Mars: News & Features
Description This composite of seven images from the Mastcam-Z instrument aboard NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover shows Earth, visible as a small bright dot moving from upper left to lower right, passing behind the Martian moon Phobos on July 2, 2026,…
Earth and the Martian moon Phobos dance together in a series of images recently acquired by NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover. Earth appears as a point of light in the Martian sky, disappearing behind the crescent of Phobos, the larger of…
Description NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover captured this sand-capped butte, nicknamed “Miraflores,” estimated to be about 20 feet (6 meters) tall, with its Mast Camera, or Mastcam, on June 11, 2026, the 4,923rd Martian day, or sol, of the mission. The…
Description NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover captured this 360-degree view of an expanse of terrain covered in surface features called polygons on June 19 and 20, 2026, the 4,930th and 4,931st Martian days, or sols, of the mission. The rover has…
As NASA’s Curiosity rover recently began climbing up a Martian valley nicknamed “Valle Grande,” it sent back images that were a familiar sight to mission scientists: honeycomb-like textures called polygonal fractures, each one about 1.5 to 3 inches (4 to…
NASA MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) mission scientists have uncovered a key puzzle piece in understanding certain types of auroras on Mars, finding that they form in a similar way to Earth-based auroras. Results published Thursday in Nature Communications show…
Background Human exploration of Mars will expose crews to a persistent, fine particulate environment whose physicochemical properties and health implications remain only partly understood. Because no samples of authentic Martian airborne dust have been returned to Earth, NASA must rely…
Description Billions of years ago, an hours-long Martian sandstorm blew so intensely that sand ripples began to climb upon one another as they moved across the surface. These layers of sediment eventually hardened into the multilayered rocks seen in this…
Description This view looking back up at the outside lip of the 490-foot-tall (150-meter-tall) rim of Jezero Crater was taken by the Mastcam-Z instrument aboard NASA’s Perseverance on May 15, 2025, the 1,505th day, or sol, of the rover’s mission to…
Description This orbital map shows the path NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover took to get to a location the science team has dubbed the “Broom Point member,” a sequence of layered bedrock likely more than 3.9 billion years old. As planned, the…
