Data from the Chinese rover Zhurong is adding to the pile of evidence for oceans on ancient Mars. For a year, this little craft traveled over nearly two kilometers of the Martian surface and made radar scans of buried natural structures that look like ocean shorelines. Zhurong’s ground-penetrating radar (GPR) looked under the surface to … Read more
It is robotic moon machinery on steroids. Tagged as the Endurance sample return mission, it would collect bits and pieces from key lunar locations for later retrieval by future astronauts in NASA’s Artemis program. Furthermore, high-value collectibles snagged from those distant spots would be hauled back to Earth by astronauts. NASA has begun blueprinting the … Read more
In 2018, NASA mission planners selected the Jezero Crater as the future landing site of the Perseverance rover. This crater was a natural choice, as it was once an ancient lake bed, as evidenced by the delta fan at its western edge. On Earth, these features form in the presence of flowing water that gradually … Read more