Musk said on Friday. More »
Europe’s Schiaparelli spacecraft came very close to a successful landing on Mars last year, but engineers failed to realize how jarring the probe’s parachute descent could be, dooming the touchdown, a report released on Wednesday said. More »
The base of Mars’ Mount Sharp – the rover’s eventual science destination – is pictured in this August 27, 2012 NASA handout photo taken by the Curiosity rover. NASA/Handout via REUTERS Particles blasting out from the sun stripped away what was once a thick, Ea... More »
A sculpture of a man wearing Stemrad’s new protective vest, Astrorad, is seen at an exhibit at Madatech, National Museum of Science Technology and Space in Haifa, Israel February 23, 2017. REUTERS/Amir Cohen A vest designed to shield astronauts from deadly sol... More »
Phobos, the largest of Mar’s two moons, taken by the high resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is shown in this April 9, 2008 image provided by NASA March 2, 2107. NASA/JPL/University of Arizona/Handout vi... More »
File Photo – NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is seen at the site from which it reached down to drill into a rock target called ‘Buckskin’ on lower Mount Sharp in this low-angle self-portrait taken August 5, 2015 and released August 19, 2015. REUTERS/NASA/JPL-Calte... More »
An illustration released by the European Space Agency (ESA) shows the Schiaparelli EDM lander. A European space lander reached Mars on October 19, 2016 in what scientists hope will mark a major milestone in exploration of the Red Planet, but whether it touched... More »
A full-size model of the European ExoMars entry, descent and landing module, Schiaparell is seen during a press conference at the European Space Agency (ESA) Headquarters in Darmstadt, Germany October 20, 2016. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach Images taken by a NASA Ma... More »
An illustration released by the European Space Agency (ESA) shows the Schiaparelli EDM lander. ESA/Handout via REUTERS A European space lander reached Mars on Wednesday in what scientists hope will mark a major milestone in exploration of the Red Planet, but w... More »
An illustration released by the European Space Agency (ESA) shows the Schiaparelli EDM lander. A European space lander reached Mars on October 19, 2016 in what scientists hope will mark a major milestone in exploration of the Red Planet, but whether it touched... More »
A full-size model of the European ExoMars entry, descent and landing module, Schiaparell is seen during a press conference at the European Space Agency (ESA) Headquarters in Darmstadt, Germany October 20, 2016. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach Images taken by a NASA Ma... More »
The ExoMars 2016 spacecraft composite, comprised of the Trace Gas Orbiter and Schiaparelli, is transfered to the launch vehicle adapter (LVA), with the conical shaped LVA seen in the foreground, at the Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, in this handout photo rel... More »
Concept portrayal of China’s Mars rover and lander released on August 23, 2016 by lunar probe and space project center of Chinese State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence. China Daily/via REUTERS China has showed off its fi... More »
BERLIN A spacecraft is due to set off for Mars next week on a mission that scientists hope will help answer one of the most burning questions of spacefaring times: Is there life on other planets? The craft, part of the European-Russian ExoMars program, is to l... More »
NASA plans to repair a Mars spacecraft that was grounded in December because of a leak in its primary science instrument, putting the mission back on track for another launch attempt in 2018, the U.S. space agency said on Wednesday. The spacecraft, a satellite... More »
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. Three years after landing in a giant Martian crater, NASA’s Curiosity rover has found what scientists call proof that the basin had repeatedly filled with water, bolstering chances for life on Mars, a study published on Thursday showed. Th... More »
