Mars

This week a major geochemistry conference heard an argument for life on Earth having originated on Mars, but does this hold up to scrutiny?

More to explore: Curiosity Catches Sight of Mars’ Moon Passing the Other (PsiVid) Latest SpaceX Rocket Test Successfully Goes Sideways (New York Times) Public Naming of Planets and Planetary Satellites: Reaching Out for Worldwide Recognitionwith the Help of the IAU [Pdf] (IAU) Around the World in Four Days: NASA Tracks Chelyabinsk Meteor Plume (NASA) Russian [...]

This video depicts NASA’s Curiosity rover observing Mars’ two moons, then shows one moon passing in front of the other. Phobos and Deimos, the moons of Mars, are thought to be asteroids captured in Mars’ gravitational field.

More to explore: Is There Life on Venus? (Scitable) Venus May Have Had Continents and Oceans (Nature News) (Scientific American is part of the Nature Publishing Group) Was Venus Alive?

As the space agency's Curiosity rover celebrates one year on Mars, preparations are under way for the launch later this year of NASA's next Red Planet mission, called MAVEN

Mars Curiosity Rover has captured our attention from the time it launched in November 2011 to the time it landed on August 5, 2012 in a very dramatic landing to now.

A new study suggests human activity could, in theory, bring about the end of most life on Earth

Precision dating of a single rock resolves lingering uncertainties about the Red Planet’s history

Early data from the rover teases out new details of Mars’s atmosphere and how it changed over billions of years

The Hubble Space Telescope was used to measure visible light from one of the best-studied planets outside our solar system, HD 189733 b

Researchers have found that chunks of dry ice, jetting around on cushions of gas, may be responsible for mysterious channels on the Martian surface

Around 250 million years ago animals in the seas began to diversify with gusto. Remarkably, the evolution of minute plants known as phytoplankton probably powered that dramatic explosion