“Spider”, “Alien”, “John Carter”, “awesome Martian space crab” – these are a few suggestions by social media users who apparently thoroughly studied a recent NASA image of Mars which captured a strange object on the surface of the red planet. The raw image taken by NASA Curiosity somewhere in July was hugely discussed in the Facebook group ‘Journey to the Surface of the Mars’. “Now... 

Mars at the boundary between darkness and daylight, with an area including Gale Crater beginning to catch morning light. NASA mulls using bacteria and algae to produce oxygen on Mars, as a 2030 deadline for sending humans to the red planet looms. “This is a possible way to support a human mission to Mars, producing oxygen without having to send heavy gas canisters,” chief Techshot scientist,... 

A new way of generating energy could potentially power human colonies on Mars, a new study claims. This is thanks to nothing more than dry ice, which is abundant on the red planet, according to recent research. Since man wants to start colonizing the place within the next few decades, we need all the help we can get. This could also have profound implications on planning. For now, we’re only considering... 

Analysis of water residue in Martian ice caps indicates that the Red Planet was once, at least partly, blue. Billions of years ago, Mars had a body of water that held more water than Earth’s Arctic Ocean, according to a NASA study published Thursday. “Our study provides a solid estimate of how much water Mars once had, by determining how much later was lost to space,”said Geronimo Villanueva,... 

An ‘alien coffin’ might possibly be added to the long list of curious objects found on the surface of the Red Planet. Puzzled UFO enthusiasts now want NASA’s Curiosity rover to take a closer look. Will Farrar, a UFO (unidentified flying object) hunter from Maryland, US, noticed a strange, box-shaped object as he was looking through a set of photos, taken by the Mars Curiosity rover. On his YouTube... 

With the now increased traffic in the Red Planet’s region since India’s satellite reached Mars’s orbit Wednesday, a traffic light might just be what’s been missing. And it didn’t take long for one to be discovered. NASA’s Mars rover, the Curiosity, which has been exploring the planet for over two years, fitted with 17 cameras, sent a picture of something that looks much like Earth’s... 

A US space agency Mars rover that would launch in 2020 is to carry a device that will turn carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere into oxygen. The oxygen thus created could then be used to make rocket fuel and for future astronauts to breathe, according to Bill Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate at NASA. “The 2020 rover will help... 

China is planning to land a rover on Mars by 2020 and bring back samples from the Red Planet a decade later, according to a top scientist with the country’s Lunar Exploration Program. The Mars probe will be launching an orbiter and a landing rover, Ouyang Ziyuan of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and one of the chief scientists of China’s Lunar Exploration Program (CLEP) said on Monday at the... 

This handout photo provided June 3, 2014 by NASA/JPL/Caltech shows the Low Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) in the Missile Assembly Building at the US Navy’s Pacific Missile Range Facility in Kaua‘i, Hawaii. The US space agency has conducted a launch test on a saucer-shaped flying object to see whether it can land the vehicle properly in circumstances simulating landing conditions on Mars. On... 

​Entrepreneur and inventor Elon Musk has some travel suggestions that are out of this world. The SpaceX CEO known as the brains behind the Tesla electric car says he wants to take humans to Mars during the next decade. Speaking to CNBC this week, the South African-born billionaire said that his main goal at this moment is to perfect technology that would make space travel possible in the not-so-distant... 

NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity The NASA Curiosity rover that was thought to bring only cameras, sensors, and scientific equipment when it traveled to Mars in August 2012 may have brought along dozens of species of bacteria that originated on Earth, according to a new study. A study conducted by the American Society for Microbiology and published in the Nature science journal revealed that 377 strains... 

706 people continue fighting for four places in the Mars colonization program Mars One, a participant of the project, resident of Los Angeles, Sue Ann Pien said on Friday. More than 202 thousand people filed applications for participation in the first stage of the selection program, which ended in September, 2013. The first six groups of Martian colonists – consisting of four people each –... 

This image, released on Feb. 10, 2014, combines a photograph of seasonal dark flows on a Martian slope with a grid of colors based on data collected by a mineral-mapping spectrometer observing the same area. Scientists at the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) say new clues have emerged about the presence of flowing water on the surface of Mars. NASA’s spacecraft orbiting Mars... 

NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover shows geological members of the Yellowknife Bay formation on Mars The rock that suddenly appeared next to the NASA’s Opportunity rover in the beginning of January turns out to have an irregular chemical composition for Mars: it has too much sulfur, magnesium and manganese, scientists say. In particular, the rock has twice as much manganese as anything that previously... 

An Indian spacecraft bound for the Red Planet has left Earth’s atmosphere, set for a 300-day mission to Mars. The probe will cost $72 million, and the spacecraft should reach its destination on September 24, 2014. The spacecraft is called the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), also known as Mangalyaan, and will cruise some 680 million kilometers. The probe has completed six orbits around Earth before Sunday’s...