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Explanation: Against dark rifts of interstellar dust, the ebb and flow of starlight along the Milky Way looks like waves breaking on a cosmic shore in this night skyscape. Taken with a digital camera from the dunes of Hatteras Island, North Carolina, planet Earth, the monochrome image is reminiscent of the time when sensitive black and white film was a popular choice for dimmly lit night- and astro-photography. Looking south, the bright stars of Sagittarius and Scorpius are near the center of the frame. Wandering Mars, Saturn, and Zubenelgenubi (Alpha Librae) form the compact triangle of bright celestial beacons farther...

A jump, hop, and a rocket ride away lies Earth's blushing sister: Mars. While apparently lifeless today, some 4 billion years ago, Mars featured rivers, oceans, and potentially even microbial life. The good times obviously didn't last. On Earth, we fear asteroid impacts as harbingers of destruction, but to early Mars, they were cascading gifts of life. The energy and gas they provided helped keep the planet hot and wet. But as the solar system settled down after its turbulent birth, those impacts grew to be few and far between. At the same time, Mars' core was cooling, quieting the...

After a thorough review of cost and engineering issues, NASA managers formally approved the development of the agency’s mammoth heavy lift rocket – the Space Launch System or SLS – which will be the world’s most powerful rocket ever built and is intended to take astronauts farther beyond Earth into deep space than ever before possible – to Asteroids and Mars. The maiden test launch of the SLS is targeted for November 2018 and will be configured in its initial 70-metric-ton (77-ton) version, top NASA officials announced at a briefing for reporters on Aug. 27. On its first flight known...

An image from the Curiosity rover that some people thought showed a “thigh bone” on Mars is just a photo of a weathered rock, according to NASA. The photo shows the dirt-covered surface of Mars littered with bits of rock, one of which is elongated in a shape similar to a leg bone. The image was first picked up on a UFO blog, Space.com reports, purporting to show evidence of past alien life on the planet. The claim got so much attention that NASA released the photo with an official explanation — saying the object did look like a thigh...

Explanation: What's happened in Hebes Chasma on Mars? Hebes Chasma is a depression just north of the enormous Valles Marineris canyon. Since the depression is unconnected to other surface features, it is unclear where the internal material went. Inside Hebes Chasma is Hebes Mensa, a 5 kilometer high mesa that appears to have undergone an unusual partial collapse -- a collapse that might be providing clues. The above image, taken by the robotic Mars Express spacecraft currently orbiting Mars, shows great details of the chasm and the unusual horseshoe shaped indentation in the central mesa. Material from the mesa appears...

Could rocket scientists be an endangered species? You're probably betting "no," given the contemporary efforts to hurl hardware to the moon, to Mars, and to a passel of other unearthly locales. The rocket biz is busy, and it's diversifying. An enthusiastic troupe of private companies is also getting into the act, hoping to cash in by lifting off. It seems that "rocket scientist" is a job category that's here for the long haul, like "mortician." But all this activity masks an important point: rockets are not a terribly efficient way to lift things into space. For every pound of payload,...

The 2020 rover’s instruments goals are to search for signs of organic molecules and past life and help pave the way for future human explorers. Seven carefully-selected payloads were chosen from a total of 58 proposals received in January 2014 from science teams worldwide, which is twice the usual number for instrument competitions and demonstrates the extraordinary interest in Mars by the science community. The 2020 rover architecture is based on NASA’s hugely successful Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Curiosity rover which safely touched down a one ton mass on Mars on Aug. 5, 2012 using the nail-biting and never before...

When American astronauts make the next "giant leap" by launching to Mars, they will bring with them a memento from the first moon landing 45 years ago. NASA on Monday will present the Kennedy Space Center in Florida with a mission patch that Apollo 11 crew mates Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins carried to the moon in 1969, collectSPACE has learned. The patch will be held at the spaceport until the first crew is ready to lift off for the Red Planet on a mission NASA plans for the 2030s.

China has ambitious plans to touch down on Mars by 2020, likely with a rover, and to collect its own samples from the red planet 10 years after that, a top aerospace scientist has revealed. China already sent a probe, the Jade Rabbit (or Yutu) to the moon last year. It is expanding its horizons this time. Ouyang Ziyuan, chief scientist of the country’s lunar project, said the new Mars programme aimed to create space probes – an orbiter and rover – for Mars, according to the Beijing Times. They will help answer questions including if there is extraterrestrial activity...

Explanation: June 24th marked the first full Martian year of the Curiosity Rover's exploration of the surface of the Red Planet. That's 687 Earth days or 669 sols since its landing on August 5, 2012. To celebrate, consider this self-portrait of the car-sized robot posing next to a rocky outcrop dubbed Windjana, its recent drilling and sampling site. The mosaicked selfie was constructed with frames taken this April and May using the rover's Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), intended for close-up work and mounted at the end of the rover's robotic arm. The MAHLI frames used exclude sections that show...

The key argument against the Constellation program was that it didn’t pencil out — that there wasn’t nearly enough money dedicated to the program to achieve the lunar landing it envisioned. But now the NRC committee has delivered essentially the same assessment of the Obama Administration’s current NASA program of record. If the goal is Mars, the committee said, the current strategy isn’t going to work. “Absent a very fundamental change in the nation’s way of doing business, it is not realistic to believe that we can achieve the consensus goal of reaching Mars,” committee co-chair and former Indiana Gov....

Comet Hitchhiker: This would be a “tethered” spacecraft that swings from comet to comet to explore icy bodies in the solar system. “First, the spacecraft harpoons a target as it makes a close flyby in order to attach a tether to the target. Then, as the target moves away, it reels out the tether while applying regenerative brake to give itself a moderate (<5g) acceleration as well as to harvest energy,” the description stated. ... The Aragoscope: A telescope that would look through an opaque disk at a distant object, which is different from the usual mirror arrangement.”Rather than block...

Friday, 23 May 2014 Stuart Gary ABC New Australian research suggests Martian minerals may have formed from biological rather than geological origins. The findings, reported in the journal Geology, indicate the mineral stevensite, which is found on both Earth and Mars, can be created either in hot, highly alkaline volcanic lakes, or by mineralisation in living microbes. Stevensite is a magnesium-silicate mineral, used a Nubian beauty treatment for several centuries.

NASA has been talking about sending people to Mars by 2035. That goal is still on the books, despite recent upheaval in the space program, according to two of the agency's top scientists. "In the near term, Mars remains our primary focus," Ellen Stofan, NASA's chief scientist said May 15 in a talk at the Royal Institution in London ... ....scientists [also] decided to "redirect" an asteroid into an orbit of the moon and are searching for an asteroid that's an appropriate candidate. "Once we find the right one, we'll use all the technology we've got," he said. "We'll snag...

All of the remaining candidates will be interviewed by the Mars One selection committee. Eventually, only four will be picked for the first trip. Apparently, none of them is scared off by the idea that, because of technological and financial limitations, Mars One astronauts would probably never come home. She could be on a one-way trip to Mars A one-way ticket to Mars ... A reality TV concept is one way Mars One may make good on its $6 billion budget for getting the first four humans to Mars. Lansdorp hopes the unprecedented video opportunities will attract sponsors, partners and...

Explanation: Staring up into the martian sky, the Opportunity rover captured an image at 11:02 AM local mean time nearly every 3rd sol, or martian day, for 1 martian year. Of course, the result is this martian analemma, a curve tracing the Sun's motion through the sky in the course of a year (668 sols) on the Red Planet. Spanning Earth dates from July, 16, 2006 to June 2, 2008 the images are shown composited in this zenith-centered, fisheye projection. North is at the top surrounded by a panoramic sky and landscape made in late 2007 from inside Victoria crater....

Pope Francis would absolutely baptize an alien from Mars, if one showed up at the Vatican and asked for it. During his weekly homily on Monday, Franics said that aliens — which he imagines could be "Green, with that long nose and big ears, just like children paint them" — should be baptized just like anyone else who asks for it, because it's not up to any human to decide who should receive the Holy Spirit. In other words: if God prompts some Martians to come to Earth, find the Pope, and say "we want in on this Catholicism thing."...

Explanation: The largest canyon in the Solar System cuts a wide swath across the face of Mars. Named Valles Marineris, the grand valley extends over 3,000 kilometers long, spans as much as 600 kilometers across, and delves as much as 8 kilometers deep. By comparison, the Earth's Grand Canyon in Arizona, USA is 800 kilometers long, 30 kilometers across, and 1.8 kilometers deep. The origin of the Valles Marineris remains unknown, although a leading hypothesis holds that it started as a crack billions of years ago as the planet cooled. Several geologic processes have been identified in the canyon. The...

Explanation: What has the Curiosity rover come across on Mars? Dubbed Mount Remarkable, the rolling robot has chanced upon this notable 5-meter tall mound during its continuing journey around and, eventually, up 5.5-kilometer high Mt. Sharp. Unsure of the density of the surrounding layered sandstone, the human team on Earth has instructed the car-sized rover on Mars to drill into a rock on the side of Mt. Remarkable to investigate. Quite possibly, water involved in creating the dense sandstone could have helped to support ancient life on the red planet. Mt. Sharp, the unusual central peak of Gale Crater, has...

Nasa has released pictures of a prototype space suit, parts of which American astronauts could one day wear on the first manned mission to Mars. The public voted on three different designs for the Z-2 and the "Technology" design won by a landslide with 63 per cent of the vote. The design uses luminescent wire to form a light on the front of the suit that can be personalised to help astronauts identify other individuals on their team. The Z-2 is a prototype so will not be making any future trip to Mars itself as it does not have the...