Pack your bags, because it looks like we are a step closer to making colonizing Mars a reality: researchers at the Netherlands’ Wageningen University have grown vegetables in nutrient-poor soil designed to closely mimic that of the moon and Mars. Looks like we weren’t the only ones intrigued by the possibilities in The Martian! And it worked! Just look at these radishes...

Human exploration of Mars dates back to the beginning of the space age. Our first machine emissaries buzzed the Red Planet in the 1960s, and... read more

When Elon Musk talks about governance on Mars, what’s really scary are the implications for democracy on Earth. By Ziyaad Bhorat.

When the newly developed Mars 2020 rover lands on the Red Planet in February 2021 after embarking on a seven-month cruise through space, we will be able to hear sounds of the landing and the Martian surface for the first time, according to NASA.

On August 5, 2012, NASA's Curiosity Rover touched down on the Martian surface for the first time. It entered the Martian atmosphere at a staggering 13,000 ...

As NASA prepares to launch a new rover to the red planet, Curiosity celebrates its action-packed journey.

Official description: Curiosity approaching Murray Buttes locality on Sol 1421.

NASA is giving us some more insight into its plans to get humans to Mars, under the blanket mission called ‘Journey to Mars,’ and during the press conference, NASA Deputy Associate Administrator for Exploration Systems Development Bill Hill revealed that the current hope is to hand off control of the International Space Station to a commercial owner by sometime around the mid 2020s.

NASA, in conjunction with global innovation consultant organization NineSigma, has launched a new competition aimed at pushing the limits of robotic dexterity. Known as the Space Robotics Challenge, the competition comes with a US$ 1 million prize purse, and could one day lead to robonauts setting up habitats and life support systems prior to a manned mission to Mars. When humanity embarks on its first crewed journey to Mars, the endeavor will be fraught with danger, and the very real possibility of human fatalities.

Mars has been the vague next big goal of NASA’s manned space exploration since the 1970s, but a real, concrete commitment never quite seemed to happen. Until now. A bipartisan bill passed yesterday in Congress authorizes a new $19.5 billion budget for NASA, and an official mandate to send a crewed mission to mars within 25 years. Oh boy. The main goal of the bill is to keep the next president from changing or interfering with NASA’s goals and development projects...

Marsquakes — that is, earthquakes on Mars — could generate enough hydrogen to support life there, a new study finds. Humans and most animals, plants and fungi get their energy mainly from chemical reactions between oxygen and organic compounds such as sugars. However, microbes depend on a wide array of different reactions for energy; for instance, reactions between oxygen and hydrogen gas help bacteria called hydrogenotrophs survive deep underground on Earth, and previous research suggested that such reactions may have even powered the earliest life on Earth.

Today, Elon Musk will finally tell the world how he wants to colonize Mars — an ambition of his that has served as the foundation for essentially all of his commercial spaceflight endeavors. Musk will specify his plans for making humans a multi-planetary species during a one-hour speech at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico.

Boeing Co. once helped the U.S. beat the Soviet Union in the race to the moon. Now the company intends to go toe-to-toe with newcomers such as billionaire Elon Musk in the next era of space exploration and commerce. Boeing Chief Executive Officer Dennis Muilenburg sketched out a Jetsons-like future at a conference Tuesday, envisioning a commercial space-travel market with dozens of destinations orbiting the Earth and hypersonic aircraft shuttling travelers between continents in two hours or less. And Boeing intends to be a key player in the initial push to send humans to Mars, maybe even beating Musk to his long-time goal.

One of my earliest memories is sitting on my grandfather's shoulders, waving a flag as our astronauts returned to Hawaii. This was years before we'd set foot on the moon. Decades before we'd land a rover on Mars. A generation before photos from the International Space Station would show up in our social media feeds.

The European Space Agency has teamed up with Russia's Roscosmos program to land a spacecraft on Mars on Wednesday, October 19. If they stick the landing, they’ll join NASA as the only space agencies in history to successfully land a spacecraft on Mars (minus the failed Mars 3 probe). And that will only be the beginning - the lander will then start a whole new quest to search for signs of life on the Red Planet.

This weekend the Schiaparelli lander will begin its descent to the surface of Mars. It's travelled more than a billion kilometres to get there. It's hoped the joint project between the European Space Agency (ESA) and Russia could be the first from Europe to make it safely to the red planet. The aim of the unmanned mission is to try to find out if life exists, or has ever existed, on Mars. On Sunday, the Schiaparelli lander will separate from the main ship, the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO).

If the trip doesn’t kill you, living there might. By Joel Achenbach.

Why blow billions of dollars on space exploration when billions of people are living in poverty here on Earth? You’ve likely heard the justifications. The space program brings us useful innovations and inventions. Space exploration delivers perspective, inspiration, and understanding. Because it's the final frontier. Because it's there. What you haven’t heard is anything to inspire a sense of urgency. Indeed, NASA’s struggle to defend its existence and funding shows how weak these justifications sound to a public that cares less about space than seemingly more pressing needs.