Veteran inventor, business pioneer, futurist, and entrepreneur, Eric Knight, unveiled today his concept to enable the human exploration of Mars in a handful of years -- instead of the 20-year timetable proposed by NASA and other space authorities.

This was originally posted here, written for the IAG Planetary Geomorphology Working Group’s featured image of the month. The author, Kathryn Fishbaugh, is a HiRISE team member, and she allowed us to post a copy of it here as well. It’s great to see the results scientists are getting from HiRISE images - and you thought they were just pretty pictures!

At the north pole of Mars lies Planum Boreum, a dome of layered, icy materials similar in some ways to the large ice caps in Greenland and Antarctica and comparable in size to the former. The dome itself consists of the polar layered deposits, consisting of over 90% ice with a little bit of dust, and the basal unit, consisting of ice, dust, and sand.

The image shows a cliff in the Polar Cap deposits. The upper portion of the cliff consists, for the most part, of fractured portions of the polar layered deposits and has a reddish appearance due to dust both coating and entrained within the ice (red arrow). Below that is the basal unit, with more flat-lying layers of blueish material that is basaltic sand (blue arrow) (like the black sand beaches in Hawaii). You might also notice some lighter colored layers. Those are also fractured and composed of ice and dust, like the polar layers above them. And at the bottom of the image, sand eroding from the basal unit is collecting into dunes (white arrow). The entire cliff is about 700 m (2300 ft.) tall (comparable to the depth of the Grand Canyon).

Scientists study past climates and trends in global warming on Earth by examining the air bubbles trapped within ice cores (long, cylindrical samples of ice, extracted with a drill) taken from Greenland and Antarctica. These ice cores contain ice created from last year’s snowfall to many hundreds of thousands of years ago and have trapped bubbles with the same atmospheric composition as existed when the snow fell. From this composition, scientists can figure out what was the contemporary temperature and hence how the climate has changed over time. Similarly, the ice in the polar layers and basal unit on Mars must also have recorded how the martian climate has changed. (more…)

China's first mission to Mars is due to take off in October while the country's second moon probe is expected to blast into the sky a year ahead of schedule, a Hong Kong-based newspaper has revealed.

NASA's rovers landed on Mars in 2004, with a life expectancy of 90 days. Five years on, they're still working, having amassed more data on the Red Planet than any other spacecraft

Bob Zubrin's “How to Live on Mars” extends the author’s advocacy by painting a vision of a frontier Mars.

When it comes to Mars missions, NASA's twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity seem to be the robots that never quit.

Many people ask us if we are still imaging the Phoenix lander, and the answer is yes, as long as there is enough light. Here is our latest view of the landing site, acquired December 21, 2008. Conditions are hazy and dark because as the season approaches northern winter on Mars, the sun does not rise as high in the sky. Looks cold!

Some urban legends just won't die, and sometimes, unfortunately, they are given new life. We've already discussed and dismissed the rock on Mars that looks like a Bigfoot – a teeny, tiny little Bigfoot (Jan. 25, 2008). And now it's back. And it's completely ridiculous. Amazingly, this guy thinks a [...]

by Suzanne M. M. Young br /Greetings one and all.br /I know it has been a very long time, but I have been too busy to write. Sorry about that! Being the Tactical Science Plan Integrator and squeezing in time to start thinking about our amazing WCL data and what it means towards biohabitability on polar Mars kept me more than busy for many months.br /br /The mission was quite a time ? I mean that both figuratively and very literally - as we worked on Mars time for months.nbsp; I was entirely immersed in Mars operations ...

Humans have pondered the mysteries of Mars for thousands of years, with one question eliciting particular interest: Is there life up there?

A lawyer in the United States has written the National Geographic Society, asking it to publish in National Geographic his discovery that a photograph taken and beamed back to Earth by NASA's Mars Rover Spirit contains evidence of life on Mars. In his letter, Andrew D.

NASA rovers Spirit and Opportunity may still have big achievements ahead as they approach the fifth anniversaries of their memorable landings on Mars.

Landmark moments from the Phoenix Mars Lander mission will be featured on a PBS "NOVA" science program Tuesday night.

NASA landed on Mars, photographed distant worlds, added to the International Space Station, took part in a lunar science mission with India and made major progress toward returning astronauts to...

After the successful launch of the Chandrayaan-I mission to Moon, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is working on a slew of missions to conquer new frontiers of space, including landing a rover on the Moon in 2012, sending a spacecraft to Mars in 2013 and a manned space mission in 2015.

Space scientists at the University of Colorado don't have a minute to waste preparing for their newly planned mission to Mars.

Santa Invited To Explore NASA's Moon And Mars Progress

In preparation of celebrating Spirit and Opportunity's fifth anniversary on Mars in January, we've been talking with rover driver Scott Maxwell, getting updates on the two Mars Exploration Rovers and learning about what it really is like to drive the rovers. Today, Scott will share some of the highlights of the past five years, [...]

What an incredible image of a storm on Mars! The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's main assignment is to study the surface of the Red Planet, looking for clues about the history of water on Mars. But while photographing, analyzing and mapping, it also spends time each day pursuing intense weather on Mars. Sometimes, MRO [...]

The Mars Exploration Rovers have been traversing the surface of the Red Planet for almost five years now. But how exactly are the two rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, "driven" from Earth, about 150 million km away? Many of us might have visions of joysticks, similar to what are used for remote control toys, [...]