Hundreds of scientists and Mars-exploration enthusiasts gather this week to present, discuss and deliberate the future landing site for NASA's next Red Planet. […]

One month since increasing their commanding frequency, engineers have yet to hear from NASA's Opportunity rover. […]

A mixed-reality software that allows scientists and engineers to virtually walk on Mars has received NASA's 2018 Software of the Year Award. […]

What does NASA do to get a rover ready for Mars? JPL's paint shop does a thousand different paint jobs a year. And while every piece of spacecraft that comes through the shop is important, one headed for the Red Planet adds a little extra oomph. […]

NASA engineers are switching over to Curiosity's spare computer to diagnose a technical issue. […]

Astrophysicists have investigated the long-term path development of Centaurs -- small icy bodies that orbit the Sun between Jupiter and Neptune. […]

A team of astrophysicists has developed a scientifically based, standardized method for creating Martian and asteroid soil known as simulants. […]

Researchers have developed a software tool for computer-aided discovery that could help mission planners make these decisions. It automatically produces maps of favorable landing sites, using the available data on Mars' geology and terrain, as well as a list of scientific priorities and engineering constraints that a user can specify. […]

When dust filled the Martian atmosphere during the recent planet-wide dust storm, observations were plentiful -- even from unlikely instruments. […]

Phobos, the larger of Mars' two tiny satellites, is the darkest moon in the solar system. This dark aspect inspired the hypothesis that the close-orbiting moon may be a captured asteroid, but its orbital dynamics seemed to disagree. A new study suggests Phobos' composition may be more like the volcanic crust of the Red Planet than it appears, consistent with an origin for the moon in an ancient, violent impact on Mars. […]

When Australian scientists presented evidence in 2016 of life on Earth 3.7 billon years ago—pushing the record back 220 million years—it was a big deal, influencing even the search for life on Mars. […]

The idea of exploring and colonizing Mars has never been more alive than it is today. Within the next two decades, there are multiple plans to send crewed missions to the Red Planet, and even some highly ambitious plans to begin building a permanent settlement there. Despite the enthusiasm, there are many significant challenges that need to be addressed before any such endeavors can be attempted. […]

Hundreds of scientists and Mars-exploration enthusiasts will convene in a hotel ballroom just north of Los Angeles later this week to present, discuss and deliberate the future landing site for NASA's next Red Planet rover—Mars 2020. The three-day workshop is the fourth and final in a series designed to ensure NASA receives the broadest range of data and opinion from the scientific community before the agency chooses where to send the new rover. […]

For the second time this year, the five brightest planets can be seen at the same time. You can catch them by looking towards the western sky after sunset. The planets will form a line rising up from the horizon. […]

Filmmaker Rory Kennedy couldn't resist the obvious place to open her new documentary on NASA. That's a news clip of her uncle, President John F. Kennedy, challenging the space agency to land a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s. […]