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In the movie, "The Martian," Matt Damon was a fictional astronaut stranded on Mars. In reality, the head of NASA says astronauts could set foot on the Red Planet within the next twenty years. "We think we're on the right trajectory to get humans to Mars in the 2030's," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden told CNBC's "On the Money" in an interview this week. He should know: Prior to assuming NASA's top job in 2009, Bolden was himself an astronaut for 14 years, commanding two space shuttle missions during that time. The U.S.'s top space official says he's confident the agency's...

Establishing a human settlement on Mars has been the fevered dream of space agencies for some time. Long before NASA announced its “Journey to Mars” – a plan that outlined the steps that need to be taken to mount a manned mission by the 2030s – the agency’s was planning how a crewed mission could lead to the establishing of stations on the planet’s surface. And it seems that in the coming decades, this could finally become a reality. But when it comes to establishing a permanent colony – another point of interest when it comes to Mars missions –...

Explanation: Point or tilt to see a spectacular view of Mars visible to the Curiosity rover last December. In the foreground, part of Curiosity itself is visible, including its dusty sundial. Starting about seven meters back, the robotic rover is seen posing in front of a 5-meter tall dark sand dune named Namib, one of many dunes that span Bagnold field. Further in the distance is the summit of Mt. Sharp, the 5.5-kilometer peak at the center of 150-km wide Gale crater, the crater where Curiosity landed a few years ago. The featured composite spans a full 360-degrees around by...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A first-ever high-resolution map of Mars' entire magnetic field provides new evidence that Earth-like plate tectonics - great crustal plates pulling apart and crashing together - underpin the Red Planet's surface geology, US space agency NASA said. Using the map made by the National Aeronautic and Space Administration's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, scientists were able to detect signs of transform faults, which are tell-tale indications of plate tectonics on Earth. The results of the scientists' research appeared in the October 10 edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Evidence of plate tectonics at...

The travel time from Earth to Mars using current space flight technologies is estimated to be 9 months. Last week, an innovative concept was proposed which claims to reduce the time that will be spent for Mars travel to merely three days through so-called photonic propulsion technology. But a new proposal threatens to radically shorten this period to an astounding 30 minutes. The idea was revealed by Phillip Lubin, who is a physics professor at the University of California Santa Barbara. Lubin was also responsible for the photonic propulsion technology proposal. This time, however, he identified the use of high-powered...

Artist's conception of a terraformed Mars. Credit: Ittiz/Wikimedia Commons Guide to Space, Mars, TerraformingHow Do We Terraform Mars? 15 Mar , 2016 by Matt Williams As part of our continuing “Definitive Guide To Terraforming” series, Universe Today is happy to present our guide to terraforming Mars. At present, there are several plans to put astronauts and ever settlers on the Red Planet. But if we really want to live there someday, we’re going to need to do a complete planetary renovation. What will it take?Despite having a very cold and very dry climate – not to mention little atmosphere...

Last week, their national nuclear corporation Rosatom announced it isbuilding a nuclear engine that will reach Mars in a month and a half—with fuel to burn for the trip home. Russia might not achieve its goal of launching a prototype by 2025. But that has more to do with the country’s financial situation...than the technical challenges of a nuclear engine. ... “A nuclear contraption should not be too far off, not too complicated,” says Nikolai Sokov, senior fellow at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, CA. “The really expensive thing will be designing a ship around these...

A volcano on Mars half the size of France spewed so much lava 3.5 billion years ago that the weight displaced the Red Planet's outer layers, according to a study released Wednesday. Mars' original north and south poles, in other words, are no longer where they once were. The findings explain the unexpected location of dry river beds and underground reservoirs of water ice, as well as other Martian mysteries that have long perplexed scientists, the lead researcher told AFP. "If a similar shift happened on Earth, Paris would be in the Polar Circle," said Sylvain Bouley, a geomorphologist at...

Be Educated, not just entertained! Listen to The Jacki Daily Show! Jacki speaks with Robert Zubrin, author of Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism about the origins of the Green Party. @JackiDailyShow Jack Ekstrom of Vice President, Corporate and Government Relations Whiting Petroleum https://soundcloud.com/jacki-daily/the-dark-history-of-the-green-party-322016

Explanation: What caused this unusual light rock formation on Mars? Intrigued by the possibility that they could be salt deposits left over as an ancient lakebed dried-up, detailed studies of these fingers now indicate a more mundane possibility: volcanic ash. Studying the exact color of the formation indicated the possible volcanic origin. The light material appears to have eroded away from surrounding area, indicating a very low-density substance. The stark contrast between the rocks and the surrounding sand is compounded by the unusual darkness of the sand. The featured picture was taken with the Thermal Emission Imaging System on the...

The hunt for signs of life on Mars has been on for decades, and so far scientists have found only barren dirt and rocks. Now a pair of astronomers thinks that strangely shaped minerals inside a Martian crater could be the clue everyone has been waiting for. In 2008, scientists announced that NASA's Spirit rover had discovered deposits of a mineral called opaline silica inside Mars's Gusev crater. That on its own is not as noteworthy as the silica's shape: Its outer layers are covered in tiny nodules that look like heads of cauliflower sprouting from the red dirt. No...

Explanation: February's five planet line-up stretches across a clear sky in this predawn scene. A hilltop Castell de Burriac looms in the foreground, overlooking the town of Cabrera de Mar near Barcelona, Spain, planet Earth. The mosaicked, panoramic image looks south. It merges three different exposure times to record a bright Last Quarter Moon, planets, seaside city lights, and dark castle ruins. Seen on February 1st the Moon was near Mars on the sky. But this week early morning risers have watched it move on, passing near Saturn and finally Venus and Mercury, sliding along near the ecliptic toward the...

NASA's Spirit Mars Rover Found Mysterious Growths On Mars That Could Be The Biggest Discovery In Science Jennifer Deal February 5, 2016 Four billion years ago, Mars looked a lot like Earth does today. So it's not surprising that a team of scientists believe that they may have discovered the first signs of ancient alien life on the planet.(click to the site to see the video)

NASA can't afford to put humans on Mars while also pursuing missions to put astronauts back on the moon, according to a panel of experts who testified to the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Space yesterday (Feb. 3). "Today the future of NASA's human spaceflight program is far from clear," said Tom Young, former director of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "There has been continual debate about should we go to the moon or Mars or both ... It is clear, again, that we cannot do both. And there is a need to focus our attention, capability and resources...

Scientists Debate Signatures of Alien Life Searching for signs of life on faraway planets, astrobiologists must decide which telltale biosignature gases to target. Photo illustration by Olena Shmahalo/Quanta Magazine February 2, 2016 Comments (5) Share this: facebooktwitterredditmail PDF Print Huddled in a coffee shop one drizzly Seattle morning six years ago, the astrobiologist Shawn Domagal-Goldman stared blankly at his laptop screen, paralyzed. He had been running a simulation of an evolving planet, when suddenly oxygen started accumulating in the virtual planet’s atmosphere. Up the concentration ticked, from 0 to 5 to 10 percent.“Is something wrong?” his wife asked.“Yeah.”The rise of...

Explanation: As January closes and in the coming days of February, early morning risers can spot the five naked-eye planets before dawn. Though some might claim to see six planets, in this seaside panoramic view all five celestial wanderers were found above the horizon along with a bright waning gibbous Moon on January 27. Nearly aligned along the plane of the ecliptic, but not along a line with the Sun, the five planets are spread well over 100 degrees across the sky. Just arriving on the predawn scene, fleeting Mercury stands above the southeastern horizon in the golden light of...

After a year-and-a-half long voyage aboard the International Space Station, a group of fungi collected from Antarctica has proven its ability to withstand harsh, Mars-like conditions. More than half of the cells remained intact over the course of the 18-month study, providing new insight for the possibility of life on Mars. These fungal samples, along with lichens from Spain and Austria, have allowed European researchers to assess the survivability and stability of microscopic lifeforms on the red planet. The tiny fungi taken from Antarctica are typically found in the cracks of rocks in this dry, hostile region. Scientists took samples...

Could a Mars colony become a nation? That question was posed by Michael Byers, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law at the University of British Columbia in a Washington Post article. Byers’ answer to his question was yes. A body of international law has evolved over time that recognizes the rights of people to self-determination.

Charles D. Walker (a former commercial astronaut), kicked up something of a fuss recently when he opined in the pages of the Arizona Daily Star that NASA should lead the way in space exploration and not leave everything to the private sector. The reasons he cites are risk and lack of a clear profit motive, particularly related to going to Mars. The commercial space sector should be encouraged to bring down the cost of space travel, particularly by operating a space taxi service to the International Space Station, in his view. But NASA must lead the way in exploration, particularly...

Explanation: What is that dark sand dune doing on Mars? NASA's robotic rover Curiosity has been studying it to find out, making this the first-ever up-close investigation of an active sane dune on another world. Named Namib Dune, the dark sand mound stands about 4 meters tall and, along with the other Bagnold Dunes, is located on the northwestern flank of Mount Sharp. The featured image was taken last month and horizontally compressed here for comprehensibility. Wind is causing the dune to advance about one meter a year across the light bedrock underneath, and wind-blown sand is visible on the...