Mars

Ancient Mars was warm and wet, not cold and icy

Mars, planetary science, Science, solar system / 9u50fv / February 15, 2026

This is important because it means these rocks were less likely to have been altered in a hydrothermal environment, where scalding hot water was temporarily released by melting ice caused by volcanism or a meteorite impact.

Instead, they appear to have been altered under modest temperatures and persistent heavy rainfall. The authors found distinct similarities between the chemical composition of these clay pebbles with similar clays found on Earth dating from periods in our planet’s history when the climate was much warmer and wetter.

False colour image of the dried up river delta in Jezero crater, which Perseverance is currently exploring. Credit: NASA

The paper concludes that these kaolinite pebbles were altered under high rainfall conditions comparable to “past greenhouse climates on Earth” and that they “likely represent some of the wettest intervals and possibly most habitable portions of Mars’ history”.

Furthermore, the paper concludes that these conditions may have persisted over time periods ranging from thousands to millions of years. Perseverance recently made headlines also for the discovery of possible biosignatures in samples it collected last year, also from within Jezero crater.

These precious samples have now been cached in special sealed containers on the rover for collection by a future Mars sample return mission. Unfortunately, the mission has recently been cancelled by Nasa and so what vital evidence they may or may not contain will probably not be examined in an Earth-based laboratory for many years.

Crucial to this future analysis is the so-called “Knoll criterion” – a concept formulated by astrobiologist Andrew Knoll, which states that for something to be evidence of life, an observation has to not just be explicable by biology; it has to be inexplicable without it. Whether these samples ever satisfy the Knoll criterion will only be known if they can be brought to Earth.

Either way, it is quite striking to imagine a time on Mars, billions of years before the first humans walked the Earth, that a tropical climate with – possibly – a living ecosystem once existed in the now desolate and wind-swept landscape of Jezero crater.

Gareth Dorrian is a Post Doctoral Research Fellow in Space Science at the University of Birmingham

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Why would Elon Musk pivot from Mars to the Moon all of a sudden?

Mars, moon, musk, Space, spacex / Shannon Garcia / February 9, 2026

As more than 120 million people tuned in to the Super Bowl for kickoff on Sunday evening, SpaceX founder Elon Musk turned instead to his social network. There, he tapped out an extended message in which he revealed that SpaceX is pivoting from the settlement of Mars to building a “self-growing” city on the Moon.

“For those unaware, SpaceX has already shifted focus to building a self-growing city on the Moon, as we can potentially achieve that in less than 10 years, whereas Mars would take 20+ years,” Musk wrote, in part.

Elon Musk tweet at 6: 24 pm ET on Sunday. Credit: X/Elon Musk

This is simultaneously a jolting and practical decision coming from Musk.

Why it’s a jolting decision

A quarter of a century ago, Musk founded SpaceX with a single-minded goal: settling Mars. One of his longest-tenured employees, SpaceX President and Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell, described her very first interview with Musk in 2002 to me as borderline messianic.

“He was talking about Mars, his Mars Oasis project,” Shotwell said. “He wanted to do Mars Oasis, because he wanted people to see that life on Mars was doable, and we needed to go there.”

She was not alone in this description of her first interaction with Musk. The vision for SpaceX has not wavered. Even in the company’s newest, massive Starship rocket factory at the Starbase facility in South Texas—also known as the Gateway to Mars—there are reminders of the red planet everywhere. For example, the carpet inside Musk’s executive conference room is rust red, the same color as the surface of Mars.

In the last 25 years, Musk has gone from an obscure, modestly wealthy person to the richest human being ever, from a political moderate to chief supporter of Donald Trump; from a respected entrepreneur to, well, to a lot of things to a lot of people: world’s greatest industrialist/supervillain/savant/grifter-fraudster.

But one thing that has remained constant across the Muskverse is his commitment to “extending the light of human consciousness” and to the belief that the best place to begin humanity’s journey toward becoming a multi-planetary species was Mars.

Why would Elon Musk pivot from Mars to the Moon all of a sudden? Read More »

NASA faces a crucial choice on a Mars spacecraft—and it must decide soon

blue origin, Mars, mars telecommunications orbiter, NASA, rocket lab, Space, spacex / Shannon Garcia / January 30, 2026

However, some leaders within NASA see the language in the Cruz legislation as spelling out a telecommunications orbiter only and believe it would be difficult, if not impossible, to run a procurement competition between now and September 30th for anything beyond a straightforward communications orbiter.

In a statement provided to Ars by a NASA spokesperson, the agency said that is what it intends to do.

“NASA will procure a high-performance Mars telecommunications orbiter that will provide robust, continuous communications for Mars missions,” a spokesperson said. “NASA looks forward to collaborating with our commercial partners to advance deep space communications and navigation capabilities, strengthening US leadership in Mars infrastructure and the commercial space sector.”

Big decisions loom

Even so, sources said Isaacman has yet to decide whether the orbiter should include scientific instruments. NASA could also tap into other funding in its fiscal year 2026 budget, which included $110 million for unspecified “Mars Future Missions,” as well as a large wedge of funding that could potentially be used to support a Mars commercial payload delivery program.

The range of options before NASA, therefore, includes asking industry for a single telecom orbiter from one company, asking for a telecom orbiter with the capability to add a couple of instruments, or creating competition by asking for multiple orbiters and capabilities by tapping into the $700 million in the Cruz bill but then augmenting this with other Mars funding.

One indication that this process has been muddied within NASA came a week ago, when the space agency briefly posted a “Justification for Other Than Full and Open Competition, Extension” notice on a government website. It stated that the agency “will only conduct a competition among vendors that satisfy the statutory qualifications.” The notice also listed the companies eligible to bid based on the Cruz language: Blue Origin, L3Harris, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Rocket Lab, SpaceX, Quantum Space, and Whittinghill Aerospace.

NASA faces a crucial choice on a Mars spacecraft—and it must decide soon Read More »

NASA will soon find out if the Perseverance rover can really persevere on Mars

Mars, Mars 2020, Mars Perseverance, Mars Sample Return, NASA, planetary science, Science, solar system, Space / DJ Henderson / December 18, 2025

Engineers at JPL are certifying the Perseverance rover to drive up to 100 kilometers.

The Perseverance rover looks back on its tracks on the floor of Jezero Crater in 2022. Credit: NASA/JPL

When the Perseverance rover arrived on Mars nearly five years ago, NASA officials thought the next American lander to take aim on the red planet would be taking shape by now.

At the time, the leaders of the space agency expected this next lander could be ready for launch as soon as 2026—or more likely in 2028. Its mission would have been to retrieve Martian rock specimens collected by the Perseverance rover, then billed as the first leg of a multilaunch, multibillion-dollar Mars Sample Return campaign.

Here we are on the verge of 2026, and there’s no sample retrieval mission nearing the launch pad. In fact, no one is building such a lander at all. NASA’s strategy for a Mars Sample Return, or MSR, mission remains undecided after the projected cost of the original plan ballooned to $11 billion. If MSR happens at all, it’s now unlikely to launch until the 2030s.

That means the Perseverance rover, which might have to hand off the samples to a future retrieval lander in some circumstances, must continue weathering the harsh, cold, dusty environment of Mars. The good news is that the robot, about the size of a small SUV, is in excellent health, according to Steve Lee, Perseverance’s deputy project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

“Perseverance is approaching five years of exploration on Mars,” Lee said in a press briefing Wednesday at the American Geophysical Union’s annual fall meeting. “Perseverance is really in excellent shape. All the systems onboard are operational and performing very, very well. All the redundant systems onboard are available still, and the rover is capable of supporting this mission for many, many years to come.”

The rover’s operators at JPL are counting on sustaining Perseverance’s good health. The rover’s six wheels have carried it a distance of about 25 miles, or 40 kilometers, since landing inside the 28-mile-wide (45-kilometer) Jezero Crater in February 2021. That is double the original certification for the rover’s mobility system and farther than any vehicle has traveled on the surface of another world.

This enhanced-color mosaic is made from three separate images taken on September 8, 2025, each of which was acquired using the Perseverance rover’s Mastcam-Z instrument. The images were processed to improve visual contrast and enhance color differences. The view shows a location known as “Mont Musard” and another region named “Lac de Charmes,” where the rover’s team will be looking for more rock core samples to collect in the year ahead. The mountains in the distance are approximately 52 miles (84 kilometers) away.

Going for 100

Now, engineers are asking Perseverance to perform well beyond expectations. An evaluation of the rover’s health concluded it can operate until at least 2031. The rover uses a radioactive plutonium power source, so it’s not in danger of running out of electricity or fuel any time soon. The Curiosity rover, which uses a similar design, has surpassed 13 years of operations on Mars.

There are two systems that are most likely to limit the rover’s useful lifetime. One is the robotic arm, which is necessary to collect samples, and the other is the rover’s six wheels and the drive train that powers them.

“To make sure we can continue operations and continue driving for a long, long way, up to 100 kilometers (62 miles), we are doing some additional testing,” Lee said. “We’ve successfully completed a rotary actuator life test that has now certified the rotary system to 100 kilometers for driving, and we have similar testing going on for the brakes. That is going well, and we should finish those early part of next year.”

Ars asked Lee why JPL decided on 100 kilometers, which is roughly the same distance as the average width of Lake Michigan. Since its arrival in 2021, Perseverance has climbed out of Jezero Crater and is currently exploring the crater’s rugged rim. If NASA sends a lander to pick up samples from Perseverance, the rover will have to drive back to a safe landing zone for a handoff.

“We actually had laid out a traverse path exploring the crater rim, much more of the crater rim than we have so far, and then be able to return to a rendezvous site,” Lee said. “So we did an estimate of the total mission drive duration to complete that mission, added margin for science exploration, added margin in case we need the rendezvous at a different site… and it just turned out to add up to a nice, even 100 kilometers.”

The time-lapse video embedded below shows the Perseverance rover’s record-breaking 1,351-foot (412-meter) drive on June 19, 2025.

Despite the disquiet on the future of MSR, the Perseverance rover has dutifully collected specimens and placed them in 33 titanium sample tubes since arriving on Mars. Perseverance deposited some of the sealed tubes on the surface of Mars in late 2022 and early 2023 and has held onto the remaining containers while continuing to drive toward the rim of Jezero.

The dual-depot approach preserves the option for future MSR mission planners to go after either batch of samples.

Scientists selected Jezero as the target for the Perseverance mission because they suspected it was the site of an ancient dried-up river delta with a surplus of clay-rich minerals. The rover’s instruments confirmed this hypothesis, finding sediments in the crater floor that were deposited at the bottom of a lake of liquid water billions of years ago, including sandstones and mudstones known to preserve fossilized life in comparable environments on Earth.

A research team published findings in the journal Nature in September describing the discovery of chemical signatures and structures in a rock that could have been formed by ancient microbial life. Perseverance lacks the bulky, sprawling instrumentation to know for sure, so ground teams ordered the rover to collect a pulverized specimen from the rock in question and seal it for eventual return to Earth.

Fill but don’t seal

Lee said Perseverance will continue filling sample tubes in the expectation that they will eventually come back to Earth.

“We do expect to continue some sampling,” Lee said. “We have six open sample tubes, unused sample tubes, onboard. We actually have two that we took samples and didn’t seal yet. So we have options of maybe replacing them if we’re finding that there’s even better areas that we want to collect from.”

The rover’s management team at JPL is finalizing the plan for Perseverance through 2028. Lee expects the rover will remain at Jezero’s rim for a while. “There are quite a number of very prime, juicy targets we would love to go explore,” he said.

In the meantime, if Perseverance runs across an alluring rock, scientists will break out the rover’s coring drill and fill more tubes.

“We certainly have more than enough to keep us busy, and we are not expecting a major perturbation to our science explorations in the next two and a half years as a result of sample return uncertainty,” Lee said.

Perseverance has its own suite of sophisticated instruments. The instruments can’t do what labs on Earth can, but the rover can scan rocks to determine what they’re made of, search for life-supporting organic molecules, map underground geology, and capture startling vistas that inspire and inform.

This photo montage shows sample tubes shortly after they were deposited onto the surface by NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover in late 2022 and early 2023. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

The rover’s sojourn along the Jezero Crater rim is taking it through different geological eras, from the time Jezero harbored a lake to its formation at an even earlier point in Martian history. Fundamentally, researchers are asking the question “What was it like if you were a microbe living on the surface of Mars?” said Briony Horgan, a mission scientist at Purdue University.

Along the way, the rover will stop and do a sample collection if something piques the science team’s interest.

“We are adopting a strategy, in many cases, to fill a tube, and we have the option to not seal it,” Lee said. “Most of our tubes are sealed, but we have the option to not seal it, and that gives us a flexibility downstream to replace the sample if there’s one that we find would make an even stronger representative of the diversity we are discovering.”

An indefinite wait

Planetary scientists have carefully curated the specimens cached by the Perseverance rover. The samples are sorted for their discovery potential, with an emphasis on the search for ancient microbial life. That’s why Perseverance was sent to Jezero in the first place.

China is preparing its own sample-return mission, Tianwen-3, for launch as early as 2028, aiming to deliver Mars rocks back to Earth by 2031. If the Tianwen-3 mission keeps to this schedule—and is successful—China will almost certainly be first to pull off the achievement. Officials have not announced the landing site for Tianwen-3, so the jury is still out on the scientific value of the rocks China aims to bring back.

NASA’s original costly architecture for Mars Sample Return would have used a lander built by JPL and a small solid-fueled rocket to launch the rock samples back into space after collecting them from the Perseverance rover. The capsule containing the Mars rocks would then transfer them to another spacecraft in orbit around Mars. Once Earth and Mars reached the proper orbital alignment, the return spacecraft would begin the journey home. All told, the sample return campaign would last several years.

NASA asked commercial companies to develop their own ideas for Mars Sample Return in 2024. SpaceX, Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin, and Rocket Lab submitted their lower-cost commercial concepts to NASA, but progress stalled there. NASA’s former administrator, Bill Nelson, punted on a decision on what to do next with Mars Sample Return in the final weeks of the Biden administration.

A few months later, the new Trump administration proposed outright canceling the Mars Sample Return mission. Mars Sample Return, known as MSR, was ranked as the top priority for planetary science in a National Academies decadal survey. Researchers say they could learn much more about Mars and the possibilities of past life there by bringing samples back to Earth for analysis.

Budget writers in the House of Representatives voted to restore funding for Mars Sample Return over the summer, but the Senate didn’t explicitly weigh in on the mission. NASA is now operating under a stopgap budget passed by Congress last month, and MSR remains in limbo.

There are good arguments for going with a commercial sample-return mission, using a similar approach to the one NASA used to buy commercial cargo and crew transportation services for the International Space Station. NASA might also offer prizes or decide to wait for a human expedition to Mars for astronauts to scoop up samples by hand.

Eric Berger, senior space editor at Ars, discussed these options a few months ago. After nearly a year of revolving-door leadership, NASA finally got a Senate-confirmed administrator this week. It will now be up to the new NASA chief, Jared Isaacman, to chart a new course for Mars Sample Return.

Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.

NASA will soon find out if the Perseverance rover can really persevere on Mars Read More »

NASA just lost contact with a Mars orbiter, and will soon lose another one

Lockheed Martin, Mars, MAVEN, NASA, planetary science, Science, solar system, Space / DJ Henderson / December 11, 2025

Technicians work on the MAVEN spacecraft at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida ahead of its launch in 2013. Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

But NASA’s two other Mars orbiters have been in space for more than 20 years. The older of the two, named Mars Odyssey, has been at Mars since 2001 and will soon run out of fuel, probably sometime in the next couple of years. NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which launched in 2005, is healthy for its age, with enough fuel to last into the 2030s. MRO is also important to NASA because it has the best camera at Mars, with the ability to map landing sites for future missions.

Two European spacecraft, Mars Express and the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, have radios to relay data between mission controllers and NASA’s landers on the Martian surface. Mars Express, now 22 years old, suffers from the same aging concerns as Mars Odyssey and MRO. The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter is newer, having arrived at Mars in 2016, but is also operating beyond its original lifetime.

China and the United Arab Emirates also have orbiters circling Mars, but neither spacecraft is equipped to serve as a communications relay.

NASA’s Curiosity and Perseverance rovers have the capability for direct-to-Earth communications, but the orbiting relay network can support vastly higher data throughput. Without overhead satellites, much of the science data and many of the spectacular images collected by NASA’s rovers might never make it off the planet.

MAVEN’s unique orbit, stretching as far as 2,800 miles (4,500 kilometers) above Mars, has some advantages for data relay. In that orbit, MAVEN could relay science data from rovers on the surface for up to 30 minutes at a time, longer than the relay periods available through NASA’s lower-altitude orbiters. Because of this, MAVEN could support the largest data volumes of any of the other relay options.

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In a major new report, scientists build rationale for sending astronauts to Mars

astronauts, life, Mars, NASA, Space / Shannon Garcia / December 9, 2025

The committee also looked at different types of campaigns to determine which would be most effective for completing the science objectives noted above. The campaign most likely to be successful, they found, was an initial human landing that lasts 30 days, followed by an uncrewed cargo delivery to facilitate a longer 300-day crewed mission on the surface of Mars. All of these missions would take place in a single exploration zone, about 100 km in diameter, that featured ancient lava flows and dust storms.

Science-driven exploration

Notably, the report also addresses the issue of planetary protection, a principle that aims to protect both celestial bodies (i.e., the surface of Mars) and visitors (i.e., astronauts) from biological contamination. This has been a thorny issue for human missions to Mars, as some scientists and environmentalists say humans should be barred from visiting a world that could contain extant life.

In recent years, NASA has been working with the International Committee on Space Research to design a plan in which human landings might occur in some areas of the planet, while other parts of Mars are left in “pristine” condition. The committee said this work should be prioritized to reach a resolution that will further the design of human missions to Mars.

“NASA should continue to collaborate on the evolution of planetary protection guidelines, with the goal of enabling human explorers to perform research in regions that could possibly support, or even harbor, life,” the report states.

If NASA is going to get serious about pressing policymakers and saying it is time to fund a human mission to Mars, the new report is important because it provides the justification for sending people—and not just robots—to the surface of Mars. It methodically goes through all the things that humans can and should do on Mars and lays out how NASA’s human spaceflight and science exploration programs can work together.

“The report says here are the top science priorities that can be accomplished by humans on the surface of Mars,” Elkins-Tanton said. “There are thousands of scientific measurements that could be taken, but we believe these are the highest priorities. We’ve been on Mars for 50 years. With humans there, we have a huge opportunity.”

In a major new report, scientists build rationale for sending astronauts to Mars Read More »

The twin probes just launched toward Mars have an Easter egg on board

atmosphere loss, bald eagle, Berkeley, blue origin, easter eggs, escapade, Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers, hybrid magnetosphere, kiwi, Mars, NASA, new glenn, ng-2, plaques, plates, rocket lab, Space, Space exploration, space history, Space Sciences Laboratory, space weather, University of California / DJ Henderson / November 15, 2025

The mission aims to aid our understanding of Mars’ climate history and what was behind the loss of its conditions that once supported liquid water, potential oceans, and possibly life on the surface.

Plaques and partner patches

In addition to the kiwi-adorned plates, Rocket Lab also installed two more plaques on the twin ESCAPADE spacecraft.

“There are also two name plates (one in blue and one in gold) on each spacecraft listing Rocket Lab team members who’ve contributed to the mission, making it possible to get to Mars,” said McLaurin.

Mounted on the solar panels, the plaques use shading to also display the Latin initials (NSHO) of the Rocket Lab motto and form the company’s logo. Despite their diminutive size, each plate appears to include more than 200 names, including founder, president, and CEO Peter Beck.

Montage of photos and graphics illustrating the blue and gold metal plates attached a spacecraft — Additional plates in blue and gold display the names of the Rocket Lab team members behind the ESCAPADE spacecraft. Credit: UCB-SSL via collectSPACE.com

UC Berkeley adopted its colors in 1873. According to the school’s website, “blue for the California sky and ocean and for the Yale graduates who helped establish the university, gold for the ‘Golden State.’”

ESCAPADE also has its own set of colors, or rather, colorful patches.

The main mission logo depicts the twin spacecraft in orbit around Mars with the names of the primary partners listed along its border, including UCB-SSL (University of California, Berkeley-Space Science Laboratory); RL (Rocket Lab); ERAU (Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, which designed and built the langmuir probe, one of the mission’s science instruments); AdvSp (Advanced Space, which oversaw mission design and trajectory optimization); and NASA-GSFC (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center).

Rocket Lab also designed an insignia, which renders the two spacecraft in blue and gold, as well as shows their trajectory in the same colors and includes the company’s motto.

Lastly, Blue Origin’s New Glenn-2 (NG-2) patch features the launch vehicle and the two ESCAPADE satellites, using hues of orange to represent Mars.

Graphic montage of mission patches — Three mission patches represent the Mars ESCAPADE mission and its partners. Credit: NASA/Rocket Lab/Blue Origin/collectSPACE.com

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Here’s how orbital dynamics wizardry helped save NASA’s next Mars mission

blue origin, Commercial space, escapade, launch, Mars, NASA, new glenn, ng-2, planetary science, rocket lab, Science, solar system, Space, uc berkeley / Shannon Garcia / November 9, 2025

Blue Origin is counting down to launch of its second New Glenn rocket Sunday.

The New Glenn rocket rolls to Launch Complex-36 in preparation for liftoff this weekend. Credit: Blue Origin

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida—The field of astrodynamics isn’t a magical discipline, but sometimes it seems trajectory analysts can pull a solution out of a hat.

That’s what it took to save NASA’s ESCAPADE mission from a lengthy delay, and possible cancellation, after its rocket wasn’t ready to send it toward Mars during its appointed launch window last year. ESCAPADE, short for Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers, consists of two identical spacecraft setting off for the red planet as soon as Sunday with a launch aboard Blue Origin’s massive New Glenn rocket.

“ESCAPADE is pursuing a very unusual trajectory in getting to Mars,” said Rob Lillis, the mission’s principal investigator from the University of California, Berkeley. “We’re launching outside the typical Hohmann transfer windows, which occur every 25 or 26 months. We are using a very flexible mission design approach where we go into a loiter orbit around Earth in order to sort of wait until Earth and Mars are lined up correctly in November of next year to go to Mars.”

This wasn’t the original plan. When it was first designed, ESCAPADE was supposed to take a direct course from Earth to Mars, a transit that typically takes six to nine months. But ESCAPADE will now depart the Earth when Mars is more than 220 million miles away, on the opposite side of the Solar System.

The payload fairing of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket, containing NASA’s two Mars-bound science probes. Credit: Blue Origin

The most recent Mars launch window was last year, and the next one doesn’t come until the end of 2026. The planets are not currently in alignment, and the proverbial stars didn’t align to get the ESCAPADE satellites and their New Glenn rocket to the launch pad until this weekend.

This is fine

But there are several reasons this is perfectly OK to NASA. The New Glenn rocket is overkill for this mission. The two-stage launcher could send many tons of cargo to Mars, but NASA is only asking it to dispatch about a ton of payload, comprising a pair of identical science probes designed to study how the planet’s upper atmosphere interacts with the solar wind.

But NASA got a good deal from Blue Origin. The space agency is paying Jeff Bezos’ space company about $20 million for the launch, less than it would for a dedicated launch on any other rocket capable of sending the ESCAPADE mission to Mars. In exchange, NASA is accepting a greater than usual chance of a launch failure. This is, after all, just the second flight of the 321-foot-tall (98-meter) New Glenn rocket, which hasn’t yet been certified by NASA or the US Space Force.

The ESCAPADE mission, itself, was developed with a modest budget, at least by the standards of interplanetary exploration. The mission’s total cost amounts to less than $80 million, an order of magnitude lower than all of NASA’s recent Mars missions. NASA officials would not entrust the second flight of the New Glenn rocket to launch a billion-dollar spacecraft, but the risk calculation changes as costs go down.

NASA knew all of this in 2023 when it signed a launch contract with Blue Origin for the ESCAPADE mission. What officials didn’t know was that the New Glenn rocket wouldn’t be ready to fly when ESCAPADE needed to launch in late 2024. It turned out Blue Origin didn’t launch the first New Glenn test flight until January of this year. It was a success. It took another 10 months for engineers to get the second New Glenn vehicle to the launch pad.

The twin ESCAPADE spacecraft undergoing final preparations for launch. Each spacecraft is about a half-ton fully fueled. Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

Aiming high

That’s where the rocket sits this weekend at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. If all goes according to plan, New Glenn will take off Sunday afternoon during an 88-minute launch window opening at 2: 45 pm EST (19: 45 UTC). There is a 65 percent chance of favorable weather, according to Blue Origin.

Blue Origin’s launch team, led by launch director Megan Lewis, will oversee the countdown Sunday. The rocket will be filled with super-cold liquid methane and liquid oxygen propellants beginning about four-and-a-half hours prior to liftoff. After some final technical and weather checks, the terminal countdown sequence will commence at T-minus 4 minutes, culminating in ignition of the rocket’s seven BE-4 main engines at T-minus 5.6 seconds.

The rocket’s flight computer will assess the health of each of the powerful engines, combining to generate more than 3.8 million pounds of thrust. If all looks good, hold-down restraints will release to allow the New Glenn rocket to begin its ascent from Florida’s Space Coast.

Heading east, the rocket will surpass the speed of sound in a little over a minute. After soaring through the stratosphere, New Glenn will shut down its seven booster engines and shed its first stage a little more than 3 minutes into the flight. Twin BE-3U engines, burning liquid hydrogen, will ignite to finish the job of sending the ESCAPADE satellites toward deep space. The rocket’s trajectory will send the satellites toward a gravitationally-stable location beyond the Moon, called the L2 Lagrange point, where it will swing into a loosely-bound loiter orbit to wait for the right time to head for Mars.

Meanwhile, the New Glenn booster, itself measuring nearly 20 stories tall, will begin maneuvers to head toward Blue Origin’s recovery ship floating a few hundred miles downrange in the Atlantic Ocean. The final part of the descent will include a landing burn using three of the BE-4 engines, then downshifting to a single engine to control the booster’s touchdown on the landing platform, dubbed “Jacklyn” in honor of Bezos’ late mother.

The launch timeline for New Glenn’s second mission. Credit: Blue Origin

New Glenn’s inaugural launch at the start of this year was a success, but the booster’s descent did not go well. The rocket was unable to restart its engines, and it crashed into the sea.

“We’ve incorporated a number of changes to our propellant management system, some minor hardware changes as well, to increase our likelihood of landing that booster on this mission,” said Laura Maginnis, Blue Origin’s vice president of New Glenn mission management. “That was the primary schedule driver that kind of took us from from January to where we are today.”

Blue Origin officials are hopeful they can land the booster this time. The company’s optimism is enough for officials to have penciled in a reflight of this particular booster on the very next New Glenn launch, slated for the early months of next year. That launch is due to send Blue Origin’s first Blue Moon cargo lander to the Moon.

“Our No. 1 objective is to deliver ESCAPADE safely and successfully on its way to L2, and then eventually on to Mars,” Maginnis said in a press conference Saturday. “We also are planning and wanting to land our booster. If we don’t land the booster, that’s OK. We have several more vehicles in production. We’re excited to see how the mission plays out tomorrow.”

Tracing a kidney bean

ESCAPADE’s path through space, relative to the Earth, has the peculiar shape of a kidney bean. In the world of astrodynamics, this is called a staging or libration orbit. It’s a way to keep the spacecraft on a stable trajectory to wait for the opportunity to go to Mars late next year.

“ESCAPADE has identified that this is the way that we want to fly, so we launch from Earth onto this kidney bean-shaped orbit,” said Jeff Parker, a mission designer from the Colorado-based company Advanced Space. “So, we can launch on virtually any day. What happens is that kidney bean just grows and shrinks based on how much time you need to spend in that orbit. So, we traverse that kidney been and at the very end there’s a final little loop-the-loop that brings us down to Earth.”

That’s when the two ESCAPADE spacecraft, known as Blue and Gold, will pass a few hundred miles above our planet. At the right moment, on November 7 and 9 of next year, the satellites will fire their engines to set off for Mars.

An illustration of ESCAPADE’s trajectory to wait for the opportunity to go to Mars. Credit: UC-Berkeley

There are some tradeoffs with this unique staging orbit. It is riskier than the original plan of sending ESCAPADE straight to Mars. The satellites will be exposed to more radiation, and will consume more of their fuel just to get to the red planet, eating into reserves originally set aside for science observations.

The satellites were built by Rocket Lab, which designed them with extra propulsion capacity in order to accommodate launches on a variety of different rockets. In the end, NASA “judged that the risk for the mission was acceptable, but it certainly is higher risk,” said Richard French, Rocket Lab’s vice president of business development and strategy.

The upside of the tradeoff is it will demonstrate an “exciting and flexible way to get to Mars,” Lillis said. “In the future, if we’d like to send hundreds of spacecraft to Mars at once, it will be difficult to do that from just the launch pads we have on Earth within that month [of the interplanetary launch window]. We could potentially queue up spacecraft using the approach that ESCAPADE is pioneering.”

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Research roundup: 6 cool science stories we almost missed

Archeology, Food science, geophysics, Mars, planetary geology, research roundup, Science, snakes / Shannon Garcia / November 1, 2025

Also: the science of regular vs. gluten-free spaghetti, catching high-speed snake bites in action, etc.

Karnak Temple, Luxor, Egypt. Credit: Ben Pennington

It’s a regrettable reality that there is never enough time to cover all the interesting scientific stories we come across each month. In the past, we’ve featured year-end roundups of cool science stories we (almost) missed. This year, we’re experimenting with a monthly collection. October’s list includes the microstructural differences between regular and gluten-free spaghetti, capturing striking snakes in action, the mystery behind the formation of Martian gullies, and—for all you word game enthusiasts—an intriguing computational proof of the highest possible scoring Boggle board.

Highest-scoring Boggle board

boggle board showing highest scoring selection of letters — Credit: Dan Vanderkam

Sometimes we get handy story tips from readers about quirkily interesting research projects. Sometimes those projects involve classic games like Boggle, in which players find as many words as they can from a 4×4 grid of 16 lettered cubic dice, within a given time limit. Software engineer Dan Vanderkam alerted us to a a preprint he posted to the physics arXiv, detailing his quest to find the Boggle board configuration that yields the highest possible score. It’s pictured above, with a total score of 3,625 points, according to Vanderkam’s first-ever computational proof. There are more than 1000 possible words, with “replastering” being the longest.

Vanderkam has documented his quest and its resolution (including the code he used) extensively on his blog, admitting to the Financial Times that, “As far as I can tell, I’m the only person who is actually interested in this problem.” That’s not entirely true: there was an attempt in 1982 that found an optimal board yielding 2,195 points. Vanderkam’s board was known as possibly being the highest scoring, it was just very difficult to prove using standard heuristic search methods. Vanderkam’s solution involved grouping board configurations with similar patterns into classes, and then finding upper bounds to discard clear losers, rather than trying to tally scores for each board individually—i.e., an old school “branch and bound” technique.

DOI: arXiv, 2025. 10.48550/arXiv.2507.02117 (About DOIs).

Origins of Egypt’s Karnak Temple

Core samples being extracted at Karnak Temple — Credit: Ben Pennington

Egypt’s Karnak Temple complex, located about 500 meters of the Nile River near Luxor, has long been of interest to archaeologists and millions of annual tourists alike. But its actual age has been a matter of much debate. The most comprehensive geological survey conducted to date is yielding fresh insights into the temple’s origins and evolution over time, according to a paper published in the journal Antiquity.

The authors analyzed sediment cores and thousands of ceramic fragments from within and around the site to map out how the surrounding landscape has changed. They concluded that early on, circa 2520 BCE, the site would have experienced regular flooding from the Nile; thus, the earliest permanent settlement at Karnak would have emerged between 2591 and 2152 BCE, in keeping with the earliest dated ceramic fragments. This would have been after river channels essentially created an island of higher ground that served as the foundation for constructing the temple. As those channels diverged over millennia, the available area for the temple expanded and thus, so did the complex.

This might be supported by Egyptian creation myths. “It’s tempting to suggest the Theban elites chose Karnak’s location for the dwelling place of a new form of the creator god, ‘Ra-Amun,’ as it fitted the cosmogonical scene of high ground emerging from surrounding water,” said co-author Ben Pennington, a geoarchaeologist at the University of Southampton. “Later texts of the Middle Kingdom (c.1980–1760 BC) develop this idea, with the ‘primeval mound’ rising from the ‘Waters of Chaos.’ During this period, the abating of the annual flood would have echoed this scene, with the mound on which Karnak was built appearing to ‘rise’ and grow from the receding floodwaters.”

DOI: Antiquity, 2025. 10.15184/aqy.2025.10185 (About DOIs).

Gullies on Mars

Mars dune with gullies in the Russell crater. On their way down, the ice blocks threw up levees. — Credit: HiRISE/NASA/JPL/University of Arizon

Mars has many intriguing features but one of the more puzzling is the sinuous gullies that form on some its dunes. Scientists have proposed two hypotheses for how such gullies might form. The first is that they are the result of debris flow from an earlier time in the planet’s history where liquid water might have existed on the surface—evidence that the red planet might once have been habitable. The second is that the gullies form because of seasonal deposition and sublimation of CO2 ice on the surface in the present day. A paper published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters demonstrated strong evidence in favor of the latter hypothesis.

Building on her earlier research on how sublimation of CO2 ice can drive debris flows on Mars, earth scientist Lonneke Roelofs of Utrecht University in the Netherlands collaborated with scientists at the Open University in Milton Keynes, UK, which boasts a facility for simulating conditions on Mars. She ran several experiments with different sediment types, creating dune slopes of different angles and dropping blocks of CO2 ice from the top of the slope. At just the right angle, the blocks did indeed start digging into the sandy slope and moving downwards to create a gully. Roelofs likened the effect to a burrowing mole or the sandworms in Dune.

Per Roelofs, on Mars, CO2 ice forms over the surface during the winter and starts to sublimate in the spring. The ice blocks are remnants found on the shaded side of dune tops, where they break off once the temperature gets high enough and slide down the slope. At the bottom, they keep sublimating until all the CO2 has evaporated, leaving behind a hollow of sand.

DOI: Geophysical Research Letters, 2025. 10.1029/2024GL112860 (About DOIs).

Snake bites in action

S.G.C. Cleuren et al., 2025

Snakes can strike out and bite into prey in as little as 60 microseconds and until quite recently it just wasn’t technologically possible to capture those strikes in high definition. Researchers at Monash University in Australia decided to test 36 different species of snake in this way to learn more about their unique biting styles, detailing their results in a paper published in the Journal of Experimental Biology. And oh yes, there is awesome video footage.

Alistair Evans and Silke Cleuren traveled to Venomworld in Paris, France, where snake venom is harvested for medical and pharmaceutical applications. For each snake species, they poked at said snake with a cylindrical piece of warm medical gel to mimic meaty muscle until the snake lunged and buried its fangs into the gel. Two cameras recorded the action at 1000 frames per second, capturing more than 100 individual strikes in great detail.

Among their findings: vipers moved the fastest when they struck, with the blunt-nosed viper accelerating up to 710 m/s², landing a bite within 22 microseconds. All the vipers landed bites within 100 microseconds of striking. By contrast, the rough-scaled death adder only reached speeds of 2.5 m/s². Vipers also sometimes pulled out and reinserted their fangs if they didn’t like the resulting angle; only then did they inject their venom. Elapids like the Cape coral cobra bit their prey repeatedly to inject their venom, while colubrids would tear gashes into their prey by sweeping their jaws from side to side, ensuing the maximum possible amount of venom was delivered.

DOI: Journal of Experimental Biology, 2025. 10.1242/jeb.250347 (About DOIs).

Spaghetti secrets

Spaghetti, like most pasta, is made of semolina flour, which is mixed with water to form a paste and then extruded to create a desired shape. The commercial products are then dried—an active area of research, since it’s easy for the strands to crack during the process. In fact, there have been a surprisingly large number of scientific papers seeking to understand the various properties of spaghetti, both cooking and eating it—the mechanics of slurping the pasta into one’s mouth, for instance, or spitting it out (aka, the “reverse spaghetti problem”); how to tell when it’s perfectly al dente; and how to get dry spaghetti strands to break neatly in two, rather than three or more scattered pieces.

Pasta also has a fairly low glycemic index, and is thus a good option for those with heart disease or type 2 diabetes. With the rise in the number of people with a gluten intolerance, gluten-free spaghetti has emerged as an alternative. The downside is that gluten-free pasta is harder to cook correctly and decidedly subpar in taste and texture (mouthfeel) compared to regular pasta. The reason for the latter lies in the microstructure, according to a paper published in the journal Food Hydrocolloids.

The authors used small-angle x-ray scattering and small-angle neutron scattering to analyze the microstructure of both regular and gluten-free pasta—i.e., the gluten matrix and its artificial counterpart—cooked al dente with varying salt concentrations in the water. They found that because of its gluten matrix, regular pasta has better resistance to structural degradation, and that adding just the right amount of salt further reinforces that matrix—so it’s not just a matter of salting to taste. This could lead to a better alternative matrix for gluten-free pasta that holds its structure better and has a taste and mouthfeel closer to that of regular pasta.

DOI: Food Hydrocolloids, 2025. 10.1016/j.foodhyd.2025.111855 (About DOIs).

Can machine learning identify ancient artists?

Dr Andrea Jalandoni studies finger flutings at a cave site in Australia — Credit: Andrea Jalandoni

Finger flutings are one of the oldest examples of prehistoric art, usually found carved into the walls of caves in southern Australia, New Guinea, and parts of Europe. They’re basically just marks made by human fingers drawn through the “moonmilk” (a soft mineral film) covering those walls. Very little is known about the people who left those flutings and while some have tried to draw inferences based on biometric finger ratios or hand size measurements—notably whether given marks were made by men or women—such methods produce inconsistent results and are prone to human error and bias.

That’s why digital archaeologist Andrea Jaladonia of Griffith University decided to experiment with machine learning image recognition methods as a possible tool, detailing her findings in a paper published the journal Scientific Reports. She recruited 96 adult volunteers to create their own finger flutings in two different settings: once in a virtual reality environment, and once on a substitute for the moonmilk clay that mimicked the look and feel of the real thing. Her team took images of those flutings and then used them to train two common image recognition models.

The results were decidedly mixed. The virtual reality images performed the worst, yielding highly unreliable attempts at classifying whether flutings were made by men or women. The images produced in actual clay produced better results, even reaching close to 84 percent accuracy in one model. But there were also signs the models were overfitting, i.e., memorizing patterns in the training data rather than more generalized patterns, so the approach needs more refinement before it is ready for actual deployment. As for why determining sex classifications matters, “This information has been used to decide who can access certain sites for cultural reasons,” Jalandoni explained.

DOI: Scientific Reports, 2025. 10.1038/s41598-025-18098-4 (About DOIs).

Jennifer is a senior writer at Ars Technica with a particular focus on where science meets culture, covering everything from physics and related interdisciplinary topics to her favorite films and TV series. Jennifer lives in Baltimore with her spouse, physicist Sean M. Carroll, and their two cats, Ariel and Caliban.

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New Glenn rocket has clear path to launch after test-firing at Cape Canaveral

blue origin, Commercial space, escapade, launch, Mars, NASA, new glenn, Space / Beth Washington / November 1, 2025

The road to the second flight of Blue Origin’s heavy-lifting New Glenn rocket got a lot clearer Thursday night with a success test-firing of the launcher’s seven main engines on a launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

Standing on a seaside launch pad, the New Glenn rocket ignited its seven BE-4 main engines at 9: 59 pm EDT Thursday (01: 59 UTC Friday). The engines burned for 38 seconds while the rocket remained firmly on the ground, according to a social media post by Blue Origin.

The hold-down firing of the first stage engines was the final major test of the New Glenn rocket before launch day. Blue Origin previously test-fired the rocket’s second-stage engines. Officials have not announced a target launch date, but sources tell Ars the rocket could be ready for liftoff as soon as November 9.

“Love seeing New Glenn’s seven BE-4 engines come alive! Congratulations to Team Blue on today’s hotfire,” the company’s CEO, Dave Limp, posted on X.

Blue Origin, the space company owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, said the engines operated at full power for 22 seconds, generating nearly 3.9 million pounds of thrust. Limp said engineers extended this test-firing and shut down some of the BE-4 engines to simulate the booster’s landing burn sequence, which Blue Origin hopes will culminate in a successful touchdown on a barge floating downrange in the Atlantic Ocean.

“This helps us understand fluid interactions between active and inactive engine feedlines during landing,” Limp wrote.

Blue Origin is counting on recovering the New Glenn first stage on the next flight after missing the landing on the rocket’s inaugural mission in January. Officials plan to reuse this booster on the third New Glenn launch early next year, slated to propel Blue Origin’s first unpiloted Blue Moon lander toward the Moon. If Blue Origin fails to land this rocket, it’s unlikely a new first stage booster will be ready to launch until sometime later in 2026.

A few more things to do

With the test-firing complete, Blue Origin’s ground crew will lower the more than 320-foot-tall (98-meter) rocket and roll it back to a nearby hangar. There, technicians will inspect the vehicle and swap its payload fairing for another clamshell containing two NASA-owned spacecraft set to begin their journey to Mars.

New Glenn rocket has clear path to launch after test-firing at Cape Canaveral Read More »

Has Perseverance found a biosignature on Mars?

astrobiology, biosignature, Mars, Mars Perseverance, Mars rovers, Science / Mike M. / September 10, 2025

Interpreting the data is tricky because other non-biological processes could account for the findings.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Last year, we reported on the discovery of an intriguing arrow-shaped rock on Mars by NASA’s Perseverance rover. The rock contained chemical signatures and structures that could have been formed by ancient microbial life. Granted, this was not slam-dunk evidence of past life on Mars, and the results were preliminary, awaiting peer review. But it was an intriguing possibility nonetheless.

Now further analysis and peer review are complete, and there is a new paper, published in the journal Nature, reporting on the findings. It’s still not definitive proof that there was water-based life on Mars billions of years ago, but the results are consistent with a biosignature. It’s just that other non-biological processes would also be consistent with the data, so definitive proof might require analysis of the Martian samples back on Earth. You can watch NASA’s livestream briefing here.

“We have improved our understanding of the geological context of the discovery since [last year], and in the paper, we explore abiotic and biological pathways to the formation of the features that we observe,” co-author Joel Hurowitz, an astrobiologist at Stony Brook University in New York, told Ars. “My hope is that this discovery motivates a whole bunch of new research in laboratory and analog field settings on Earth to try to understand what conditions might give rise to the textures and mineral assemblages we’ve observed. This type of follow on work is exactly what is needed to explore the various biological and abiotic pathways to the formation of the features that we are calling potential biosignatures.”

On February 18, 2021, Perseverance landed in Jezero Crater, a site chosen because rocks resembling a river delta are draped over its rim, indicating that flowing water might have met a lake here in the past. The little rover has multiple cameras for both general imagery and spectral analysis, supplemented by an X-ray instrument. A ground-penetrating radar instrument can reveal layering hidden below the surface; a weather module tracks atmospheric conditions and airborne dust; and a drill on the end of its robotic arm grinds clean spots for analysis. The drill can also core out small cylindrical rock samples.

Mineralogical map of the Martian surface explored by the Perseverance rover. Credit: M. Parente et al./Zenodo 2021

By the end of 2021, Perseverance had identified igneous rocks in the Seitah formation on the crater’s floor, containing the mineral olivine surrounded by pyroxene. This combination is known as a cumulate; olivine crystallizes early and can settle to the bottom of a magma body and accumulate, and it’s a common formation in magma chambers on Earth. Scientists thought that Jezero was once a lake; this was evidence of possible volcanic activity.

An arrow-shaped clue

As Ars Space Editor Eric Berger reported last year, the arrow-shaped rock that caused such a stir last year was collected on July 21, 2024, as the rover explored the Neretva Vallis riverbed. The science team operating Perseverance nicknamed the rock Chevaya Falls and subjected it to multiple scans by the rover’s SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals) instrument. Samples were taken from two sites known as Bright Angel and Masonic Temple; the arrow-shaped rock came from Bright Angel.

That analysis revealed tiny green specks of iron phosphates that have been chemically reduced, as well as iron sulfide minerals, all embedded in mudstone composed of iron minerals, clays, and calcium sulfates. Those distinctive colorful nodules and specks are a smoking gun for certain chemical reactions (known as redox) rather than microbial life itself. On Earth, microbial life can derive energy from these kinds of chemical reactions, so signs of such reactions suggest a plausible source of energy for microbes on Mars. In addition, there are organic chemicals present on the same rock, consistent with some form of life.

This latest paper confirms those initial findings and also concludes that the iron phosphate in the green specks is most likely vivianite, consistent with prior samples taken from the crater’s Onahu site. The nodules and specks seem to have formed under low-temperature conditions and after the deposition of sediment. And the minerals of interest aren’t evenly distributed throughout the mudstone; they are concentrated in specific zones. All of this taken together suggests that these might be biosignatures, per the authors.

So what needs to happen to definitively confirm these are actual signs of previous life on Mars? NASA has a seven-step process for determining whether something can be confirmed as extraterrestrial life. This is known as the CoLD scale, for Confidence of Life Detection. In this case, the detection of these spots on a Martian rock represented just the first of seven steps. Among other steps, scientists must rule out any non-biological possibility and identify other signals to have confidence in off-world life—i.e., solving the so-called “false positive” problem.

For instance, “Analyses of sulfur isotopes can be used to trace the geochemical and biogeochemical pathways that formed sulfate and sulfides,” Janice Bishop (SETI Institute) and Mario Parente (University of Massachusetts Amherst) wrote in an accompanying perspective. “Such analyses would be needed to determine whether ancient microbes participated in the redox reactions that formed these minerals on Mars.”

Michael Wong, an astrobiologist at Carnegie Science who was not involved in the research, told Ars that he appreciated Hurowotiz et al.’s care in not over-hyping their findings and thinks they make a compelling case. Unlike hints of biosignatures on distant exoplanets, he thinks scientists can have confidence in the Mars data. “We’re right up against the rocks, we’re taking spectra of things that we can get up close and personal with,” he said.

The tricky part is in the interpretation of that data. “I think this is consistent with a potential biosignature,” said Wong. “I wouldn’t get too excited, of course, because there could be interesting geological mechanisms for creating these phenomena that we just haven’t thought of yet.”

Chemically reduced nodules of greenish material containing the mineral vivianite are embedded in a matrix of red–brown, oxidized clay mineral. More-complex ‘leopard spot’ features contain vivianite along with a sulfide mineral — Chemically reduced nodules of greenish material containing the mineral vivianite are embedded in a matrix of red-brown, oxidized clay mineral. More complex ‘leopard spot’ features contain vivianite along with a sulfide mineral. Credit: J. Hurowitz et al. 2025

Still cause for skepticism

That said, “I’d love to know a little bit more about what organics were found and in what abundances,” said Wong. “If you can look at the distribution of, say, amino acids or lipids, these building blocks of life, that can be a really important clue as to whether or not it’s actually life that was responsible here. Life is really good at making molecules that function well, and it doesn’t care about making molecules that don’t play into its metabolism and replication cycles. I’d love to know a little bit more about the isotopic ratios of those organic compounds, because life preferentially absorbs lighter isotopes than heavier ones.”

Sara Walker, an astrobiologist at Arizona State University who was not involved in the study, told Ars that analyses like that of Hurowitz et al. “are often targeted at simple metabolic products or reactions that life on Earth is known to mediate, but which are not uniquely diagnostic of life, e.g. can be produced abiotically,” she said. “It is not in general possible to exhaustively rule out all possible abiotic causes, especially in planetary science contexts where we have limited information, as is always the case for Mars data. A convincing biosignature detection would need to be based on detection of a signature of life that has no false positives.”

Much will depend on NASA’s planned Mars Sample Return mission. Returning pristine specimens from Mars to Earth for analysis in ground-based labs has been a top priority for the planetary science community’s decadal survey process. “The Perseverance rover wasn’t designed to make any definitive claims about biosignatures, but only to look for samples that have the most intriguing clues and would be the most interesting to bring back to Earth so that we can analyze it with all of the fancy instrumentation here,” said Wong.

Getting those samples back has turned out to be a lot more challenging than NASA thought. In 2023, an independent review found ballooning costs and delays threatened the mission’s viability. The effort would likely cost NASA between $8 billion and $11 billion, and the launch would be delayed at least two years until 2030, with samples getting back to Earth a few years later, the review board concluded. NASA put out a call to industry in April of this year to propose ideas on how to return the Mars rocks to Earth for less than $11 billion and before 2040, selecting seven companies to conduct more detailed studies.

“Ultimately, I suspect that we’ll find that there are ways that you can make them under very specific abiotic—perhaps at high temperature—and biological conditions, and we’ll end up at a point where the sample will need to come home so that we can study it and make the final determination for what process made these features,” said Hurowitz. “But the follow-on work will provide testable hypotheses that can guide the examination of the Sapphire Canyon core sample we collected from the Bright Angel formation even before it comes back to Earth.”

According to Walker, while sample return would be ideal, it may not be critical to detection of extraterrestrial biosignatures, or even provide a conclusive determination in the present case. For these kinds of signatures, “There will always be some doubt, whether studied here on Earth or elsewhere,” Walker said. “There are lots of clever means to doing better science for biosignatures on other worlds. I would focus on ones that do not have false positives. But this is a direction that is very new in the field.” Her own research involves using assembly theory and mass spectrometry to identify molecules that are too complex to form abiotically.

Those alternatives might be the best course given the current state of science funding in the US. “In planetary science and astrobiology, the funding cuts to the NASA science mission directorate makes it really difficult to imagine a near future in which we can actually do the analysis,” said Wong. “We need to determine whether or not these ancient Mars rocks do or do not contain signs of alien life. We’re leaving on the doorstep this really intriguing question that we can answer if we brought the samples back to Earth, but we simply aren’t going to. We could be on the steps of a golden age of astrobiology if only we had the willpower to do it.”

DOI: Nature, 2025. 10.1038/s41586-025-09413-0 (About DOIs).

Has Perseverance found a biosignature on Mars? Read More »

A new Martian climate model suggest a mostly cold, harsh environment

carbonates, climate model, Climate science, Curiosity rover, Mars, planetary science, rover, Science / DJ Henderson / July 13, 2025

“Very early in Mars’ history, maybe 4 billion years ago, the planet was warm enough to support lakes and river networks,” Kite told Ars. “There were seas, and some of those seas were as big as the Caspian Sea, maybe bigger. It was a wet place.” This wet period, though, didn’t last long—it was too short to make the landscape deeply weathered and deeply eroded.

Kite’s team used their model to focus on what happened as the planet got colder, when the era of salts started. “Big areas of snowmelts created huge salt flats, which eventually built up over time, accumulating into a thick sedimentary deposit Curiosity rover is currently exploring,” Kite said. But the era of salts did not mark the end of liquid water on the Martian surface.

Flickering habitability

The landscape turned arid, judging by Earth’s standards, roughly 3.5 billion years ago. “There were long periods when the planet was entirely dry,” Kite said. During these dry periods, Mars was almost as cold as it is today. But once in a while, small areas with liquid water appeared on the Martian surface like oases amidst an otherwise unwelcoming desert. It was a sterile planet with flickering, transient habitable spots with water coming from melted snow.

This rather bleak picture of the Martian landscape’s evolution makes questions about our chances for finding traces of life in there tricky.

“You can do a thought experiment where you take a cup of water from the Earth’s ocean and pour it into one of those transient lakes on Mars,” Kite said. “Some microbes in this cup of water would do fine in such conditions.” The bigger question, he thinks, is whether life could originate (rather than just survive) on ancient Mars. And, perhaps more critically, whether hypothetical life that originated even before the salts era, when the planet was warm and wet, could persist in the oases popping up in the Kite’s model.

The answer, sadly, is probably not.

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