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Known as the Martian Moons Exploration (MMX) mission, the plan is to have a robotic spacecraft fly to Phobos and Deimos to explore their surfaces and return samples to Earth for analysis. The spacecraft would be deployed sometime in the 2020s, and would be tasked with two main objectives. The first would be to help scientists determine the origins of Phobos and Deimos, which has been a subject of debate for some time. Whereas some believe that these moons are capture asteroids, others have argued that they were created when fragments ejected from Mars (due to giant impacts on the...

-snip- “John Carter,” a big-budget science fiction epic from Walt Disney Studios that opened Friday and flopped over the weekend. Disney spent lavishly (some say foolishly) on the movie in large part to keep one of its most important creative talents happy: Andrew Stanton, the Pixar-based director of “Finding Nemo” and “Wall-E.” “John Carter,” which cost an estimated $350 million to make and market, and was directed by Mr. Stanton, took in about $30.6 million at the North American box office, according to Rentrak, which compiles box-office data. That result is so poor, even when factoring in about $71 million...

Transplanted to Mars, a Civil War Confederate Captain discovers a lush planet inhabited by 12-foot tall barbarians. Finding himself a prisoner of these creatures, he escapes, only to encounter a princess who is in desperate need of a savior.

Just saw a pre-screening of "John Carter", a new Disney movie scheduled to open on March 9. It pretty much followed the Edgar Rice Burroughs Martian books. We saw it in 3D and it was quite good. Action all the way. Pretty sure there will be sequels by the way it ended.

PARIS (AFP) – A huge, potentially life-giving sea likely covered more than a third of Mars some 3.5 billion years ago, according to a study released Sunday. Spread over an area the size of the Atlantic Ocean, it would have straddled the north pole and contained the equivalent of a tenth of the water on Earth. For decades scientists have argued as to whether the Red Planet once harboured bodies of water big enough to help nourish a true hydrological cycle marked by evaporation and rainfall. Recent evidence suggests as much, but doubts remained. To dig deeper, Gaetano Di Achille...