The Latest Breaking News from Red Planet

Buttes and mesas in Mars' Chryse Planitia contain clay minerals made from liquid water interacting with the rock nearly 4 billion years ago.

Data collected by NASA's InSight lander suggest that ancient internal processes are responsible for the "Martian dichotomy" that splits the Red Planet into two distinct halves.

As Mars approaches opposition this month, it will become a dazzling spectacle in the night sky. See it at its best now, or wait until 2027.

From arachnid-like formations and mysterious blobs to an underground ocean and a giant volcano, here are our 10 favorite things scientists discovered on Mars this year.

Mars is on the cusp of becoming bigger and brighter than at any point since 2022 as it comes into alignment with Earth and the sun.

Curiosity has just finished the latest leg of its 12-year Mars mission and will now set out to explore miles of web-like surface features left behind by ancient water on the Red Planet. The zig-zagging rocks could also provide clues about whether Mars once harbored extraterrestrial life.

"We think the water came from the melting of nearby sub-surface ice called permafrost, and that the permafrost melting was caused by magmatic activity that still occurs periodically on Mars to the present day."

Mars' global magnetic field may have hung around for 200 million years longer than scientists had thought, possibly giving life a longer window to take hold on the Red Planet.

Europe's Mars Express and Trace Gas Orbiter missions captured a variety of cryptic surface features poking through melting ice across the Red Planet's south pole as spring hit the region.

New research suggests that the atmosphere of Mars could have literally "gone to ground" as carbon dioxide was greedily slurped out of the atmosphere and locked away by Red Planet clays.

Tiny black hole "bullets" left over from the Big Bang could be passing through Mars at speeds in excess of 7,000 times the speed of sound, causing the Red Planet to "wobble."