Fixed nitrogen: Mars was once habitable
The Mars rover Curiosity has for the first time found evidence of indigenous nitrogen in the form of nitrate in aeolian deposits and in two mudstone deposits on the red…
Category: Curiosity
Editorial: Curiosity can’t kill life on Mars
As if the news on earth weren’t depressing enough, the latest dispatches from Mars are also gloomy. It turns out the red planet doesn’t have any atmospheric methane. Earthlings longing…
Editorial: A year of curiosity
Curiosity — the car-sized remote vehicle with an array of sophisticated instruments — may have travelled only a little more than 1.6 km within the Gale Crater on Mars as…
Editorial: A river ran through Mars
From finding a trail of evidence supporting the presence of water on Mars a few billion years ago, Curiosity’s discovery of subrounded or rounded pebbles provides definitive proof that the…
Rounded pebbles on Mars point to water flow
For the first time ever, scientists have been able to collect unequivocal evidence that water had once flowed on Mars some three billion years ago. Observations by NASA’s Mars rover…
Radiation risk to astronauts travelling to Mars measured
Measurements made by the Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) on board Curiosity show that radiation in deep space poses a “significant” risk to human space travellers. During the 253-day, 560-million-km trip…
Editorial: Mars mission accomplished
Published in The Hindu on March 28, 2013 In what counts for one more extraordinary achievement in space science, the Mars Curiosity rover launched by NASA scientists has found strong…
Editorial: Watery Mars
Published in The Hindu on February 4, 2013 Mars might have been cold and dry with a transient presence of water at the surface some four billion years ago —…
