Category: Mars

Astronauts could travel back to Earth from Mars using rocket fuel converted directly from the carbon dioxide in the Red Planet's atmosphere, using a technique known as electrochemical reduction, a recent study reports.

It's an old method involving electrolysis, which is the application of an electrical current to drive a chemical reaction, but the new trick produces methane pure enough to be used as liquid propellant. (A number of rocket engines these days burn liquid oxygen and liquid methane — including the Raptors that power Starship, the rocket SpaceX is developing to help humanity get to Mars.)

"The work we're doing is basically taking CO2 and using electricity to convert it into carbon-containing fuels and chemicals," said Carter Racine in a statement. Racine is a Ph.D. student in mechanical engineering at Texas A&M University and a member of the study team, which was led by University of Mississippi chemical engineer Ahmed Badreldin.

"You can't bring up everything you need [on Mars] from Earth, because every additional kilogram adds enormous cost and complexity to launch and escape Earth's gravity," added Badreldin. "So the question becomes, How do we make the fuels and chemicals needed for space exploration from the resources already available at the destination?"

One answer is electrochemical reduction, which takes place in an electrolyzer, with electrons flowing from the negatively charged anode to the positively charged cathode. Water at the anode is oxidized, meaning it loses an electron, which is transferred to the carbon dioxide at the cathode, where one of its atoms gains an electron and becomes what chemists refer to as "reduced" (meaning its oxidation state is lowered). It can then react with the hydrogen and oxygen atoms that have split from the oxidized water molecules.

The anode contains a catalyst, and the choice of material for the catalyst dictates what carbon-based compounds are produced when the reduced carbon reacts with the hydrogen and oxygen. For example, a gold catalyst leads to the production of carbon monoxide (CO), while copper produces more complex compounds including alcohols, ethanol and methane (CH4).

What makes the work of Badreldin's team stand apart from previous experiments is that they have developed a nanometer-scale copper catalyst doped in nitrogen that is able to produce nearly pure methane.

Electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide has been used to produce methane before, in applications on Earth. The problem is, those methods have produced a lot of byproducts alongside methane. On Earth we have complex equipment that separates the methane from the other unwanted compounds, but astronauts are not going to be able to take such unwieldy devices to Mars when every kilogram counts. That's a problem, because for methane to be used as a liquid propellant in rocket fuel it needs to be pure.

However, the specific copper catalyst used by Badreldin's team is able to preferentially produce methane over other compounds, thereby creating it pure without having to refine it. And there's plenty of carbon dioxide available on Mars to use: While Mars' atmosphere is thin, it is nonetheless composed of 96% carbon dioxide.

Even if astronauts never go to Mars, the usefulness of this technique on Earth is clear. Rather than drilling for this natural gas, we can create methane from the carbon dioxide already in our atmosphere.

"We want to do that because right now many of these carbon-based products ultimately come from virgin fossil resources," said Racine. "If we can make them using captured CO2 and renewable electricity, it could reduce reliance on virgin fossil carbon and help close the carbon cycle."

Consequently, electrochemical reduction has also been suggested for use on Earth as a carbon sequestration technique, drawing carbon dioxide out of our atmosphere where it acts as an unwanted greenhouse gas.

The problem with that is, converting carbon dioxide into methane to be burned as a fuel simply releases that carbon dioxide straight back into the atmosphere in a net-zero cycle. Ideally, we want to lock that carbon dioxide away from the atmosphere for a long period of time, but Badreldin doesn't think the technology is ready yet.

"What we are ultimately interested in is seeing whether we can move beyond simply recycling CO2 and toward pathways that are net-negative," he said. "That means using CO2 as a carbon source while converting it into products where the carbon is stored or used long enough that it is not immediately released back into the atmosphere."

It should be noted that the best way to alleviate climate change is to cease burning all fossil fuels, including methane. However, using methane created from electrochemical carbon dioxide reduction in a net-zero process rather than drilling for it could help during the transition from fossil fuels to renewable resources.

The study reporting this research was published in April in the journal ACS Catalysis.

Is that a footprint on Mars? Sorry to burst your bubble, but no. However, scientists have found a strange feature unlike anything they've seen before on the Red Planet's surface.

What is it?

While NASA's Perseverance rover is the newest addition to the agency's robotic Red Planet fleet, its cousin Curiosity is still going strong and finding strange and unusual things on Mars 14 years after landing.

In new observations captured on Mars' Mount Sharp, the Curiosity team has identified "features unlike quite anything we have seen in the past," Michelle Minitti, deputy principal investigator for Curiosity's Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), said in a statement.

These mysterious features are a bunch of broad, shallow pits scattered across the Martian bedrock.

Why is it incredible?

While little pits and divots are common to find on the Martian surface, these wide, shallow pits that researchers saw with Curiosity are quite different from surface features that have been seen before.

"The pits of this week were much broader and shallower than past features and were not accompanied by obvious objects that were once in the pits," Minitti said.

The team collected as much data as they could on the strange pits using Curiosity's various instruments, including MAHLI, the Mastcam camera, ChemCam (the Chemistry and Camera complex) and APX (Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer).

They have so far found interesting layers in the pit material that seems chemically different from the main bedrock.

But we will have to wait and see what else researchers might be able to learn about these odd pits. How did they form? How long have they existed? What can they tell us about the history of Mars?

Are those purple, wavy, alien thumbprints? Or perhaps an otherworldly ocean? Nope! It's actually a dune field on Mars, colored purple.

What is it?

Across the Martian surface are all sorts of unique features in the rocky, dusty surface material. In this false-color image, snapped by the HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, you can see the incredible and strange ripples of a dune field on Mars.

"Our science goal for this observation is to observe any changes from a previous image we acquired in 2011," a statement sharing the image reads. "For this footprint, the target enlarged and centered more over the dune field, which is located on the floor in the northern half of an unnamed impact crater."

Why is it incredible?

Spacecraft like MRO, with its HiRISE camera, have opened our eyes to the incredible features across the Martian surface.

From dune fields like we see here to craters and ancient riverbeds, these views have helped scientists piece together the planet's incredible, dynamic history. For decades, observations from orbit around Mars and by rovers on the planet's surface have helped to solve at least part of the mystery of what Mars was once like.

Researchers are still looking for signs that unequivocally point to life once existing on the planet. But so far, observations have showed that, billions of years in the past, Mars had abundant surface water — lakes, rivers perhaps even a huge ocean. In analyzing the material in and near ancient waterways on the planet with NASA's Perseverance rover, researchers have already found evidence that could possibly link to biosignatures.

While this image might look like a strange but beautiful purple-colored desktop background, photos like it this can be essential clues for scientists hunting for answers.

Are those purple, wavy, alien thumbprints? Or perhaps an otherworldly ocean? Nope! It's actually a dune field on Mars, colored purple.

What is it?

Across the Martian surface are all sorts of unique features in the rocky, dusty surface material. In this false-color image, snapped by the HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, you can see the incredible and strange ripples of a dune field on Mars.

"Our science goal for this observation is to observe any changes from a previous image we acquired in 2011," a statement sharing the image reads. "For this footprint, the target enlarged and centered more over the dune field, which is located on the floor in the northern half of an unnamed impact crater."

Why is it incredible?

Spacecraft like MRO, with its HiRISE camera, have opened our eyes to the incredible features across the Martian surface.

From dune fields like we see here to craters and ancient riverbeds, these views have helped scientists piece together the planet's incredible, dynamic history. For decades, observations from orbit around Mars and by rovers on the planet's surface have helped to solve at least part of the mystery of what Mars was once like.

Researchers are still looking for signs that unequivocally point to life once existing on the planet. But so far, observations have showed that, billions of years in the past, Mars had abundant surface water — lakes, rivers perhaps even a huge ocean. In analyzing the material in and near ancient waterways on the planet with NASA's Perseverance rover, researchers have already found evidence that could possibly link to biosignatures.

While this image might look like a strange but beautiful purple-colored desktop background, photos like it this can be essential clues for scientists hunting for answers.

China is making progress on its Tianwen 3 Mars sample return mission, which aims to bring back to Earth roughly 500 grams (17.6 ounces) of Red Planet collectibles in 2031.

According to the China National Space Administration, the Tianwen 3 mission will have a lander, an ascender, a service capsule, an orbiter and an Earth reentry module.

If all goes to plan, Tianwen 3 will launch in 2028 on two Long March 5 heavy-lift rockets from the Wenchang Space Launch Site on the island of Hainan, China's southernmost province.

Sputnik moment

"The Tianwen 3 mission is progressing smoothly, with intensified efforts being made to overcome technical challenges," Hou Zengqian, the mission's chief scientist, recently told CCTV, a state-run Chinese broadcaster.

"The probe equipment has entered the prototype development phase, and scientifically, many scientist teams from across the country are working together to tackle the challenges in accordance with the mission's scientific objectives," Hou added.

Meanwhile, NASA's plans for hauling Mars samples to Earth are murky at the moment. So China appears to be in the lead to notch a major space milestone.

"If accurate, this represents a Sputnik moment," said former NASA "Mars Czar" Scott Hubbard, referring to the reported Tianwen 3 progress.

"China will not only grab the headlines but may be the first to find evidence of life on another planet," Hubbard, who also previously directed NASA's Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, told Space.com.

Top scientific priority

"The Tianwen 3 mission will look for microbial traces potentially similar to early forms of life on Earth, while also taking into consideration the possibility of unknown forms of life that may have emerged through Mars' unique evolutionary history, providing crucial evidence to answer this major scientific question," Hou told the state-run Xinhua news agency in a recent interview.

Searching for potential signs of life on Mars is the top scientific goal of the Tianwen 3 mission, Hou said on Sept. 3 during the 2026 International Deep Space Exploration Conference on, which was held in Hefei, the capital of eastern China's Anhui Province.

Landing site

China's Mars sample-return trek will be launched "around 2028" on two Long March 5 rockets departing from the Wenchang Space Launch Site in China's southernmost island province of Hainan. (Launch windows for Mars missions come around just once every 26 months. The next one opens in November-December of this year, and the one after that, which Tianwen 3 apparently is targeting, runs from December 2028 to January 2029.)

Hou also said China expects to finalize the landing site for the mission by the end of 2026, with Chinese specialists advancing work on a next-generation geological map of Mars in its entirety.

If everything goes according to plan, the mission will collect samples from the Martian surface and then send them back to Earth around 2031.

"Regardless of whether signs of life are found, the returned Martian samples will have irreplaceable scientific value," Hou said.

Tackle the challenges

Hou added that analyses of the returned samples at microscopic, molecular and isotopic scales could deepen our understanding of Mars' geology and environment, as well as the evolution of habitability and the conditions under which life may originate.

According to Hou, Mars sample return is an extremely complex project, with landing-site selection, planetary protection and contamination control, and the identification of potential signs of life among its key challenges.

Chinese Mars researchers are selecting candidate landing sites for the mission based on factors that include geological age, history of water activity, habitability and the potential for preserving biosignatures.

Planetary protection lab

Xinhua reported last month that a "planetary protection laboratory" is to be built in the first phase of Hefei's Deep-Space Science City in east China's Anhui Province, citing the Deep Space Exploration Laboratory (DSEL).

"The planetary protection laboratory will implement a two-way protection system that guards both the returning Martian samples and Earth's biosphere," Xinhua reports.

The lab's tasks encompass sample sterilization, unsealing, processing and biological risk assessment. "The facility is designed to support the implementation of major deep-space missions and to enable scientific research on Martian samples," added Xinhua.

China "will follow the planetary protection policies of the Committee on Space Research, to prevent biological contamination of Mars by terrestrial organisms and to protect Earth from any potential extraterrestrial life forms that may be carried back in the samples," said Li Hang, director of the development planning department at DSEL, according to Xinhua.

You can view a video about China's Mars sample return plans here.

New research into the interior of Mars further emphasizes that the Red Planet is a world of two very different halves.

Deep inside the southern hemisphere of Mars, the temperature is up to 750 degrees Fahrenheit (400 degrees Celsius) warmer than beneath the northern hemisphere, deepening the mystery of the strange dichotomy between the Red Planet's flattened north and craggy southern highlands.

"Scientists usually assume that the interiors of planetary bodies are generally spherically symmetric, but this is not necessarily true," said Alexander Berne, formerly of Caltech and now at the University of Arizona, in a statement. Berne is the lead author of a new research paper revealing the discovery of the strange southern hotspot.

Berne and his team went back and looked at archival data from three NASA spacecraft – Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter – to look for subtle changes in their orbital velocity that might reflect variations in Mars's gravitational field. Using a technique developed by Berne called 'tidal tomography' that also accounts for the sun's varying gravitational influence on Mars as the Red Planet progresses around its elliptical orbit, he and his team were able to infer a model of the interior structure and temperature of Mars.

How the gravitational field that the various spacecraft experienced changed over time differs substantially from what would be expected were Mars's interior perfectly spherically symmetrical. To explain this difference, the mantle beneath Mars's southern hemisphere must be between 390 and 750 degrees Fahrenheit (200 and 400 degrees Celsius) warmer than the mantle in the north, and indeed it is so warm that it could still be partially molten. This could have repercussions for both Mars's habitability and how long Mars remained volcanically active.

Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that Mars's interior is different in the south compared to the north, because we already know that its surface is asymmetrical. The north of Mars is characterized by lowland plains, while the planet's crust in the south is on average 15.5 miles (25 kilometers) thicker than in the north and is covered by cratered highlands. The northern lowlands may have once been home to a large ocean.

"The dichotomy that we see between north and south is important to understand because it gives information about processes that may have influenced the hydrology of Mars, including the formation of basins that may have held water," said Caltech's Amirhossein Bagheri, who is the second author of the research.

A hotter southern mantle could also explain some other puzzling discoveries on Mars. NASA's InSight lander, which ended its mission in December 2022 and which had a seismometer on board, found that seismic waves dissipate more quickly in the south, which can be explained by the hotter temperature there. Additionally, magnetic anomalies found in iron-bearing minerals in the south now make more sense.

Today, Mars lacks a global magnetic field, but over four billion years ago it had one. If upwelling from a warmer southern mantle heated the crust in excess of the 'Curie temperature', which is the temperature at which materials lose their inherent magnetic properties and any residual magnetism in them is induced, it could have resulted in creating the mysterious magnetic remnants in the iron-bearing minerals.

"Understanding the interior structure of planetary bodies helps us unravel the processes that shaped their formation and evolution," said Berne, although the origin of Mars's north–south divide is still up in the air. It's not even clear whether the surface differences have the same causes as the interior differences.

The leading contender is that it's all the result of an ancient giant impact over four billion years ago and that the northern lowlands are therefore actually an enormous impact basin. By gouging out a huge hole in the north, the impact would have facilitated the release of a lot of internal heat, allowing the northern mantle to cool faster than the south.

Alternatively, the thicker crust in the south could have proven to be an efficient lid, preventing the leaking of much heat from the mantle. This can actually be tested – magma upwelling would have stalled as it encountered the thick, dense crust, creating melt intrusions beneath the surface that could be inferred in higher-resolution gravity data.

These are questions for future missions, but the tidal tomography technique could be employed for other worlds too, from Mercury to the large moons of Jupiter.

"As we get more gravity data, we can determine the three-dimensional intricacies of a planet's interior structure," said Berne. "These inferences in turn give us a blueprint for designing future missions and scientific exploration of these worlds."

The discovery of Mars's thermal anomaly was reported on Aug. 27 in Nature.

The world just got its first good looks at some hardware that will make spaceflight history.

Last Thursday (Aug. 13), Japan unveiled the spacecraft that make up its Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission, which aims to snag samples of the Mars moon Phobos and haul them to Earth — something that has never been done.

The big reveal came at Tanegashima Space Center, the site from which MMX will launch toward the Red Planet atop an H3 rocket. And we just got some clarity about when that liftoff will take place.

If all goes according to plan, MMX will launch on Oct. 19 at 3:41 p.m. EDT (1941 GMT; 4:41 a.m. on Oct. 20 Japan time), the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) announced on Thursday (Aug. 20). That's the first day of the mission's launch window, which extends through Nov. 7.

JAXA originally intended to launch MMX in 2024 but had to stand down due to issues with the H3. Mars and Earth align properly for interplanetary launches just once every 26 months, so this was a significant delay.

MMX will spend about a year traveling to Mars. Once in orbit around the Red Planet, the mission will map and study its two small moons, Phobos and Deimos, which are just 14 miles (22 kilometers) and 7.5 miles (12 km) wide, respectively.

Part of this work will help the mission team pick a landing site on Phobos, where they'll drop a 55-pound (25 kilograms) French-German rover called Idefix. That little robot — which is named after the dog in the French comic "Asterix" — will study Phobos' surface in detail using a variety of instruments.

The MMX spacecraft itself will then spiral down toward Phobos, eventually making contact and collecting about 0.35 ounces (10 grams) of material. MMX will leave Mars orbit with these samples in 2030 and deliver them to Earth for analysis a year later.

The mission aims to shed light on the nature and origin of Phobos and Deimos.

"Understanding how Mars and the two moons formed is a heavily debated topic in solar system science," JAXA officials wrote in a mission description.

"Remote-sensing observations by the MMX spacecraft and the detailed analyses of the returned sample will determine whether Phobos and Deimos are remnants of early Mars created from debris produced by a giant impact with the young planet, or whether the moons are asteroids captured by Mars's gravity that brought material from outer solar system," they added.

To date, no spacecraft has returned material from the Mars system. Russia tried to do so with its Phobos-Grunt mission, which aimed to sample the eponymous Red Planet moon, but that effort failed shortly after its November 2011 launch. (The Soviet Union also launched two probes to Phobos in 1988, but neither one of them met its mission objectives.)

NASA plans to collect and haul home pristine samples that have already been collected on the Martian surface by its Perseverance rover, but it's unclear when or if that will happen. The agency has deemed its original sample-return architecture too expensive and is currently investigating other options.

There are good reasons to believe that Japan will succeed where others have failed, however. The country has a history of small-body sample-return success; its Hayabusa mission brought home pieces of the asteroid Itokawa in June 2010, and Hayabusa2 did the same with material from the space rock Ryugu in December 2020.

Europe's Mars Express orbiter has captured new, stunning imagery flying low over a geological region of the Red Planet shaped by ancient waterflow billions of years ago.

Mars Express launched in 2003 and is operated by the European Space Agency (ESA). It's equipped with the High Resolution Stereo Camera, which scans multiple points of perspective across regions of Mars' surface to create 3D color renderings. During a low pass on the spacecraft's highly elliptical orbit, Mars Express flew over the planet's Southern Highlands and Schiaparelli Crater — one of Mars' largest impact sites.

Schiaparelli Crater is located in a heavily cratered region of Mars' Southern Highlands, where a wetter and warmer climate supported water flows that shaped the planet's geography 3.7 billion years ago, according to ESA's Mars Express video. Schiaparelli measures more than 285 miles (460 km) across, and has a bit of fictional fame. The crater happens to be the site where astronaut character Mark Watney gets stranded in Andy Weir's "The Martian". It also shares a namesake with ESA's real-life Schiaparelli Mars lander, which crashed on Mars' surface in 2016 (but wasn't headed for Schiaparelli Crater).

Both are named for Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli (1835–1910), who made detailed observations of Mars during the planet's closest approach in 1877. Schiaparelli created a map of "canali," Italian for "channels," he saw as dark lines across its surface, which he assumed were filled with water. That was later mistranslated by English-speaking astronomers as "canals," leading to speculation about intelligent life on Mars constructing artificial structures.

Though that hypothesis for Mars' surface features was disproven by later astronomers (to date, there have been no discoveries on Mars that suggest intelligent life once lived there), it has since been discovered that Mars once did have active bodies of water on its surface. Schiarapelli's contributions to the astronomical field were significant enough to land him the honor of a Martian crater in his name.

Despite its massive diameter, Schiaparelli is considered shallow compared to other Martian craters its size. It was once much deeper, but sediment deposited by wind and ancient water flows, volcanic eruptions and asteroid impact debris have filled the crater over the last several billion years.

In addition to showcasing Mars Express' new footage, the ESA video also provides an explanation for how the satellite uses its High Resolution Stereo Camera to observe five simultaneous viewing angles over a four-color spectrum as it flies low over the planet. The low-orbit passes allow Mars Express to capture swaths of 3D data that span hundreds to thousands of miles long and dozens of miles across. Those are then stitched together to form more complete regional maps, which can be added to scientists' increasingly complex model of the entire Martian globe.

People around the world enjoyed stellar views with last week's total solar eclipse.

And the day after we looked up to see the moon obscuring out sun, NASA's Perseverance Mars rover looked up to see its own Martian solar eclipse.

What is it?

Solar eclipses aren't unique to Earth. In theory, any planet with at least one orbiting moon would have times where that moon might eclipse some part of its sun to anyone looking up from the planet's surface.

On Aug. 13, 2026, one day after Earth's total solar eclipse in which our moon temporarily blocked out our sun for skywatchers in some locations, Mars saw its own solar eclipse.

Looking up with its left Mastcam-Z camera, Perseverance snapped this image of one of Mars' two moons, Phobos and Deimos, partially eclipsing the sun. This appears to be Phobos — the larger of the pair — eclipsing the sun.

Why is it incredible?

So far, we humans have only directly had vantage points on Earth, in Earth orbit and on the moon. We have not yet landed humans on Mars, and it remains unclear how long it might be before that happens.

But robotic explorers like Perseverance allow us to travel where we can't go ourselves. Such travelers have taken us into interstellar space and all throughout our solar system. From Saturn's rings to Neptune's distant, icy neighborhood, robotic probes have allowed humanity's reach to stretch far through the cosmos.

And thanks to Perseverance and its two "eyes," the two Mastcam-Z cameras located high on its mast, we can travel right to the surface of Mars, look up and see an alien solar eclipse. What an amazing thing that is.

On Aug. 17, 1877, American astronomer Asaph Hall discovered Mars's moon Phobos.

Moons of Mars: Amazing Photos of Phobos and Deimos

Hall was working at the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C. and looking through a 26-inch refractor telescope — which was then the largest in the world — when he first spotted the moon. Six days earlier, he had discovered another, smaller moon that he first described as "a faint star near Mars."

Upon further inspection, not only did he realize that this star was actually the Martian moon Deimos, but he also discovered a second, larger moon now known as Phobos. He announced both discoveries the following day, on Aug. 18, 1877.

Phobos is the largest moon of Mars. Its dimensions measure 10 by 14 by 11 miles (17 by 22 by 18 kilometers) across and orbits Mars three times each Martian day at a distance of about 3,700 miles (6,000 km).

Why it mattered

Over the century and a half since this discovery, there has been an enormous amount of scientific progress in the study of Mars. In addition to many decades of studying the planet from afar, we have seen a variety of different orbiters and rovers explore the Red Planet over the past few decades. We have sampled bits of Martian material, seen up-close photos of the planet and the rocks which scatter across its surface. It might be easy to take for granted how much we know about our planetary neighbor, and this 19th century discovery was groundbreaking.

As we look to the future with new technologies and new discoveries on the horizon, it is important to also look backward to see and understand the history and work that made all of this progress possible.