SpaceRef: Mars Archives

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Layered Bedrock in Nili Fossae Region of Mars

Nili Fossae Region of Mars

The Nili Fossae region contains some of the best exposures of ancient bedrock on Mars. Ancient bedrock can be tilted, folded, and generally complicated and difficult to understand, but the center of this image shows a stack of nearly horizontal layers.

Mars

Mojave Desert Tests Prepare for NASA Mars Roving

Team members of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission took a test rover to Dumont Dunes in California's Mojave Desert this week to improve knowledge of the best way to operate a similar rover, Curiosity, currently flying to Mars for an August landing.

Mars

Signs of Flowing Water on Ancient Mars

ESA's Mars Express has returned images of a region on the Red Planet that appears to have been sculpted in part by flowing liquid. This again adds to the growing evidence that Mars had large volumes of water on its surface in the distant past.

Mars

100 Days From Mars

At 10:31 p.m. PDT on April 27 NASA's Mars Science Laboratory, carrying the one-ton Curiosity rover, was within 100 days from its appointment with the Martian surface. At that moment, the mission had about 119 million miles (191 million kilometers) to go and was closing at a speed of 13,000 mph (21,000 kilometers per hour).

Mars

Mars Express Gravity Results

Five years of Mars Express gravity mapping data are providing unique insights into what lies beneath the Red Planet's largest volcanoes. The results show that the lava grew denser over time and that the thickness of the planet's rigid outer layers varies across the Tharsis region.

Mars

Life After Mars

Seventeen months of isolation on a simulated trip to Mars came to an end five months ago. Their mission was over and they breathed fresh air again. What have ESA 'marsonauts' Diego Urbina and Romain Charles been doing since they left their 'spacecraft'?

Mars

NASA's Mars Program Planning Group: Same Old Answers or Open To New Ideas?

At last week's media telecon NASA representatives stressed that this review process and this meeting were going to be "transparent and open" and that people from outside NASA would be encouraged to attend. This does not synch with the meeting description that has been posted.

Mars

A Wild Assortment of Jumbled Rocks on Mars

This image covers a region of Mars near Nili Fossae that contains some of the best exposures of ancient bedrock on Mars. The enhanced-color subimage shows part of the ejecta from an impact crater.

Mars

Mars: Summer is on Its Way

These dark sand dunes in the North polar region, basking in the sunshine of late spring, have shed most of their seasonal layer of winter ice. A few bright ice deposits remain sequestered in "cold traps" shadowed from the sun on the poleward-facing side of the dunes.

Mars

The pit-chains of Mars - a possible place for life?

ESA: The latest images released from ESA's Mars Express reveal a series of 'pit-chains' on the flanks of one of the largest volcanoes in the Solar System. Depending on their origin, they might be tempting targets in the search for microbial life on the Red Planet.

Mars

Opportunity Checks in From Mars (With Photos)

Sols 2901-2906, March 22-27, 2012: Opportunity is positioned on the north end of Cape York on the rim of Endeavour Crater with an approximate 15-degree northerly tilt for favorable solar energy production.

Mars

'Mount Sharp' On Mars Links Geology's Past and Future

Curiosity, the big rover of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission, will land in August 2012 near the foot of a mountain inside Gale Crater. One particular mountain on Mars, bigger than Colorado's grandest, has been beckoning would-be explorers since it was first sighted from orbit in the 1970s.

Mars

Image: A Cloudy Day on Mars

Mars occasionally has cloudy weather. We intended to take a picture of the bright ice-covered dunes that are faintly visible through these thin clouds, but weather forecasting on Mars is just as challenging as on Earth. Where the clouds are thin, the remaining bright winter ice is visible, protected in shallow grooves on the ground, in addition to covering the dunes.

Mars

Image: A Towering Dust Devil Swirls Over The Surface of Mars

A towering dust devil casts a serpentine shadow over the Martian surface in this stunning, late springtime image of Amazonis Planitia.

Mars

Working Models for the Gravitational Field of Phobos

Phobos is the larger and closer of the two natural satellites of Mars. Despite decades of Martian exploration, we still know very little about Phobos. Many fundamental properties of this small potato-shaped body stay vague, for example, its gravitational field.

Mars

NASA MRO Image of Mars: Another Well-Preserved Impact Crater

Shown here a well-preserved impact crater about 6 or 7 kilometers wide from rim to rim. By well-preserved we mean that the crater has a sharp rim, deep cavity, impact morphologies preserved down to scales of tens of meters, and little sign of infilling or degradation by a range of processes (other impacts, volcanism, tectonism, icy flow, aeolian erosion and infill, etc.).

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