mars

HP and SpaceX sent some servers with off-the-shelf Intel Xeon CPUs and Nvidia Tesla GPUs to the ISS in 2017, and as of 2018, those servers were fully operational. But, according to a recent BBC report, HP's "Spaceborne Computer" was schedules to come back down to Earth about 3 months ago, and...

NASA rover "Opportunity" was laid to rest on Tuesday night as attempts to make contact with the long-lived, space explorer wrapped up. Eight months ago, a ferocious, fast-moving Martian dust storm is thought to have covered the solar panels on the rover and cutoff the vital supply of sunlight...

NASA landed their "InSight" probe on Mars in November last year, and it brought a suite of sensors and gizmos with it. Among other things, NASA wants to dig into the Martian soil with InSight, but deploying the equipment needed to do that is a painfully slow, and risky, process. But yesterday...

Pictures of the water ice in the Korolev crater on Mars have been released by the European Space Agency. The icy interior of the crater is maintained by a phenomenon know as an 'ice trap'. This occurs naturally when "the air moving over the deposit of ice cools down and sinks, creating a layer...

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory just uploaded processed sensor recordings of "wind" on Mars. The vibrations from Insight's seismometer are very low frequency, but are still audible without having to be sped up, which makes them a great bass test for your PC. NASA also uploaded the raw sounds to...

NASA's InSight Mars Lander is scheduled to touch down on the red planet at around 2PM CST today. The craft has traveled over 300 million miles over the course of 7 months, and with the planet in the sights of the spacecraft's cameras, engineers have already made the last major course corrections...

In a press release, NASA announced the landing site for the upcoming Mars 2020 Rover mission. The ancient, dry river basin outside the Jezero Crater is a science treasure trove, but NASA says that landing in the area was cost prohibitive until now. Scientists claim that signs of organic...

In a piece on Spectrum, NASA detailed their plans to mine dust on heavenly bodies in our solar system, and turn it into rocket fuel. That already sounds difficult, but according to NASA "Swamp Works" team leader Kurt W. Leucht, mining on Mars is even harder than you'd think. For example, it...

NASA really hit it out of the park when they designed and built the Opportunity rover. This bot has wandered all over Mars for the last 15 years even though NASA figured the rover would only make it through a 90-day mission window. Opportunity has been out of contact for some time now because of...

NASA is running a multi-year contest to design 3D-printable habs for Mars using on-planet materials. The contest is in the first part of the third phase and the teams are putting together designs with Building Information Modeling software. This ensures the structures are functional and you have...

The Daily Mail is reporting that the Curiosity Rover took a selfie in the middle of the martian dust storm that covered nearly seven million square miles. The $2.5 billion nuclear powered research vehicle took the image while in the Gale Crater, a valley in which scientists think may have once...

A new study released by NASA reveals that there are large organic molecules on Mars. This data was gathered by the Curiosity rover in Mars's Gale Crater where it found the 3.5B year old molecules. These results don't mean there was life on Mars, but they do show where more advanced missions...

NASA is going back to some old plans they shelved back in the 70's and is looking at using an atomic rocket to get to Mars. Believe it or not this makes a lot of sense because the spacecraft would have the capability to get there faster and as a by-product this would increase astronaut safety...

Researchers from NASA, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the Department of Energy announced they have successfully tested a small nuclear reactor. These reactors range in power from 1 kilowatt to 10 kW. NASA states that to run a habitat on Mars and create fuel, about 40 kW would be needed...

The Mars rover Opportunity has survived its 8th winter thanks to the Mars rover team using a tilted strategy for the rover during the winter months. Basically they make sure the rover is always tilted towards the sun and take extra care when in the fall and winter. Further, Opportunity has...

Can you imagine a CGI commercial of Clydesdales pulling a Budweiser wagon on Mars? If Budweiser gets their way it might happen sooner than later. They've teamed up with the Center for Advancement of Science in Space and are going to launch some barley seeds into orbit to study how it will...

Over at Wired, they've put together a great story about the future of the Chinese space program and where they want to be by 2030. I believe, just as the author of this story believes, that China is going to be a major power in space in the next decade or so and they will definitely be a tough...

In 2020, NASA plans on launching an SUV sized rover to Mars that contains a total of 23 cameras. This number of cameras is larger than any other rover. What makes this one unique is its ability to take better pictures at a faster rate because it reduces the prep and processing time back on...