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While the moon is the main goal of NASA's Artemis program, the agency's larger goal is to send crewed missions to Mars. But long-term space travel and habitation won't be easy. Such missions will present both physical and mental challenges as astronauts work to not only survive, but perform important scientific research in uniquely difficult environments. In the upcoming NASA-Russia experiment, which builds on a previous four-month-long study from 2019, a crew will live in isolation in a closed facility at Russia's Institute for Biomedical Problems, which is in Moscow, NASA officials said in a statement. This habitat facility was...

Scientists are preparing for a potential close encounter of the viral kind. Researchers say that when humans return from a planned visit to Mars in the 2030s, they’ll have to quarantine because rock samples from the Red Planet could be as dangerous as Ebola — even if the likelihood they are is low. Rockets returning from Mars will have to undergo a chemical cleaning involving intense heat as well.

Felix sat down with Robert Zubrin - Scientist, Engineer, Inventor & President of the Mars Society - to have a talk about Elon Musk, SpaceX and the future of humanity. Robert Zubrin was able to provide me with most interesting answers and gave insights into what he learned while working and talking with SpaceX's Elon Musk

Tianwen-1, meaning ‘questions to heaven’, is taken from the name of a long-form poem by Qu Yuan, a poet born in the fourth century B.C., according to CNSA chief engineer Ge Xiaochun. China is understood to be planning a Mars sample return mission, a Jupiter orbiter and considering possible missions to icy giants and interstellar space. A joint near-Earth asteroid sample return and comet rendezvous mission has also been proposed. Few details of the Tianwen-1 mission have been released so far. The Tianwen-1 spacecraft is expected to have a wet mass of around 5 metric tons. Launch on a Long...

Perseverance's descent stage was also fueled up last weekend, just before the helicopter integration, NASA officials said. The descent stage is the rocket-powered sky crane that will lower Perseverance onto the Martian dirt via cables in February 2021. Gassing up the crane was no trivial task; the craft's four tanks hold a total of 884 lbs. (401 kilograms) of hydrazine propellant, agency officials said. "The last hundred days before any Mars launch is chock-full of significant milestones," David Gruel, the Mars 2020 assembly, test and launch operations manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, said in a...

THE American space agency is planning to send a spacecraft to a lump of metal in space worth quadrillions of dollars. The 200km-wide asteroid is currently orbiting the sun between Mars and Jupiter. It is made up of various precious metals such as iron, nickel and gold. Experts believe the iron alone in the rock would be worth $10,000 quadrillion – enough to cause the world’s economy, worth $73.7 trillion, to promptly collapse altogether.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) delivers once again! Using its advanced imaging instrument, the High Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) camera, the orbiter captured a breathtaking image (shown below) of the plains north of Juventae Chasma. This region constitutes the southwestern part of Valles Marineris, the gigantic canyon system that runs along the Martian equator. The image was originally taken in July of 2007 by the HiRISE camera and showcases three distinct types of terrain. In the top half of the image, this includes plains with craters and sinuous ridge features. These features are of particular interest since they could be...

NASA unsticks its Martian digging probe by whacking it with a shovel. ______________________________________________________________________ The robotic scoop-arm pins “the mole” against the side of its hole in an attempt to get it moving.NASA/JPL-Caltech ___________________________________________________________________ Every day, the InSight lander’s suite of instruments sends back data proving that the Red Planet isn’t really dead. Marsquakes rumble the seismometer. Swirling vortices register on onboard pressure sensor. And temperature sensors help track the weather and changing of the seasons. Despite the lander’s successes, however, one gauge has met with resistance from the Martian environment while trying to carry out its mission. Something has stopped...

Early Tuesday morning, the waning crescent moon will be visible with the four planets down and to the left. As the sky begins to brighten, Mercury will rise and both Saturn and Mars will begin to fade from view. Both the Moon and Jupiter will remain visible as it gets lighter. By Wednesday morning, the moon will be closest to Jupiter and Mars. Jupiter is currently the brightest morning planet and it will be easy to pick out. Mars will be much dimmer in comparison. The moon will continue to get thinner as the week goes on. On Thursday morning,...

These readings were obtained by InSight's magnetic sensor, which studied the magnetic fields within the mission's landing zone. This shallow crater, known as "Homestead hollow", is located in the region called Elysium Planitia – a flat-smooth plain just north of the equator. This region was selected because it has the right combination of flat topology, low elevation, and low debris to allow InSight to probe deep into the interior of Mars. Prior to this mission, the best estimates of Martian magnetic fields came from satellites in orbit and were averaged over distances of more than 150 kilometres (93 miles). Measuring...

Curiosity Mars Rover Snaps 1.8 Billion Pixel Panorama This panorama showcases Glen Torridon a region on the side of Mount Sharp that Curiosity is exploring. The panorama was taken between Nov. 24 and Dec. 1, 2019, when the Curiosity team was out for the Thanksgiving holiday. Since it would be sitting still with few other tasks to do while it waited for the team to return, the rover had a rare chance to image its surroundings several days in a row without moving. For more about the mission, visit https://mars.nasa.gov/msl

There are no oceans or rivers or lakes like there are on Earth. But new research garnered from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Odyssey missions reveal an array of water ice deposits that could greatly aid future human exploration endeavors. The new research, published in Geophysical Research Letters, revealed two large bands – or belts – of water ice located less than one meter below the Martian surface around Mars’ polar regions. The depth of this water ice ranges from 2.3 centimeters (1 inch) to 0.8 meters (or just under 3 feet). For the deposits located 2.5 centimeters under...

NASA has vehemently denied that there are living "insect- and reptile-like creatures" on Mars, after a professor at Ohio University made the controversial claim earlier this week. "The collective general opinion of the large majority of the scientific community is that current conditions on the surface of Mars are not suitable for liquid water or complex life," Alana Johnson, NASA's Public Affairs Officer, said in a statement to Fox News. Johnson added that one of NASA's objectives is "the search for life in the universe" and with the upcoming Mars 2020 rover, the government space agency hopes to take the...

"A study of 11 healthy astronauts onboard the International Space Station for six-month missions has revealed a new risk of long-term spaceflight..." (snip) ..."Reverse flow is really interesting, and we're uncertain if it harmful," Stenger said. "Reverse flow in the jugular vein could be completely harmless as the blood is simply leaving the head via one of the other venous pathways. However, reverse flow implies altered venous pressure dynamics...."

The paper, which was published in JAMA, examined the circulatory changes that took place in 11 different space travelers that spent time aboard the International Space Station. It found that while blood flow was perfectly normal when the scientists left Earth, dramatic changes had already begun by their 50th day in space. In particular, circulation changes through the head and brain raised some serious concerns. In seven of the space travelers, blood flowing from the head down to the rest of the body showed signs of stagnation and, in some cases, even reversal. On Earth, gravity aids in draining blood...

NASA’s Curiosity rover returned some seriously surprising data to Earth earlier this year, with readings of elevated methane levels that were hard to explain. Subsequent tests attempted to pin down the cause of the higher-than-expected readings but scientists have yet to come up with a definitive answer. Now, as questions about methane continue to swirl, scientists studying the behavior of gasses on Mars have noticed that oxygen on the Red Planet also acts much differently than it does on Earth. The observations were made in the Gale Crater, which the rover has called home since it landed there back in...

NASA has focused its vegetable-growing efforts on lettuce, which astronauts tend to while they live on the International Space Station. The orbiting laboratory poses different challenges than the Red Planet's surface, however, and crops that Mars visitors can expect to rely on may not be to everyone's taste. "In fact, in this particular area the soils are more alkaline so this would be OK for growing asparagus and beans and not potatoes," NASA chief scientist Jim Green said during a presentation held here last week as part of the International Astronautical Congress of soil studied by NASA's Curiosity rover. However...

Powered by plutonium and drawing 400 watts of power each to run their electronics and heat, the probes still snap photos and send them back to NASA. After 42 years, though, only six of Voyager 2Â’s 10 instruments still work... Ultimately, the team aimed to better understand how to use novel and emerging materials to make chips more computationally efficient. Their efforts to design and simulate a new neuromorphic chip led Yanguas-GilÂ’s to two pivotal breakthroughs. They were able to use filters and weights that impact neural connections in real time, depending on what the system deems important and they...

ESA released stunning images of an ancient river in Nirgal Vallis that once flowed on Mars By studying the surrounding craters, the branching remains are said to be between 3.5 and 4 billion years old Detailed images of Mars reveal an ancient river that once flowed on the red planet. Spanning nearly 435 miles across the surface, the valley stream is named Nirgal Vallis and experts said it was shaped by flowing water and impacts. By exploring the characteristics of the surrounding craters, the European Space Agency has estimated the system’s age to be between 3.5 and 4 billion years...

We may have already discovered the essence of life on Mars 40 years ago, according to a former NASA scientist. Gilbert V. Levin, who was principal investigator on a NASA experiment that sent Viking landers to Mars in 1976, published an article in the ScientificAmerican journal last Thursday, arguing the experiment's positive results were proof of life on the red planet. The experiment, called Labeled Release, was designed to test Martian soil for organic matter. "It seemed we had answered that ultimate question," Levin wrote in the article. In the experiment, the Viking probes placed nutrients in Mars soil samples...