The Latest Breaking News from Mars

Newly released images of Mars reveal a "smiley" salt deposit on the Red Planet's surface. A related study suggests that similar deposits, which were left behind from ancient lakes, may be a good place to look for signs of former life on Mars.

China has moved the launch of its Tianwen 3 Mars sample return mission up two years, to 2028. The new timeline suggests China could get Mars samples to Earth as soon as 2031.

Plus, a fully automated transcript of this episode

A long-lost moon could explain why Mars is so different from the other rocky planets in the solar system.

SpaceX's Polaris Dawn mission with civilian crew embarks on historic journey to Mars, setting new milestones in space exploration.

Get ready to rip and tear with our ranked list of all the Doom games.

SpaceX plans to start launching uncrewed Mars missions with its Starship megarocket in 2026 and crewed flights to the Red Planet two years after that, Elon Musk said.

Off-planet habitats could be 3D-printed from moon dust or Martian "soil", a space architect says, and teach Earthians a valuable lesson in sustainable living.

NASA's MAVEN mission and the Hubble Space Telescope have teamed up to reveal new insights into how Mars' water is leaking into space.

The ESCAPADE Mars mission, previously scheduled to launch atop a Blue Origin New Glenn rocket on Oct. 13, will now lift off in spring 2025 at the earliest.

We have used machine learning to identify the biggest plastic pollution hotspots across more than 50,000 towns, cities and rural areas worldwide. Our new global model reveals the most detailed picture of plastic pollution ever created with the highest environmental concentrations in India, predominantly because so much of its waste…