Amazing images as Nasa's Perseverance rover lands on Mars and seeks signs of past microbial life.

Geologists love fieldwork. They love getting their specialized hammers and chisels into seams in the rock, exposing unweathered surfaces and teasing out the rock's secrets. Mars would be the ultimate field trip for many of them, but sadly, that's not possible.

NASA's Mars Perseverance rover acquired this image using its Right Mastcam-Z camera. Mastcam-Z is a pair of cameras located high on the rover's mast. This image was acquired on Feb. 24, 2021 (Sol 3) at the local mean solar time of 16:22:38.

NASA's Perseverance rover has brought the "family portrait" bumper sticker fad to a whole new world.

Just four martian days after touching down on the Red Planet, NASA’s Perseverance rover has sent back its first video of its new home: a 1-minute arabesque of color and motion captured from four on-board cameras, as the car-size rover dangles from its rocket-propelled descent vehicle, a red-and-white parachute snaps into place, and the pitted surface of Mars comes slowly into view, dark canyons giving way to ripples of dust that look like giant, rust-colored dunes (see video, above).

A capsule carrying Perseverance will plunge through Mars's atmosphere (left) and a jetpack will fly the rover to a safe landing spot (right).

The Colour and Stereo Surface Imaging System (CaSSIS) onboard the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter mission returned this image of an area in Melas Chasma, part of the vast Valles Marineris canyon system on Mars. Valles Marineris stretches for more than 4000 km across the planet’s surface, and plunges more than 7 km deep in places.

Ever wondered what it would be like to see the Sun or the stars from Mars? Read our guide to find out what sights await future Martian astronomers.

A mysteriously long, thin cloud has again appeared over the 20-km-high Arsia Mons volcano on Mars. A recurrent feature, the cloud is made up of water ice, but despite appearances it is not a plume linked to volcanic activity. Instead, the curious stream forms as airflow is influenced by the volcano's 'leeward' slope − the side that does not face the wind.

NASA's Curiosity rover has captured its highest-resolution panorama yet of the Martian surface. Composed of more than 1,000 images taken during the 2019 Thanksgiving holiday and carefully assembled over the ensuing months, the composite contains 1.8 billion pixels of Martian landscape. The rover's Mast Camera, or Mastcam, used its telephoto lens to produce the panorama; meanwhile, it relied on its medium-angle lens to produce a lower-resolution, nearly 650-million-pixel panorama that includes the rover's deck and robotic arm.

First observations from Inouye telescope bring previously hazy star into sharp focus

New observations from a Chilean telescope showed scientists that the Milky Way's core exploded with massive star deaths just one billion years ago, a recent event in cosmic terms.

Nasa's Mars 2020 rover will have to operate on its own in a harsh environment, hundreds of millions of miles from the nearest mechanic. But for now, it’s still in development at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab — and every milestone is an important one. Including supporting its own weight, fully assembled and resting on its own six wheels, which is what the rover managed this week.

Curiosity is Mars' top supermodel. A new selfie proves the fetching NASA rover knows how to pose for the camera on the end of its robotic arm. Work it, Curiosity, work it. You can check out the full high-res image on NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab website. Look to the left of the rover and you'll spot twin drill holes created by Curiosity in this fascinating "clay-bearing unit" area of Mars.

One of the latest images of Mars looks more like cookies and cream than it does the so-called Red Planet. A photo taken this week by the European Space Agency and Roscosmos ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter's camera actually shows north polar dunes on Mars.

The most distant object easily visible to the unaided eye is M31, the great Andromeda Galaxy

Around 70 million light-years away, the spiral galaxy NGC 972 appears to be in full bloom.

NASA's rover has found a surge in methane gas that suggests there might be recent organic activity.

When InSight landed on Mars on Nov. 26th, 2018, it deployed a parachute to slow its descent through the thin Martian atmosphere. As it approached the surface, it fired its retro rocket to slow it even more, and then gently touched down on the surface. As it did so, its retro rockets excavated two small pits in the Martian soil.

The piece of space dust put on a spectacular show in the night sky of South Australia.