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14 December 2016
Finger-like structures on Mars could be the result of ancient microbes
Finger-like rock structures on Mars could harbor potential evidence of past life on the Red Planet, according to new research. In 2007, NASA’s Spirit rover landed on Mars’ “Home Plate,” a flat 90-meter-long area within the Gusev crater. Since then, researchers have been trying to make sense of finger-like rock structures splayed across the landscape. The working hypothesis at the time was that these rocks started out as continuous layers but eroded into odd shapes by the touch of wind and sand over the years.
7 July 2016
Future astronauts might not be able to use water on Mars, study suggests
Last year, scientists made a splash with the news that dark streaks on the Martian surface were signs of flowing liquid water. So far, they have been unable to determine where the water is coming from, but a new study uses recently acquired data of a large canyon system on Mars to eliminate some of the possibilities.
13 June 2016
NASA Mars orbiters reveal seasonal dust storm pattern
For six recent Martian years, temperature records from NASA Mars orbiters reveal a pattern of three types of large regional dust storms occurring in sequence at about the same times each year during the southern hemisphere spring and summer. Each Martian year lasts about two Earth years.
22 December 2015
Ancient solar storms may explain how Mars morphed into a cold, barren desert
In March of this year, the sun hurled a giant magnetic solar storm into Mars. The solar wind, full of charged particles, slammed into the red planet’s atmosphere, bouncing or “sputtering” the oxygen into deep space.
Researchers now think the same process could have evaporated Mar’s water several billion years ago, according to a new study presented at the 2015 American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting and recently published in AGU’s publication Geophysical Research Letters.
12 October 2015
Flowing water on Mars: What that means for ‘The Martian’
Faced with a sudden and urgent need for food, Mark Watney did what any astronaut stranded on Mars would do: he filled his living quarters with Martian soil, fertilized it with his own waste, built a contraption to chemically create water, and grew some potatoes.
26 August 2015
Terraced craters: Windows into Mars’ icy past
Scientists studied terraced craters on Mars and found an underground chunk of ice the size of California and Texas combined.
19 December 2014
Sterilizing for Mars
“Leave no trace.” It’s a central ethic of wilderness exploration. Pack your supplies in, pack your waste out, and leave the natural landscape unspoiled. But when it comes to the newest frontier of exploration—visiting alien worlds to search for evidence of extraterrestrial life—the challenge of avoiding contamination with traces of life from Earth is a huge challenge.
16 October 2013
Making Martian clouds on Earth
If you want to understand the atmosphere of a planet, it helps to think big. That’s just what scientists did recently when they created conditions in the world’s largest cloud chamber mimicking those in the thin veil of gases that surrounds Mars. Experiments by the researchers within the three-story shell of a former nuclear reactor confirmed earlier runs in tabletop setups that have shown how the most common clouds on Mars form.
18 February 2013
Remote Sensing and Planetary Processes: An Interview with Dr. Alex Hayes
Dr. Alex Hayes is Assistant Professor of Astronomy at Cornell University. Hayes uses spacecraft-based remote sensing to study the properties of planetary surfaces, their interactions with the interior, and if present, atmosphere. Recently, he has focused on studying the coupling of surface, subsurface, and atmospheric processes on Titan and Mars.
6 August 2012
As Curiosity’s wheels touch down, science gets rolling
As viewing parties celebrating the successful landing of the Mars Science Laboratory wound down early Monday morning, 400 scientists – many of them AGU members – were already using their newest tool for investigating the red planet.
GeoSpace is a blog on Earth and space science, managed by AGU’s Public Information staff. The blog features posts by AGU writers and guest contributors on all sorts of relevant science topics, but with a focus on new research and geo and space sciences-related stories that are currently in the news.