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SpaceX successfully landed its Starship rocket in what Elon Musk calls one of the company's most important launches. SpaceFund founder Rick Tumlinson joins Josh Lipton on Asking for a Trend to talk about what the landing means for SpaceX and the space exploration industry. The venture capital fund focused on space exploration is invested in SpaceX. "What we're witnessing here [is the] combination of the railroads, the steamships, airplanes, all in one. Like 100 years from now, people are going to look back at this period of time as sort of when humanity breaks out into space, Tumlinson says, adding...

This is an artist’s concept of an early Mars with liquid water (blue areas) on its surface. Ancient regions on Mars bear signs of abundant water – such as features resembling valleys and deltas, and minerals that only form in the presence of liquid water. Scientists think that billions of years ago, the atmosphere of Mars was much denser and warm enough to form rivers, lakes, and perhaps even oceans of water. As the planet cooled and lost its global magnetic field, the solar wind and solar storms eroded away to space a significant amount of the planet’s atmosphere, turning...

NASA has released the clearest view of Mars yet, showing stunning blue rocks littering the Martian landscape. The footage, captured by the Perseverance rover as it continu s to explore the Red Planet, also revealed 'first of its kind' geological formation resting atop the dried remains of an ancient lakebed. Dark blue, jagged boulders of volcanic basalt were spotted surrounding the speckled white rock, which was found to have a mineral composition unlike anything NASA has ever seen before on Mars. ...Most of the bluish-black rocks seen on the surface of Mars, like those on 'Mount Washburn,' are volcanic basalt....

(Image Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU) NASA’s Perseverance Rover has made a striking new discovery—a black-and-white striped rock on the Martian surface dubbed “Freya Castle,” unlike anything previously seen on the Red Planet. This unique find has sparked excitement among scientists and space enthusiasts, offering a fresh puzzle in the ongoing quest to understand Mars’ geological history. “Team scientists and the internet alike were amazed when Perseverance spotted a black-and-white striped rock unlike any seen on Mars before,” Athanasios Klidaras, a Perseverance team member and doctoral student at Purdue University, wrote in an update published by NASA. “Is this a sign of exciting...

Dutch researchers have found evidence of approximately 20 mysterious, large-scale structures hidden beneath the sediment of an ancient lost ocean on Mars. The team also reports the discovery of evidence that an active Martian crust is pushing against Olympus Mons, elevating the solar system’s largest volcano. Previous scientific efforts have found hidden ice deposits and other unexpected structures on the red planet. However, the researchers behind this latest discovery say these mysterious, large-scale structures are particularly perplexing because they appear hidden beneath the sedimentary layers of an ancient ‘lost’ Martian ocean. “These dense structures could be volcanic in origin or...

The story of how Richard and Karen covered Klaatu, the group rumored to the secret reunion of the Fab Four. Have you heard the one about the futuristic track by a group that were rumored to be The Beatles in disguise, and which was turned into a hit by America’s favorite musical brother and sister? This is the story of how the Carpenters get involved with an organization called the International Flying Saucer Bureau, and turned the affair into a hit record. Devotees of quality pop of the 1970s will, by now, know that we’re talking about “Calling Occupants Of...

Araneiform features on the surface of Mars, as imaged by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2009. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona) ====================================================================== Mars has spiders unlike anything else in the Solar System. Between the ocher dunes, across the scars of impacts, long-legged shadows appear to scuttle across the dust. They aren't actual, living spiders. These tendrilled shapes that appear in satellite images of the red planet are made, like almost everything on Mars, from dust. They're known as araneiforms, small systems of dark troughs that appear only in the southern polar region of Mars in the planet's spring. Exactly how the araneiforms...

Explanation: Mars has two tiny moons, Phobos and Deimos, named for the figures in Greek mythology Fear and Panic. Detailed surface views of smaller moon Deimos are shown in both these panels. The images were taken in 2009, by the HiRISE camera on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft, NASA's long-lived interplanetary internet satellite. The outermost of the two Martian moons, Deimos is one of the smallest known moons in the Solar System, measuring only about 15 kilometers across. Both Martian moons were discovered in 1877 by Asaph Hall, an American astronomer working at the US Naval Observatory in Washington...

Using data from NASA's InSight lander - which carried out a four-year-long mission that ended in 2022 - researchers say the amount of water underground could cover all of Mars with between one to two kilometres of water.

Explanation: As Mars wanders through Earth's night, it passes about 5 degrees south of the Pleiades star cluster in this composite astrophoto. The skyview was constructed from a series of images captured over a run of 16 consecutive clear nights beginning on July 12. Mars' march across the field of view begins at the far right, the planet's ruddy hue showing a nice contrast with the blue Pleiades stars. Moving much faster across the sky against the distant stars, the fourth planet from the Sun easily passes seventh planet Uranus. Red planet Mars and the ice giant world were in...

The new spacesuit design (illustrated) that collects urine and recycles it into drinking water weighs around 8 kilograms and can purify half a liter of water in five minutes. ================================================================ In the science-fiction series Dune, the desert-dwelling Fremen of the arid planet Arrakis recycle their body’s moisture using specially designed outfits called stillsuits. Inspired by such imaginings, a new prototype spacesuit converts astronauts’ urine into drinkable water, researchers report July 12 in Frontiers in Space Technology. “I’ve been a fan of the Dune series for as long as I can remember,” says Sofia Etlin, a space medicine and policy researcher...

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)’s rover discovered a mysterious boulder on Mars, CBS News reported Monday. NASA’s Perseverance rover made a discovery in the Jezero crater on Mars, encountering a mysterious, light-toned boulder that differs from any previously observed Martian rocks. This finding occurred during the rover’s journey through the Neretva Vallis, a dried-up river delta, as it navigated towards a region in the crater’s rim to study sediment deposits, according to CBS News. The boulder, dubbed Atoko Point, caught the team’s attention with its unique speckled, light-toned appearance amid darker rocks. It was said to be “in a...

Screen The frost on Olympus Mons, is shaded in blue. CREDIT: Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlishot A Brown University astrobiologist and an international team of planetary scientists say they have found an ‘improbable’ series of patches of water frost sitting atop a number of massive Martian volcanoes. According to the researchers behind the discovery, this finding represents the first time that water frost of any kind has been spotted near the planet’s equator. It would also be a finding that goes against current models describing the red planet’s atmosphere and water cycle. “We thought it was improbable for frost to form around...

The Jovian moon Io as seen by the New Horizons spacecraft. The mission's camera caught a view of one of this moon's volcanos erupting. (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio) The Large Binocular Telescope (LBT), located on Mount Graham in Arizona and run by the University of Arizona, is part of the next generation of extremely large telescopes (ELTs). With two primary mirrors measuring 8.4 m (~27.5 ft), it has a collecting area slightly greater than that of a 30-meter (98.4 ft) telescope. With their resolution, adaptive optics, and sophisticated instruments, these telescopes are expected to probe deeper...

Snip “My doctors have confirmed my diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. I am currently undergoing treatment to battle this disease that impacts tens of thousands of Americans every year.

A groundbreaking new pulsed plasma propulsion system could soon enable faster and safer crewed missions to planets like Mars, according to a leading developer of novel technologies aimed at advancing the next stages of human space exploration. Scottsdale, Arizona-based space technology developer Howe Industries recently announced that its Pulsed Plasma Rocket (PPR) could represent a game-changer in advanced propulsion for space travel, allowing crewed missions to significantly reduce the travel time required to reach Mars. According to current timelines, NASA aims to send the first crewed missions to Mars within the next two decades using habitat-like spacecraft paired with hybrid...

On the cold dead surface of Mars, something remarkable happens each spring. The red planet becomes infested with giant black spiders. At least, that’s what it looks like. In reality, vast fields of dark, spider-like formations become etched into the Red Planet’s landscape. No, they are not alive, nor actually spiders, but instead a geological phenomenon that occurs nowhere else in the solar system. With the recent orbital passes of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Mars Express and the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), scientists are now closer than ever to understanding these mysterious features known as “araneiforms.” Araneiforms are...

Mars-caused changes in Earth’s orbit impacts ocean currents and temperatures every 2.4 million years and is known as an “astronomical grand cycle.” Anyone with an inkling of knowledge of geologic history appreciates Earth’s climate is constantly changing. This change has many reasons, including solar cycles, volcanic activity, and asteroids. New research shows another potentially significant player in Earth’s climate change cycles: Mars, our neighboring planet. Geological evidence tracing back more than 65 million years and taken from hundreds of sites across the world suggests that deep-sea currents have repeatedly gone through periods of being either stronger or weaker. This happens...

Explanation: This close-up from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's HiRISE camera shows weathered craters and windblown deposits in southern Acidalia Planitia. A striking shade of blue in standard HiRISE image colors, to the human eye the area would probably look grey or a little reddish. But human eyes have not gazed across this terrain, unless you count the eyes of NASA astronauts in the scifi novel The Martian by Andy Weir. The novel chronicles the adventures of Mark Watney, an astronaut stranded at the fictional Mars mission Ares 3 landing site corresponding to the coordinates of this cropped HiRISE frame. For...

Scientists have discovered a gigantic volcano on Mars near the planet’s equator that remained unnoticed for decades, according to newly published research. The huge volcano was found in the Red Planet’s eastern Tharsis volcanic province, along with what researchers interpret to be a large sheet of buried glacial ice beneath the Martian surface. The discovery came as a surprise, partly because orbital spacecraft have photographed this region of Mars since the early 1970s. Hidden in plain sight now for decades, the giant volcano, which has undergone extensive erosion over time, somehow remained unnoticed. The feature has been given the temporary...