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NASA plans to delay the next phase of its Mars Sample Return campaign and split a lander mission into two separate spacecraft to reduce the overall risk of the program. At a March 21 meeting of the National Academies’ Space Studies Board, Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA associate administrator for science, revealed that NASA and the European Space Agency had agreed to revise the schedule and design for upcoming missions that will return samples being cached by the Perseverance rover to Earth. Original plans called for the launch of both a NASA-led Sample Retrieval Lander and ESA-led Earth Return Orbiter in 2026....

23 flights and counting! #MarsHelicopter successfully completed its 23rd excursion. It flew for 129.1 seconds over 358 meters. Data from Ingenuity in the new region it’s headed to will help the @NASAPersevere team find potential science targets. http://go.nasa.gov/ingenuity

Over the weekend, the #MarsHelicopter took its 22nd flight!🎉 The trip lasted 101.4 seconds and Ingenuity got up to 10 meters in the air. The team is planning another flight perhaps as early as later this week. See raw images from this flight: https://go.nasa.gov/3hVX0V3

The rock appears to be a cosmetic annoyance and not anything that’s currently hindering the rover’s progress. That Perseverance’s 20.7-inch-wide (52.2-centimeter) wheels are able to withstand this unexpected intrusion is not a huge surprise. The rover was fitted with upgraded wheels to prevent the wear-and-tear seen on NASA’s Curiosity rover. Each aluminum wheel is fitted with 48 cleats that improve traction and curved titanium spokes that provide bouncy support. The upgraded wheels are also narrower, with a thicker and more robust thread... Perseverance is currently backtracking toward the Octavia E. Butler landing site, and it’s driving longer distances than at...

The Curiosity rover took a picture of something pretty enticing this week on the surface of Mars. While the object in question looks like a tiny little flower or maybe even some type of organic feature, the rover team confirmed this object is a mineral formation, with delicate structures that formed by minerals precipitating from water. Curiosity has actually seen these types of features before, which are called diagenetic crystal clusters. Diagenetic means the recombination or rearrangement of minerals, and these features consist of three-dimensional crystal clusters, likely made of a combination of minerals. Curiosity deputy project scientist Abigail Fraeman...

Flight 20 was a success! ✅ In its 130.3 seconds of flight, the #MarsHelicopter covered 391 meters at a speed of 4.4 meters per second, bringing it closer to @NASAPersevere's landing location.

Elektra and its three moons. (ESO/Berdeu et al., Yang et al.) ====================================================================================== An asteroid discovered in the 19th century has just been identified as the most crowded we've ever found. It's called 130 Elektra, or just Elektra for short, and astronomers have just discovered that it has not one, nor two, but three smaller satellite companions, or moons. That not only makes it the most numerous asteroid system known to date, but demonstrates how we might find other faint, hard-to-see asteroid moons in the future. "Elektra is the first quadruple system ever detected," wrote a team of astronomers led by...

After some dusty weather delays, it’s time to celebrate the #MarsHelicopter’s first flight of 2022! The rotorcraft flew for the 19th time on the Red Planet, soaring for 99.98 seconds over ~62 meters.

Earth has officially been joined in its orbit around the Sun by a new trojan asteroid. Named 2020 XL5, this chunk of rock is only the second object of its type ever to have been conclusively identified. Its discovery suggests that perhaps Earth trojans may be more common than we knew, and offers new insights into these mysterious rocks. Like the first trojan, astronomers predict that 2020 XL5 will hang around for at least 4,000 years before zipping off to parts elsewhere. "The discovery of a second Earth trojan asteroid may enhance our knowledge of the dynamics of this elusive...

M&M's iconic characters — six different colored "lentils," each with their own personality — have gotten a modern makeover for a "more dynamic, progressive world," Mars said Thursday. The redesign is focused on creating a sense of belonging and community, as well as spotlighting the character's "personalities, rather than their gender." The most notable changes include the green M&M's redesign, which will exchange the white heeled go-go boots she was given in 1997 for "cool, laid-back sneakers to reflect her effortless confidence." Mars had received criticism for the green M&M's sexy characterization. The green M&M will also be "better represented...

Elon Musk is a pleasure to listen to for a number of reasons: he's down to earth, witty, often funny, and as the CEO & Chief Engineer of Space/X he can delve into the challenges of rocketing to Mars and make it somewhat understandable and interesting for the layman. I'm pretty impatient when it comes to podcasts, but I listened to the first 45 minutes of this 2.5 hour recording -- it was that interesting. Scan the subjects in the index below, then click to your subject of interest. Here's an excerpt from the podcast where he discusses what he...

To celebrate the new year, China National Space Administration (CNSA) published astonishing pictures of the Tianwen-1 Mars orbiter above the north pole of the red planet, according to Shanghai Morning Post. CNSA said the images were taken by a detachable sensor equipped with two high-definition cameras. The first picture shows the orbiter above the north pole ice cap of Mars. The second picture is a close-up of the orbiter’s golden exterior skin where high-speed data communication antennas and a solar wing are seen. Beyond the orbiter are ice caps though not the ice we consider on Earth. Mar’s ice caps...

In a rather bizarre move, NASA has recruited a British priest to prepare the religious for the discovery of alien life as space agencies claim to be getting closer to discovering evidence that life exists outside of planet earth reports The Times. Reverend Dr. Andrew Davison, a priest and theology professor at the University of Cambridge, is among 24 theologians who participated in a program sponsored by NASA at the space agency’s Center for Theological Inquiry (CTI) at Princeton University. The theologians attempted to assess how major religions would react to news of alien life being found. A NASA expert...

NASA is looking to the heavens for help with assessing how humans will react if alien life is found on other planets and how the discovery could impact our ideas of gods and creation. The agency is hiring 24 theologians to take part in its program at the Center for Theological Inquiry (CTI) at Princeton University in New Jersey, which NASA gave a $1.1 million grant to in 2014.CTI is described as building 'bridges of under understanding by convening theologians, scientists, scholars, and policymakers to think together - and inform public thinking - on global concerns.'

In the summer of 2002, record rainfall in the Texas Hill Country overfilled Canyon Lake. Water coursed over the top of its dam and carved huge, steep-walled canyons through the limestone bedrock downstream. The scoured riverbed, now called Canyon Lake Gorge, is over a mile long and has been cordoned off for scientific study. After studying the area for the last eight years, scientists are now making the same kinds of conclusions about rapid, catastrophic processes having sculpted the earth that creation geologists have been teaching for decades. In a paper published in Nature Geoscience, geologists Michael Lamb and Mark...

In the summer of 2002, a week of heavy rains in Central Texas caused Canyon Lake -- the reservoir of the Canyon Dam -- to flood over its spillway and down the Guadalupe River Valley in a planned diversion to save the dam from catastrophic failure. The flood, which continued for six weeks, stripped the valley of mesquite, oak trees, and soil; destroyed a bridge; and plucked meter-wide boulders from the ground. And, in a remarkable demonstration of the power of raging waters, the flood excavated a 2.2-kilometer-long, 7-meter-deep canyon in the bedrock.

You gotta read the article before you start arguing with me. P.S. it's NOT from a creationist site. It's from Science Daily.

The #MarsHelicopter keeps going, going, going! Ingenuity successfully completed its 18th flight, adding 124.3 seconds to its overall time aloft on the Red Planet. It flew 754 feet (230 meters) at a speed of 5.6 mph (2.5 m/sec) & took images along the way. http://go.nasa.gov/2U43zuH

A digital terrain model of Valles Marineris. (ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum), CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- A vast system of canyons that dramatically scars the face of Mars could be harboring reserves of hidden water. An unusually high quantity of hydrogen has been detected in the heart of the 4,000 kilometers (2,485 miles) of canyons known as Valles Marineris, nicknamed the Grand Canyon of Mars. We know this thanks to new data from the ESA-Roscosmos ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter's FREND instrument. The finding suggests that, at depths up to a meter (three feet) below the surface, the soil in the...

A South African researcher discovered what appears to be an image of a crashed flying saucer on the surface of Mars, according to re-analyzed NASA footage from 2006.[6 minute youtube video] 01:44 a strange trench 01:48 and at the end of it 01:50 a perfect disc 01:52 partially covered in sand and debris and 01:56 behind it 01:57 we have 01:58 random dunes 02:00 now i've removed some of the dunes 02:03 to give you an idea 02:05 of what we're looking at here or 02:07 potentially what we're looking at here 02:10 it looks like 02:11 a disc-shaped craft...