Mars Mission

What makes India's space missions cost less than Hollywood sci-fi movies?

India's low-cost space missions, Mangalyaan ($74 mn) and Chandrayaan-3 ($75 mn), starkly contrast with Hollywood's $100m Gravity and costlier Nasa and Russian counterparts

Father-daughter team from US decodes 'alien signal' after trying for a year

Extracting signals from raw data took 10 days to an online community, and decoding it took over a year. However, what the 'aliens' want to convey is still a mystery

'Spiders on Mars' fully awakened on Earth; scientists at Nasa excited

Bizarre spider-like features on Mars have been recreated on earth for the first time. This could help to unveil several mysteries surrounding the static Martian arachnids

SpaceX to launch first Starship to Mars in two years, says CEO Musk

In another post on X, Musk stated that SpaceX created the first fully reusable rocket stage and made the reuse economically viable

Nasa's Perseverance rover on Mars begins steep climb to rim of crater

NASA's Perseverance rover is tackling a steep new challenge on Mars. The six-wheeled rover has spent the last 3 1/2 years roaming around the bottom of a crater. On Tuesday, it began climbing to the top. The rover will go up 1,000 feet (305 meters) to the rim of Jezero Crater to dig up rock samples. Since landing on the red planet in 2021, Perseverance has collected 22 rock core samples from the floor of the crater, which was once filled with water. The rover's samples may help scientists piece together what the planet's climate looked like billions of years ago and learn whether any ancient Martian life lurked. NASA is exploring ways to bring the rock samples to Earth. The bedrock at the rim of the crater might yield clues as to how rocky planets like Mars and Earth came to be, said Steven Lee with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. But the road ahead won't be easy. Perseverance will scale rocky terrain and slopes of up to 23 degrees on the months-long ...

Elon Musk's Mars vision: Turn sci-fi into reality with Mars colonisation

Billionaire Elon Musk's Martian dreams stir awe and skepticism alike, as humanity weighs the allure of a new frontier against the tough realities of space colonisation

NASA CHAPEA 1 mission: Locked volunteers inside Mars simulator for 378 days

NASA began its ambitious mission by locking four volunteers inside a Mars simulator, CHAPEA 1 for 378 days. It is one of the three simulators that volunteers will have to experience in the future

China's first Mars rover may not be able to restart after hibernation

It entered sleep mode on May 18 last year to save power during the winter. It was supposed to wake up last December but it failed

NASA MRO spacecraft captures unusual circles of sand dunes on Mars

He explained that this indicates that "sand generally moves to the south, but the winds may be variable"

US to test nuclear thermal rocket engine for future Mars missions

Nasa and the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency have announced a collaboration to demonstrate a nuclear thermal rocket engine in space

India's Mars orbiter dies after 6-month mission lasts eight years

The orbiter, called Mangalyaan in Sanskrit, made India only the fourth nation to reach the distant planet; it garnered global attention primarily for its shoestring budget

Isro demonstrates new tech that can be used for Mars, Venus missions

ISRO on Saturday successfully demonstrated a new technology with Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator (IAD) that it said is a game-changer with multiple applications for future missions including to Mars and Venus. An IAD, designed and developed by ISRO's Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), was successfully test flown in a 'Rohini' sounding rocket from Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station (TERLS). The IAD was initially folded and kept inside the payload bay of the rocket, according to the Bengaluru-headquartered Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). At around 84 km altitude, the IAD was inflated and it descended through atmosphere with the payload part of sounding rocket. The pneumatic system for inflation was developed by ISRO's Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre (LPSC), it said. The IAD has systematically reduced the velocity of the payload through aerodynamic drag and followed the predicted trajectory. "This is the first time that an IAD is designed specifically for spe

UAE, NASA missions find 'patchy' proton auroras in Mars atmosphere

The United Arab Emirate's Mars Mission (EMM) and NASA's MAVEN probe have found "patchy" proton auroras in Mars' skies, providing new insights into the red planet's atmosphere. An aurora is a natural light display in a planet's sky, predominantly seen in high-latitude regions such as the northern lights, or the aurora borealis, seen from the Earth. The new aurora found by the team is formed when the solar wind directly impacts Mars' upper atmosphere and emits ultraviolet light as it slows down. It was discovered in snapshots of the dayside disk obtained by the Emirates Mars Ultraviolet Spectrometer (EMUS), which observes the planet's upper atmosphere. When the aurora occurs, small regions of the planet become much brighter, signifying intense localised energy in the atmosphere. "Our discovery of these patchy proton aurora adds a new kind of event to the long list of those currently studied by EMM and challenges our existing views of how the proton aurora on Mars' dayside are formed

NASA's InSight mission finds Martian equator contains little or no ince

Martian equator contains little or no ice, according to a new analysis of seismic data from NASA's Mars InSight mission

Euro-Russia Mars mission was suspended due to Ukraine: What to expect next?

The Rosalind Franklin rover is unique among all the rovers planned for Mars as it can drill deeper than any before it - up to 2 metres below the harsh surface

UAE partners with NASA on Mars missions to boost scientific collaborations

The United Arab Emirates has partnered with US space agency NASA on a Mars mission to boost scientific collaborations on the Red Planet.

NASA's Perseverance grabs one more rock sample on Mars, taking count to 7

NASA's Perseverance rover has grabbed one more sample from Mars, taking the total number of collection to seven.

NASA's Perseverance rover collects puzzle pieces of Mars' history

NASA's Perseverance Mars rover successfully collected its first pair of rock samples, and scientists already are gaining new insights into the region.After collecting its first sample, named "Montdenier" on September 6, the team collected a second, "Montagnac," from the same rock on September 8, according to a release by NASA.Analysis of the rocks from which the Montdenier and Montagnac samples were taken and from the rover's previous sampling attempt may help the science team piece together the timeline of the area's past, which was marked by volcanic activity and periods of persistent water."It looks like our first rocks reveal a potentially habitable sustained environment," said Ken Farley of Caltech, project scientist for the mission, which is led by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California."It's a big deal that the water was there a long time."The rock that provided the mission's first core samples is basaltic in composition and may be the product of lava ...

NASA confirms first Mars rock sample by Perseverance rover

NASA's Perseverance rover on Tuesday completed the collection of the first sample of Martian rock, a core from Jezero Crater slightly thicker than a pencil.

NASA's newest Mars rover snags first rock sample for return to Earth

NASA's newest Mars rover has successfully collected its first rock sample for return to Earth, after last month's attempt came up empty. The Perseverance rover's chief engineer, Adam Stelzner, called it a perfect core sample. "I've never been more happy to see a hole in a rock," he tweeted Thursday. A month ago, Perseverance drilled into much softer rock, and the sample crumbled and didn't get inside the titanium tube. The rover drove a half-mile to a better sampling spot to try again. Team members analyzed data and pictures before declaring success. Perseverance arrived in February at Mars' Jezero Crater believed to be the home of a lush lakebed and river delta billions of years ago in search of rocks that might hold evidence of ancient life. NASA plans to launch more spacecraft to retrieve the samples collected by Perseverance; engineers are hoping to return as many as three dozen samples in about a decade.