Add Water and Sterilize: Mars Viking Probes May Have Killed the Microbes They Were Searching For

In 1976, NASA’s Viking landers conducted a series of biological experiments designed to determine whether or not there was life present in the soil on Mars’ surface, the only such tests conducted on another planet. The results of the tests, at least at the time, perplexed the scientists in charge of the Viking landers’ experiments: while two of the […]

A New UFO Photo from NASA’s Curiosity Rover on Mars

Aside from NASA’s solar-powered Ingenuity aircraft, should there be anything flying around the skies of Mars? One of the navigation cameras on board the Mars Curiosity Rover has photographed what appears to be an airborne object streaking past the rover. Taken by Curiosity’s Right Navigation Camera on Sol 3613 (October 5, 2022 for us Earth-lubbers) in the Red Planet’s Gale Crater, the unidentified object, at least […]

Mars May Have Been Too Small To Hold On to Its Primeval Oceans for Very Long

Mars is thought to have once been home to a great deal of water, possibly amounting to oceans of the substance that have been found to have shaped the surface of the planet in what would have been catastrophic floods to anyone witnessing the events from the surface. But while there is still a surprising amount of […]

Mars’ Liquid Water Lakes Mightn’t Be Liquid After All

Researchers studying the lakes of liquid water that are buried under Mars’ southern polar ice caps are beginning to question whether or not these structures are indeed liquid, as the radar data would indicate, due to the lack of a heat source that would prevent the water from freezing. But if these subsurface deposits aren’t […]