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When I picture life on Newt Gingrich's moon colony, I picture women and men long nights spent hunched over a microscope, or working in the oxygen processing center, where they'll convert moon water to breathable air. But one Madison Avenue firm had a very different view of life in space, one where women's key contribution was keeping the habitat spic-and-span. More »
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The Agricultural Research Service produced scanning electron microscope images of what frost would look like on Mars. And it isn't water crystals that form this frost — it's carbon dioxide. More »
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Who would ever imagine that sand dunes could look so incredible? In this beautiful image, sand trapped in an impact crater in the Red Planet's Moachis Terra region have been sculpted by the winds of Mars into a vast and variegated landscape. More »
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Reason Magazine just posted a must-read article from its February 2012 issue by Timescape author Gregory Benford, in which he examines the expansive dream of space exploration propounded in the early 1950s by Wernher Von Braun. And he concludes that even though NASA seems to be scaling back and our dreams of interplanetary exploration have come to a standstill, there's still hope — including a possible Mars expedition by 2033. More »
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Remember the picture of the Pratt Whitney Rocketdyne engines that looked an awful lot like a band of Daleks in disguise? That picture may have done a good job of making space shuttle engines look like a bunch of malevolent cyborgs, but there wasn't really anything in the photo to give you a sense of just how impressive these things really are. More »
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You're looking at a once-in-a-lifetime scientific discovery. A team of experts announced today that these fragments of space rock, discovered last month near Foumzgit, Morocco, are in fact meteorites from Mars. More »
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Phobos-Grunt was the chosen one. It was said that it would bring an end to Russia's Martian curse, not extend it. But now, Russia's once-promising spacecraft — the country's first bid at interplanetary exploration in 15 years — is coming home earlier than planned. More »
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NASA's Opportunity rover has been sending images of Mars back to Earth since 2004. Now, computer scientist Mark Powell, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, has developed a free app for iPhone and Android that wires these photos directly to your phone. More »
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The University of Arizona's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera is an incredible piece of equipment. Currently circling the Red Planet aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the instrument is capable of capturing photographs of the Martian surface at unprecedented resolution, averaging about 25 centimeters per pixel. More »
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Back in November, NASA's next-generation Mars rover, Curiosity, set a course for the Red Planet. But it didn't actually chart a direct course; in order to keep Mars clean of microbes originating from here on Earth, NASA actually had to aim the spacecraft so that it would miss Mars. More »
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From law-violating subatomic particles to entirely new, earth-like worlds, 2011 was an incredible year for scientific discovery. In the past 12 months, scientific breakthroughs in fields ranging from archaeology to structural biochemistry have allowed humanity to rewrite history, and enabled us to open to brand new chapters in our development as a species. More »
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So the age of human space exploration may be over for the US, but a new form of space travel could be invented - and it could be done in bed. Here's a mathematical thought experiment in which a bed sheet could get us to Mars through the power of doubling. More »
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Let's face it: It's only a matter of time until Mars comes after us. We've got lots of water. It doesn't. We've got life. It doesn't. All this might have been okay, but then we alerted Mars to our presence with our various satellites and rovers, and now it's just a matter of time. Here are some ways we might destroy the red menace before it comes after us. More »
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NASA's latest Mars rover, Curiosity, is currently its way to Mars, on a mission to explore whether life could exist there. If we're going to colonize Mars — and some scientists say we must — it's likely that we'll start by terraforming. Terraforming, or planetary engineering, is the process of altering the climate of a planet to be more hospitable to life and human exploration. Of all the bodies in the solar system, Mars is by far the best candidate. Here's how that would work. More »
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In August of 2012, NASA's biggest, baddest, and most scientifically capable rover ever, Curiosity, will touch down on the surface of Mars. More »
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A few weeks ago, NASA scientists announced they'd discovered something completely new on the surface of the Red Planet. Now they know what it is —and they're calling it the most powerful evidence for liquid water on Mars ever encountered by the Opportunity Rover. More »
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You hear us refer to it as the "Red Planet" all the time, and any amateur stargazer will tell you that it definitely appears red in the night sky — but is Mars actually red? As this one-minute video from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory explains, the answer is yes. Kind of. Sometimes. More »
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Evidently failure is no longer an option when it comes to Russia's space program. The country's president, Dmitry Medvedev, told reporters this weekend that scientists and engineers behind the Phobos-Grunt mission — the most recent failure in Russia's decades-long streak of unsuccessful interplanetary missions — could face criminal prosecution. More »
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For decades, humanity has been launching missions to Mars, in hopes of making sense of the enigma that is our solar system's most Earth-like planet. And as with all good mysteries, many of our investigations have simply led to more questions. More »
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Now that the Mars Science Laboratory has begun its journey, let's step back and remember those depictions of Martian living from years gone by. According to certain past dreamers, Mars is occasionally occupied by nefarious sentient automobiles. More »
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At 10:02 AM Eastern Standard Time, the one-ton Mars Science Laboratory began its eight-and-a-half month mission to the Red Planet. Here's the video in case you slept in this morning. And for your perusal, here's our backgrounder on this mission. More »
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The Mars Science Laboratory — also known as MSL, or Curiosity — is the most sophisticated Martian vehicle that NASA has ever built. And it's set to launch for the Red Planet tomorrow. More »
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Science fiction is overrun with Martians, from monstrous invaders to shapeshifting superheroes to Santa-kidnapping buffoons. To make sense of over a century's worth of Martians, we present this grid ranking scifi Martians on their goodness and just how alien they are (click to expand). More »
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This past weekend marked the opening of the American Museum of Natural History's brilliant new exhibition, Beyond Planet Earth: The Future of Space Exploration. As part of our ongoing Hardcore Science Interview series, io9 spoke with the show's curator, AMNH astrophysicist Michael Shara, about the exhibit. More »
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It took almost 2000 days for the defunct Spirit rover to travel 4.8 miles across the surface of Mars, but thanks to this time-lapse by YouTuber Oisiaa, you can relive its entire journey in 3,418 frames. The ending is a tear-jerker. Here's a still zippy ten-minute take. Hat tip to a_blackpanther! More »
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The Martian rover Curiosity, also known as the Mars Science Lab, is set to launch in the next few weeks. While you're jumping up and down waiting for us to get a closer look at Mars, you can enjoy looking back through history at all the missions we've launched to the Red Planet — and where they are now. More »
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You're looking at an image of Tharsis Tholus, an extinct Martian volcano that by Earthly standards is positively massive: towering 8km above its surrounding terrain, the dormant giant's tallest peak almost matches that of Mt. Everest. More »
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Russia's Phobos-Grunt spacecraft — the country's first bid at interplanetary space exploration in 15 years — made a successful launch yesterday afternoon, but is now reportedly stuck in orbit after losing communication with Earth and failing to fire the thrusters that would have sent it into deep space. So much for kicking the country's Martian curse. More »
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At 3:16 EST, Russia launched its first interplanetary mission in 15 years. The unmanned Phobos-Grunt probe is designed to drop a lander onto the surface of Phobos — one of Mars' two moons — and acquire soil samples from its surface before returning to Earth some time in 2014. More »
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NASA may be ramping up for the launch of its next Mars rover mission later this month, but the Agency's Opportunity rover — which has been chugging around the Martian landscape for close to eight years, now — refuses to recede into obsolescence. You're looking at a close-up of the Martian surface, recently shot by Opportunity's onboard cam, that reveals a line of light-colored rocks known to NASA astronomers as "Homestake" or "The Vein." And they say it's like nothing they've ever seen. More »
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Back in the Forties, the science fiction rag Planet Comics published the ongoing feature "Life On Other Worlds." This section peppered scientific know-how amongst whatever gonzo shit the writer happened to make up. Here's a tour of our Solar System using old issues of Planet Comics. Did you know that Mars is occupied by gargantuan Romans?

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Space travel is a cramped and isolating endeavor, one that can weigh heavily on the mind of a spacefarer. How well we handle conditions like these over long periods of time is something we must consider more seriously in the years ahead, as humanity looks to venture deeper into space than we've ever been. More »
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Don't worry—if we do find evidence of Martians, it will still be on Mars, we'll probably just have to dig a little deeper to find it. A new NASA study has concluded that if life ever thrived on the Red Planet, it probably did so underground, just below the planet's surface. More »
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This Halloween eve, look upon in horror at the mark of a strange and terrible beast that roams the plains of the red planet. What horrible monster could leave such an eerie footprint? Also, it's over six miles long. More »
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We know that there are small deposits of water on the Martian surface, and there's evidence of plenty more water both below the surface and in the planet's past. Now we've gained a powerful tool for exploring Mars's watery history. More »
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NASA's robotic Mars Rover Opportunity has been trekking around the surface of Mars for close to eight years now, over 30 times longer than its planned mission duration. While on Mars, the hardy Opportunity moves at a pretty leisurely pace. It took this Energizer-bunny of a rover just short of three years to span the thirteen miles separating Victoria crater from the massive Endeavour crater. But you can experience the trip in less than three minutes. More »
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All around the Martian south pole, there are huge deposits of frozen carbon dioxide, better known as dry ice. In this image by NASA's Mars Reconaissance Orbiter, we can see huge dry ice pits... and the mysterious walls that encircle them. More »
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Say hello to NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) — it's about to become the largest, most powerful space rocket we've ever built. More »
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Every now and then, an article comes along in The Onion that we wish were actually true — like this one, about Bruce Springsteen recording a whole album about workers on Mars called Red Dust. More »
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There's no way to be absolutely certain, but we're pretty sure that no germs have ever survived the grueling journey from Earth to Mars. But the latest rover to explore the Red Planet might just take along some microscopic colonists. More »
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