If humans ever discover life on Mars, this is how it might start: with a breaking-news alert heralding a startling development well beyond Earth. On a recent Saturday afternoon, The New York Times sent a bulletin: “Mars is belching a large amount of methane gas. It’s a sign of possible life on the red planet.”Read the Full Story at Atlantic. (Photo: NASA / JPL-CALTECH / MSSS)
NASA’s newest Mars lander has started digging into the red planet, but hit a few snags, scientists said Friday. The German drilling instrument on the InSight lander struck what appeared to be a couple of stones. It only managed to burrow between half a foot (18 centimeters) and about 1 ½ feet (50 centimeters), far short of the first dig’s goal, said the German Aerospace Center. Read the Full Story at Associated Press.(Photo by NASA/JPL-Caltech via AP)
“NASA’s InSight lander has deployed its first instrument onto the surface of Mars, completing a major mission milestone. New images from the lander show the seismometer on the ground, its copper-colored covering faintly illuminated in the Martian dusk. It looks as if all is calm and all is bright for InSight, heading into the end of the year.”
Read the Full Article On Science Daily.
(photo by NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Flying over the frigid northern reaches of Mars, the orbiting Mars Express satellite captured images of the 50-mile wide Korolev crater filled with ice.
Korolev is an especially alluring sight, not just because it’s a well-preserved impact crater but because it’s loaded with ice over a mile deep year round.
Read the Full Article on Yahoo News
(Image: esa)
Five years and 60 potential locations later, NASA has chosen the Jezero Crater as the landing site for its Mars 2020 rover mission.
Slated to launch in July, the Mars 2020 rover mission will touch down at the Jezero Crater as NASA’s exploration of the Red Planet enters its next phase.
Read the Full Story at Tech Crunch.
(Photo Courtesy of Tech Crunch)
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(Photos by REUTERS/NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona and NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS via AP)
A massive ancient ocean once covered nearly half of the northern hemisphere of Mars making the planet a more promising place for alien life to have gained a foothold, Nasa scientists say.
The huge body of water spread over a fifth of the planet’s surface, as great a portion as the Atlantic covers the Earth, and was a mile deep in places. In total, the ocean held 20 million cubic kilometres of water, or more than is found in the Arctic Ocean, the researchers found.
Read the Full Article at The Guardian. 
The Medusae Fossae Formation rises near the equator of Mars. The soft rock has been carved by wind erosion into a collection of ridges, valleys and striking mesas. It’s massive. It’s strange. And scientists are now tracing its origin to explosive volcanic activity in Mars’ deep past.
NASA has referred to Medusae Fossae as “an enigmatic pile of eroding sediments.” UFO enthusiasts once spotted what they believed to be a UFO there, which is mainly a testament to the exotic shapes formed in the wind-blasted area.
Read the Full Story on CNET.
The Curiosity rover has been cruising around on Mars since late 2012, so you’d think that scientists would have a pretty good handle on the kind of data it’s been sending back by now. However, some of the latest readings the rover has taken are totally contradicting many of the theories scientists have about Mars, and most notably when and how liquid water existed on its surface.
Read the full article at BGR!
