…as long as you’re part of an older, married couple with amazing mechanical skills, great long term resilience, and relaxed attitude towards being exposed to high levels of radiation. Storify of today’s Inspiration Mars press conference: [View the story "Want to go to Mars? Dennis Tito will take you there" on Storify] Want to go [...]

On 4 November 2011, six men emerged from a windowless capsule based on the site of the Institute of Biomedical Problems in Moscow, Russia. They had been inside their spaceship for 520 days, enough time to (optimistically) go to Mars and back. They carried out the same kinds of activities and experiments that any astronauts [...]

A glowing fireball descended through the sky over North Africa last July, accompanied by two sonic booms. Observers saw the fireball turn from yellow to green, then split into two parts before one fell to the ground in a valley and the other crashed into a mountain. And then… nothing, for a while. The rocks [...]

Mars has always been the toddler of the rocky planet family. With a radius half that of Earth’s and a mass just over one tenth of that of our planet, it is bigger than baby Mercury but not quite as grown up as Earth and Venus. Now it seems that some unruly behaviour on behalf [...]

Stop whatever you are doing now and click on this: It’s a massive image composited from several days of captures by the Mars Curiosity rover. The level of detail is astounding. You could spend days zooming around in there looking at martian rocks. It’s accomplishments like this that make me proud of my species.  

Tonight I will go to bed when I am tired, and tomorrow I will rise when I please: My Mars time experiment is over. For five weeks I’ve stayed put geographically, but my circadian rhythms have marched westward, advancing two-thirds of a time zone each morning to match the 24.65-hour day of our neighbor planet. [...]

Editor’s note: Researchers exploring Mars via rover and satellite have to adapt to the longer day on the Red Planet. Katie Worth, whose Can Earthlings Adapt to the Longer Day on Mars? for Scientific American last month describes the consequences of sleep-pattern changes, is trying it out herself. Follow her experiences in living on “Mars time” at [...]

Editor’s note: Researchers exploring Mars via rover and satellite have to adapt to the longer day on the Red Planet. Katie Worth, whose Can Earthlings Adapt to the Longer Day on Mars? for Scientific American last month describes the consequences of sleep-pattern changes, is trying it out herself. Follow her experiences in living on “Mars [...]

“The witching hour, someone had once whispered to her, was a special moment in the middle of the night when every child and every grown-up was in a deep deep sleep, and all the dark things came out from hiding and had the world all to themselves.” Roald Dahl, “The BFG,” about five minutes before [...]

Editor’s note: Researchers exploring Mars via rover and satellite have to adapt to the longer day on the Red Planet. Katie Worth, whose Can Earthlings Adapt to the Longer Day on Mars? for Scientific American last month describes the consequences of sleep-pattern changes, is trying it out herself. Follow her experiences in living on “Mars time” [...]

Editor’s note: Researchers exploring Mars via rover and satellite have to adapt to the longer day on the Red Planet. Katie Worth, whose Can Earthlings Adapt to the Longer Day on Mars? for Scientific Americanearlier this week describes the consequences of sleep-pattern changes, is trying it out herself. Follow her experiences in living on “Mars time” [...]

Editor’s note: Researchers exploring Mars via rover and satellite have to adapt to the longer day on the Red Planet. Katie Worth, whose Can Earthlings Adapt to the Longer Day on Mars? for Scientific American describes the consequences of sleep-pattern changes, is trying it out herself. Follow her experiences in living on “Mars time” at [...]

Editor’s note: Researchers exploring Mars via rover and satellite have to adapt to the longer day on the Red Planet. Katie Worth, whose Can Earthlings Adapt to the Longer Day on Mars? for Scientific American describes the consequences of sleep-pattern changes, is trying it out herself. Follow her experiences in living on “Mars time” at [...]

Editor’s note: Researchers exploring Mars via rover and satellite have to adapt to the longer day on the Red Planet. Katie Worth, whose Can Earthlings Adapt to the Longer Day on Mars? for Scientific American describes the consequences of sleep-pattern changes, is trying it out herself. Follow her experiences in living on “Mars time” at [...]

Editor’s note: Researchers exploring Mars via rover and satellite have to adapt to the longer day on the Red Planet. Katie Worth, whose Can Earthlings Adapt to the Longer Day on Mars? for Scientific American describes the consequences of sleep-pattern changes, is trying it out herself. Follow her experiences in living on “Mars time” at [...]

NASA’s Curiosity rover is preparing to drill for the first time, into what appears to be sedimentary rock criss-crossed by mineral-filled veins.         Back in September last year the Mars Science Laboratory carried by the rover found a rocky outcrop on the wall of Gale Crater that was full of a crusty [...]

What would the landscapes of Mars look like under a different light? Getting an accurate visual sense of the rocks and minerals on the martian surface is important for a number of reasons. For science it’s critical that objects are correctly seen, especially in terms of colors. Spectral features help give compounds their optical fingerprints [...]

To understand Mars we need to understand its on-again off-again tango with liquid water. It’s not just the search for past or present life on Mars that hinges on this, but the search for a complete chemical, geophysical, and climatological history of the red planet. Water is such a potent agent for topographical and mineralogical [...]

It’s one thing to spot stuff from orbit above an alien world, quite another to get in close. Earlier Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter imagery of Gale Crater, now home to NASA’s Curiosity rover, had shown signs of what appeared to be something akin to an ‘alluvial fan’ spreading downwards from the crater rim. It was extremely [...]

There is nothing particularly scientific about this image, but it is remarkably evocative. The Curiosity rover on Mars took a self-portrait of its primary camera masthead using another camera (the rather charmingly named “Mars Hand Lens Imager” or MAHLI)  mounted on its robotic arm on Sept 7th 2012. In part the image was made to [...]

Ok, so every so often something comes along that just blows away everything you’ve seen before. This is one of those things. Soon after Curiosity made landfall we got to see a glimpse of a low-resolution and highly compressed time-lapse video of the descent, showing the heat-shield fall away and a precipitous drop to the [...]

The clock is ticking and NASA’s Curiosity rover with its burden of the Mars Science Laboratory is heading for a potentially historic landing on Mars. As we all wait to find out what happens, here’s a small look at the landing site. This is Gale Crater, a 150 km (about 90 mile) depression just south [...]

As the world waits with bated breath for NASA’s Curiosity rover to attempt a safe landing on Mars on August 6th (EDT), it’s interesting to recall the rovers of times past. We’ve all heard about Spirit (R.I.P. 2010) and Opportunity (still kicking), and their immediate technological precursor Sojourner (part of the Mars Pathfinder mission), but [...]

You may notice that today is the one year anniversary of the Scientific American blog network. You may also notice that across the blogs this morning is a shared theme; time for the readers to speak up. Inspired by the blogger Ed Yong, the Sci Am blogs are asking for your thoughts. Consider this an [...]

  This has been an extraordinary week for planets (moons), exoplanets, and astrobiology. I’m hard pushed to write properly about all these things but sometimes the sheer tidal mass of discoveries tells its own story.       And tidal masses is the first one up. This week new results from the Cassini mission around [...]

The energetic molecule perchlorate is rocket fuel and, it turns out, food for ancient microbes. Given that deposits of the stuff have been found wherever robots look on Mars, could the chlorine compound—poisonous to the development of humans—be serving as Martian life’s lunch? A team of Dutch researchers show in the April 5 edition of [...]

Yesterday, a mysterious group called the Inspiration Mars Foundation announced vague plans for a “historic journey to Mars and back in 501 days” scheduled for 2018. The group neglected to mention if the trip would be manned, instead directing the public to a press conference scheduled for February 27. But new information reveals that the [...]

LOS ANGELES—When the Curiosity rover lifted off toward Mars, the spacecraft carried a few stowaways—278,000 bacterial spores, by NASA’s best estimate. That is sparkling clean, by spacecraft standards—the mission’s components had been sterilized, wiped, baked and coddled in clean rooms to drastically reduce the bacterial burden. Mars missions such as Curiosity are subject to strict [...]

LOS ANGELES—There is probably water on Mars, but you wouldn’t want to drink it. It’s salty, viscous and quite possibly toxic. But astrobiologists are nonetheless excited about the possibility. Just in the past few years, orbiter cameras and Mars landers have gathered evidence that watery liquid does exist on the Red Planet, at least during [...]

Now that NASA’s “seven-minutes of terror” have passed safely, the Mars Curiosity rover’s exploratory mission is off and running. Over the next two years—probably more, if it’s anything like the Opportunity or Spirit rovers—the Jeep-sized rover will explore its new home using a variety of tools. One of the Curiosity’s most important objectives will be [...]

THE WOODLANDS, Texas—Planetary scientists, usually an affable lot, are plenty riled up at the moment. The field is bristling at cutbacks, proposed last month by the Obama administration, to planetary science and especially to NASA’s program of robotic Mars explorers. Researchers gathered here for the annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference have taken turns railing [...]

NASA just released its presidential budget request for 2013 and, as expected, the space agency’s planetary science program takes a big hit. The budget document (summary pdf) is merely the first volley in an often drawn-out exchange between the White House and Congress, but still sets the general direction for the space program. Although the [...]

  Recently, I received a press release from the American Museum of Natural History on their excellent exhibit about the future of space exploration. I did a quick word search: “Mars” got 14 hits; “asteroid” 12; “moon/lunar” 11; “Europa” and “Jupiter” a total of four. A check of “Venus” came up empty. Considering that all [...]

After nearly eight months’ journey in a small, enclosed craft, the crew of the Mars500 mission is nearing the turning point of its voyage—arrival and disembarking at the Red Planet. They will spend 10 days there, exploring the surface in a series of excursions, before returning to their craft and beginning the lengthy trip home. [...]

PASADENA—They say that null results never get published, either in science or in journalism. Well, I’m about to break that rule. Some of the most interesting results to come out of the Division for Planetary Sciences meeting this week concern non-discoveries. In recent years, planetary scientists have gotten excited by the prospect that Mars and [...]

I stayed up last night to watch the incredible event of the successful landing of Mars Curiosity only a projected 262 meters from planned site at 10:14:39 PDT official touchdown time in order to tweet (and retweet from the space pros and those in attendance of the many NASA social events watching the event) to [...]

Creative Commons Habits Are Hard to Break Creative Commons Licences are Good Things, in my estimation. I’ve had one on my personal art blog The Flying Trilobite since almost the very beginning. There are different grades of Creative Commons Licences (CCL), and like many artists, I’ve stuck with the most restrictive one. Without giving you [...]

I’m so excited I might burst. The first images from Curiosity’s cameras rained down to Earth in the middle of last night, after a 14 minute journey from the red planet. Here they are, in all their glory. Larger, color images will be available next week. Let the imagination soar!! Other neat tidbits from Curiosity: [...]

The Martian rovers Opportunity and Spirit have represented optimism, hope, and even cuteness to millions of people dreaming about discoveries on the red planet. How appropriate then, that the newest rover, Curiosity, should carry a sundial with sentiments and illustrations worthy of classic children’s literature. Curiosity blasted off aboard an Atlas 5 rocket on November [...]

There’s an interesting website that just launched recently that focuses on the infographic. It’s called Visual.ly, and one of its goals is to provide a platform for designers to upload their best infographics and get noticed. It’s an interesting concept that, among other things, makes for a great procrastination tool as you sift through their [...]

[The text below is a modified transcript of this video.] 5) Inflatable Space Station We’re this close to having a bouncy castle in space. NASA just ordered an inflatable module that will attach to the International Space Station. Start up company Bigelow Aerospace won an 18 million dollar contract from NASA to build the Bigelow [...]

[The text below is a modified transcript of this video.] 5) Couch Potatoes on Mars When you’re sending a manned mission to Mars, you need to plan for every aspect of the trip; including how to get a good night’s rest. A simulated Mars mission has shown the importance of balancing activity with sleep to [...]

Welcome to The Countdown, the Scientific American show that counts down the five coolest things happening now in space news. Episode 1: July 26, 2012 Story 5 Galaxies from the early universe usually look kind of lumpy or blobby, but scientists have spotted one with a spiral structure, making it look a lot like our [...]

Light and crystals In 1802 the English physicist William Wollaston took a prism and squinted at the spectrum of sunlight produced by it which his fellow Englishman Isaac Newton had observed in an iconic experiment more than a hundred years before. Wollaston saw black lines interposed between the familiar set of colors corresponding to the [...]

Last weekend, NASA successfully launched the Mars Science Laboratory – called Curiosity, which is currently well on its way towards the red planet. Back in May, I went to an Open House at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena. What a refreshing sight it was to see so many people – couples, families, grandparents and [...]