News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
Mars is a parched planet ruled by global dust storms. It’s also a frigid world, where night-time winter temperatures fall to minus 140 C (minus 220 F) at the poles. But it wasn’t always a dry, barren, freezing, inhospitable wasteland. It used to be a warm, wet, almost inviting place, where liquid water flowed across … Read more
Key changes deep in the core of Mars might have led to the planet losing its magnetic field early in its history, a new study suggests. Today, Mars is a planet with a thin atmosphere that is unable to support substantial running water on the surface, but scientists have found evidence of ancient lakes, streams … Read more
SpaceX will hit a big milestone this year on its road to Mars, if all goes according to plan. The company is developing a giant rocket known as Starship to help make Mars colonization and a variety of other ambitious exploration feats possible. Starship prototypes have taken just a handful of low-altitude hops off Earth’s … Read more
It’s been a year since China’s first-ever independent interplanetary mission reached Mars, and in that time, Tianwen 1 has made major achievements while also delivering a number of surprises. The Tianwen 1 spacecraft entered orbit around the Red Planet on Feb. 10, 2021. Shortly after, the China National Space Administration released epic footage of the … Read more
It’s been a full year since the United Arab Emirates made history when its first-ever interplanetary mission slipped into orbit around Mars. The Emirates Mars Mission, also called Hope, launched in July 2020, arrived at the Red Planet seven months later and successfully entered orbit around Mars on Feb. 9, 2021. After a few months … Read more
The Perseverance rover’s self-driving function is working just great on Mars, according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The mission, not quite at one Earth year on Mars, has topped a new distance record for Red Planet rovers. On Friday (Feb. 4) Perseverance made the longest drive completed in a single Martian day, or sol, traveling … Read more
The dust storm couldn’t keep NASA’s Mars helicopter Ingenuity grounded forever. The 4-pound (1.8 kilograms) Ingenuity aced a 100-second sortie on Tuesday (Feb. 8), its 19th Red Planet flight overall but its first since Dec. 15. The flight had originally been targeted for Jan. 5. But on New Year’s Day, a big dust storm kicked … Read more
NASA’s Mars sample-return plan continues to come together. The agency announced on Monday (Feb. 7) that it has selected the aerospace company Lockheed Martin to build the Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV), a small rocket that will launch pristine Red Planet samples back toward Earth a decade or so from now. “Committing to the Mars Ascent … Read more
NASA’s Curiosity rover has left plenty of marks on Mars over the past nine-plus years, and the Red Planet is returning the favor. The rugged landscape inside Mars’ Gale Crater has taken some substantial bites out of Curiosity’s six aluminum wheels, as CNET recently pointed out. The damage looks dramatic, but don’t panic; Curiosity should … Read more
We’re about to get another progress report on SpaceX’s huge Starship Mars rocket. SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk announced last week that he’ll give a big Starship update on Thursday (Feb. 10) at 9 p.m. EST (0200 GMT on Feb. 11). The presentation will presumably be webcast live; if so, you can watch it … Read more