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With bugs, algae and other resource-efficient foods we could feed one million people on Mars within a century of arriving there. Scientists even invented a martian diet. Cannon and colleagues modeled the food needs of a human population on Mars that grows to one million over about a hundred Earth years through a combination of immigration and reproduction. Though the settlement would need to import a lot of food at the start, it could transition to an entirely Martian-grown diet in about a century with the right food choices, they found. The major limiting factor is space — or rather,...

At midnight on Mars, the red planet’s magnetic field sometimes starts to pulsate in ways that have never before been observed. The cause is currently unknown. That’s just one of the stunning preliminary findings from NASA’s very first robotic geophysicist there, the InSight lander. Since touching down in November 2018, this spacecraft has been gathering intel to help scientists better understand our neighboring planet’s innards and evolution, such as taking the temperature of its upper crust, recording the sounds of alien quakes, and measuring the strength and direction of the planet’s magnetic field. As revealed during a handful of presentations...

A few months after detecting an "unusually high" level of methane on Mars, researchers have yet to figure out what's causing the spike. According to a study published in Scientific Reports, researchers from Newcastle University in the U.K. have ruled out that the spike could have been caused by wind erosion of rocks that had trapped the methane from fluid inclusions and fractures on the Red Planet's surface. "The questions are -- where is this methane coming from, and is the source biological?" principal investigator Dr. Jon Telling said Telling added that over the last decade, winds on Mars have...

During a high-altitude test on 5 August in Kiruna, Sweden, a test mass designed to represent the combined lander and rover was dropped from a stratospheric helium balloon at the height of 29km. Engineers were testing the largest of two main parachutes, measuring 35m in diameter, designed to slow the vehicle to a speed required to land safely on Mars. The European Space Agency says it's the largest ever to fly on a Mars mission. However, the test article crashed into the ground at high speed. Preliminary analysis shows that the initial steps in the parachute's deployment were carried out...

SpaceX launched and landed its Starhopper rocket in its first flight, a short test that saw the company take a giant leap forward in its development of a next-generation rocket that it hopes will take people to the moon and Mars. The rocket is the prototype for SpaceX’s vehicle called Starship. The company is building the enormous rocket to achieve its goal of transporting up to 100 people in the space flights. “Starhopper flight successful,” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said in a tweet. Musk posted a video SpaceX took of Thursday’s flight test from a flying drone nearby. The flight...

Raising crops on Mars is far easier in science fiction than it will be in real life: The Red Planet is an inhospitable world. Among other challenges, subzero temperatures mean water can persist on the surface only as ice, and the planet's atmosphere offers little protection to plants (or people) from the Sun's radiation. Of course, NASA has plans to eventually put humans on Mars, using lessons it will learn from its Artemis lunar explorations. And those humans will need to eat. Being able to produce food on Mars would help reduce the quantity of supplies consuming valuable space and...

© NASA/JPL/University of Arizona ============================================================ On the Red Planet’s Hellas Planitia expanse, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has spotted a rather conspicuous logo that will have trekkies jumping for joy, while rekindling old rivalries with the Star Wars fandom in the process. “Enterprising viewers will make the discovery that these features look conspicuously like a famous logo,” wrote Ross Beyer of the University of Arizona in a statement discussing the unusual formation which bears more than a passing resemblance to Star Treks’ Starfleet logo. The likeness did not go unnoticed by one of Star Trek’s biggest stars, William Shatner, who couldn’t...

High levels of methane could potentially be generated underground by microbes called methanogens that survive without oxygen and produce the gas as a metabolic byproduct. Project scientist Ashwin R. Vasavada told the Curiosity science team in an email that “Given this surprising result, we’ve reorganized the weekend to run a follow-up experiment,” the Times wrote. The readings on Wednesday are over three times that of a sudden spike in 2013 that lasted several months; after first finding nothing after its touchdown in 2012, Curiosity detected approximately seven parts per billion of methane later in the year. The newest measurements are...

A photo recently snapped by NASA’s Curiosity rover, which roams the vast wind-swept expanses of Mars, has captured the sight of a peculiar phenomenon which looks like a flash of white light of unclear origin. The raw image, in black-and-white, was taken by the rover’s right “navcam” on 16 June

A rover scanning the surface of Mars for evidence of life might want to check for rocks that look like pasta, researchers report in the journal Astrobiology. The bacterium that controls the formation of such rocks on Earth is ancient and thrives in harsh environments that are similar to conditions on Mars, said University of Illinois geology professor Bruce Fouke, who led the new, NASA-funded study. "It has an unusual name, Sulfurihydrogenibium yellowstonense," he said. The bacterium that controls the formation of such rocks on Earth is ancient and thrives in harsh environments that are similar to conditions on Mars,...

The Mars 2020 rover is set to land in Jezero Crater, which scientists estimate was once filled with water. Photo by NASA/MRO ================================================================= May 28 (UPI) -- A new photo captured by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and shared online this week features the landing site for the space agency's Mars 2020 mission. The Mars 2020 rover, scheduled to launch next year, is expected to land in the Jezero Crater, located in a region of Mars known as the Syrtis Major quadrangle. The crater is thought to have once been filled with water, and its watery history is visible in the...

Although it will be years before the first humans set foot on Mars, NASA is giving the public an opportunity to send their names — stenciled on chips — to the Red Planet with NASA's Mars 2020 rover, which represents the initial leg of humanity’s first round trip to another planet. The rover is scheduled to launch as early as July 2020, with the spacecraft expected to touch down on Mars in February 2021. The rover, a robotic scientist weighing more than 2,300 pounds (1,000 kilograms), will search for signs of past microbial life, characterize the planet's climate and geology,...

Trump was effusive about updates to the budget supporting the Special Olympics, and a return to space “in a BIG WAY.”“Today, I officially updated my budget to include $18 million for our GREAT @SpecialOlympics,” Trump tweeted, “whose athletes inspire us and make our Nation so PROUD!”“Under my Administration, we are restoring @NASA to greatness and we are going back to the Moon, then Mars,” the President also said. “I am updating my budget to include an additional $1.6 billion so that we can return to Space in a BIG WAY!”And despite an original proposal that cut the Great Lakes Restoration...

Researchers from the US Smithsonian Institution and King’s College London argue for preserving seven-eighths of the solar system as official 'space wildernesses.' This regulation would protect planets, moons and other bodies from unchecked mining and other types of industrial exploitation. But its core aim would be to ensure that humankind's expansion into our star system is undertaken manageably to avoid a future where all the resources are gone. … It will be challenging to decide which aspects of our star system should be protected from the space mining industry, the researchers wrote in their paper. However, areas that might merit...

An 'alien plughole' on Mars that has baffled scientists could have a simple explanation. Astronomers claim the strange crater, which has a terraced rather than bowl pattern, has been created by water ice. To confirm their theory, researchers found an enormous slab of water ice just beneath the crater, measuring 130ft (40 metre) thick. 'Craters should be bowl shaped, but this one had terraces in the wall,' says Ali Bramson, a graduate student in the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. Terraces can form when there are layers of different materials in the planet's subsurface, such as dirt, ice...

Scientists just felt the Red Planet move under their feet — robotically from millions of miles away, on the stark surface of Mars. On April 6, NASA's InSight lander sensed its first confirmed marsquake, a phenomenon scientists suspected, but couldn't confirm, occurred on the neighboring planet. Measuring the Martian equivalent of earthquakes, seismic waves traveling through the interior of the planet, was among the lander's key science goals. "We've been waiting months for our first marsquake," Philippe Lognonné, the principal investigator for the seismometer instrument, said in a statement released by the French space agency, which runs the instrument with...

Surrounded by barren hills in northwestern Gansu province, "Mars Base 1" opened on Wednesday with the aim of exposing teens—and soon tourists—to what life could be like on the planet. Built at a cost of 50 million yuan ($7.47 million), the base was constructed with help from the Astronauts Centre of China and the China Intercontinental Communication Centre, a state television production organisation. The teenagers go on treks in the desert, where they explore caves in the martian-like landscape. The closest town is Jinchang, some 40 kilometres (25 miles) away. On Wednesday, over 100 students from a nearby high school...

Scientists just announced that they’ve located signs of methane on Mars, a gas that does not necessarily indicate biological life, but rather points them in the right direction. It’s an interesting discovery, despite the fact that none of us will probably be alive to really see where it leads. We earthlings have been obsessed with finding life on Mars for decades.We’re excited to see methane gas on a different planet and liken it to life, yet in American courtrooms, statehouses, and our nation's capital, lawyers and politicians are squinting at ultrasound pictures, proclaiming... maybe?Ever since human beings turned dreams of space...

"Our results support the idea that methane release on Mars might be characterized by small, transient geological events," researcher Frank Daerden said. The European Space Agency's Mars Express probe measured methane in the Martian atmosphere a day after NASA's Curiosity rover detected the gas in Gale Crater. Photo by ESA ============================================================= April 2 (UPI) -- Some 15 years ago, a European probe measured traces of methane in the Martian atmosphere. Now, NASA's Curiosity rover and the European Space Agency's Mars Express have confirmed the gas' presence in the air above Gale Crater. "The presence of methane could enhance habitability and...

Curiosity rover mission recently determined that background levels of methane in Mars' atmosphere cycle seasonally, peaking in the northern summer. The six-wheeled robot has also detected two surges to date of the gas inside the Red Planet's 96-mile-wide (154 kilometers) Gale Crater — once in June 2013, and then again in late 2013 through early 2014. These finds have intrigued astrobiologists, because methane is a possible biosignature. Though the gas can be produced by a variety of geological processes, the vast majority of methane in Earth's air is pumped out by microbes and other living creatures. Some answers may soon...