What's New

Like storm chasers on Earth, a NASA spacecraft spends time each day pursuing intense weather on Mars. Speeding along in orbit, it takes images of dust storms. Often, the storms are spiral like giant tornadoes on Earth.
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Researchers using a powerful instrument aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have found a long-sought-after mineral on the Martian surface and, with it, unexpected clues to the Red Planet's watery past.
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NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has completed its primary, two-year science phase. The spacecraft has found signs of a complex Martian history of climate change that produced a diversity of past watery environments.
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The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE, team based at The University of Arizona today released 362 three-dimensional images of Mars taken by the HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
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Climate cycles persisting for millions of years on ancient Mars left a record of rhythmic patterns in thick stacks of sedimentary rock layers, revealed in three-dimensional detail by a telescopic camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
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On Mars, the stuff we know as "dry ice," or frozen carbon dioxide, is a powerful agent for change. In winter, it forms a polar ice cap. In spring, it becomes an expanding gas that carves channels in the surface and sends loose debris into landslides.
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The solar system's most celebrated team of off-planet drivers cheered when they heard the news. Spirit had phoned home from Mars, ending four days of silence.
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NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has revealed vast Martian glaciers of water ice under protective blankets of rocky debris at much lower latitudes than any ice previously identified on the Red Planet.
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Opal is the gemstone for those born in the month of October, but Mars scientists may claim it as the treasure of 2008. Inside the largest canyon in the whole solar system, opal minerals stretch in a pinkish cream swath, just to the right of a crater filled with dunes.
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NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has observed a new category of minerals spread across large regions of Mars. This discovery suggests that liquid water remained on the planet's surface a billion years later than scientists believed, and it played an important role in shaping the planet's surface and possibly hosting life.
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An odd, solitary hill rising part-way down an eroding slope in Mars' north polar layered terrain may be the remnant of a buried impact crater, suggests a University of Arizona planetary scientist who studied the feature in a new, detailed image from the HiRISE camera onboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
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NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has revealed hundreds of small fractures exposed on the Martian surface that billions of years ago directed flows of water through underground Martian sandstone.
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Like space shuttle pilots, Mars navigators need to know what the atmosphere will be like during landing. When Phoenix arrived, it barely missed a dust storm. Now scientists are evaluating what conditions may be like when the Mars Science Laboratory rover arrives in two years. That's one Mars year, or one change of seasons.
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As Americans celebrate Labor Day 2008, six flags stand in silent salute to the U.S. workforce on Mars. Three of the flags are on spacecraft still exploring Mars.
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Layers of clay-rich rock have been found in Mars’ Mawrth Vallis, a potential landing site for future rovers. This work, published in the August 8 issue of Science, suggests that abundant water was once present on Mars and that hydrothermal activity may have occurred.
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Lakes and rivers with the potential to support life covered much of ancient Mars. Those areas where water deposited clay minerals would be good places to search for signs of past life.
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Let's say you live in Miami. If Earth's weather were as predictable as Mars' weather, you could expect a hurricane similar in magnitude to hit Miami year after year, within about two weeks of the same date.
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NASA's Phoenix Lander is ready to begin moving its robotic arm, first unlatching its wrist and then flexing its elbow.
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A telescopic camera in orbit around Mars caught a view of NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander suspended from its parachute during the lander's successful arrival at Mars Sunday evening, May 25.
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When NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander prepares for landing on May 25, 2008, it won't be alone. Three spacecraft in orbit will serve as a welcome committee.
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New observations from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter indicate that the crust and upper mantle of Mars are stiffer and colder than previously thought.
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A new online map lets visitors explore Mars’ past through a collection of high-resolution observations from one of the most powerful spectrometers ever sent to the Red Planet. Evidence of ancient bodies of water, flowing rivers and groundwater peeks out from beneath layers of hardened magma and dust—testaments to Mars’ progression through wet, volcanic and dry eras.
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The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took these images of the larger of Mars' two moons, Phobos, on March 23, 2008.
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A new stereo view of Phobos, the larger and inner of Mars' two tiny moons, has been captured by a NASA spacecraft orbiting Mars.
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While most kids can only read about Mars exploration, four groups of high school students from around the country are getting the chance to plan observations of the Red Planet and join the science team analyzing data from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission.
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Imagine having a backyard telescope so powerful you could easily see details on another planet. NASA has such an instrument at Mars and recently pointed it at Earth!
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A NASA spacecraft in orbit around Mars has taken the first ever image of active avalanches near the Red Planet's north pole. The image shows tan clouds billowing away from the foot of a towering slope, where ice and dust have just cascaded down.
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Mars has an ethereal, tenuous atmosphere with less than one-percent the surface pressure of Earth, which challenges scientists to explain complex, wind-sculpted landforms seen with unprecedented detail in images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
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