Articles tagged as Mars | Smithsonian Magazine

The dark gray object lurking above the Herschel crater on Mars is the Martian moon Phobos, as seen by the Viking Orbiter 1 in 1977

New Research

Did Mars Steal its Moons From the Asteroid Belt?

Scientists still aren’t sure where the odd little moons came from, but they have ideas

May 22, 2015

Cool Finds

Watch the Sun Set on Mars

Curiosity takes its first color pictures of a Martian sunset

May 12, 2015

New Research

Rover May Have Found a Water Source for Humans on Mars

Data collected from the Curiosity rover suggests liquid water could be harvested from Martian soil

April 13, 2015

NASA’s chief of human exploration thinks we’ll need a pit stop en route to the fiery planet

April 6, 2015

Best Space Photos of the Week

An Easter Typhoon and Galactic Ghosts Are Among These Spacey Visions

Astronauts spy a colossal eye and Hubble sees echoes of quasars past in our picks for the week’s best space images

April 3, 2015

An artists conception of NASA's MAVEN spacecraft observing the aurora on Mars

Cool Finds

Mars Gets a ‘Northern Lights’ Show Too

Earth isn’t the only planet that sees auroras

March 19, 2015

NASA's Curiosity rover caught this image of its drill just days before a short circuit caused it to shut down.

Short circuit halts Curiosity in its tracks

March 4, 2015

This image of a Martian sunset was captured in 2005.

Cool Finds

Watch the Sunset from Mars

Opportunity rover helps capture a hauntingly blue view of nightfall on the Red Planet

February 26, 2015

Cool Finds

Impatient Scientists Used Paint-By-Numbers Technique to Create the First Image From Mars

Scientists used raw data to create their first image of the red planet

February 25, 2015

Artwork depicts the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft, which was launched from Earth in June, 2003 carrying the Beagle2 lander. Mars Express continues to function even today.

High-res images of Mars’ surface identify a long-missing probe and suggests that bad luck—rather than human error—caused the loss

January 16, 2015

Ten years ago this week, the Huygens probe gave scientists a first look at the icy surface beneath the haze of Saturn's moon Titan.

Best Space Photos of the Week

Best Space Photos of the Week: From Solar Flares to Saturn’s Moons

A spitting sun, a well-loved lake and a happy accident on Mars star in this week’s best space images

January 16, 2015

Scientists crouch with mock-ups of three generations of Mars rovers. Curiosity is the big one. Opportunity and Spirit were based on the medium-sized one on the left. The small one is front was the Sojourner rover.

A problem with Opportunity’s hardware means it only has short-term memory

December 31, 2014

These images show the planet on the last day of Martian spring in the northern hemisphere (just before summer solstice). The annual north polar carbon dioxide frost (dry ice) cap is rapidly sublimating, revealing the much smaller permanent water ice cap.

New Research

Examining Martian Meteorites, Scientists Think They’ve Found The Red Planet’s Missing Water

Mars may have an underground water reservoir

December 26, 2014

The Mars Rover Curiosity’s landing site in Gale Crater

New Research

Curiosity Rover’s Mars Crater May Have Cradled Large Lakes

Signs of water on Mars aren’t new, but now scientists think water may have been there for a long time

December 9, 2014

Curiosity is able to take pictures of itself on Mars using a camera mounted to its robotic arm. This mosaic was made from 55 snapshots taken in October 2012.

An Insider’s Biography of a Celebrity Mars Rover

The chief engineer for Curiosity offers a peek at the NASA rover’s tumultuous rise to stardom in a new tell-all book

October 21, 2014

Astronaut Mae Jemison in the Spacelab in 1992.

Cool Finds

The Case for Sending Women to Mars

Because women are smaller than men, they’re cheaper to send into space

October 21, 2014

The Mangalyaan orbiter back when it was still on the ground.

India’s Mangalyaan orbiter dropped into orbit around Mars last night

September 24, 2014

An artist's conception of MAVEN in orbit around Mars

Trending Today

Mars Just Got a New Robotic Explorer

NASA’s MAVEN orbiter dropped into orbit last night

September 22, 2014

Sorry, rover. Planting a garden will have to wait.

Four Handy Tips for Growing Your Garden on Mars

Is it possible to have a green thumb on the Red Planet? Perhaps, after you’ve mastered a few space gardening tricks

September 16, 2014

Cool Finds

Imagine Living on Mars In One of These Structures

You could call an acropolis, pyramid or beehive home

August 19, 2014