Mars Missions and Science

For the first time in the history of space exploration, scientists have measured the seasonal changes in the gases that fill the air directly above the surface of Gale Crater on Mars. As a result, they noticed something baffling: oxygen, the gas many Earth creatures use to breathe, behaves in a way that so far scientists cannot explain through any known chemical processes.

Since arriving at Mars in 2012, NASA's Curiosity rover has drilled into rocks in search of organics – molecules containing carbon. Organics are the building blocks of all life on Earth, though they can also come from non-living sources. The surface of Mars readily destroys these molecules, making them difficult to detect. Now, Curiosity has discovered ancient organics that have been preserved in rocks for billions of years. This finding helps scientists better understand the habitability of early Mars, and it paves the way for future missions to the Red Planet.

NASA-TV graphics illustrating Curiosity's findings on Mars, broadcast on June 7, 2018 from Goddard Space Flight Center.

This illustration portrays possible ways that methane might be added to Mars' atmosphere (sources) and removed from the atmosphere (sinks). NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has detected fluctuations in methane concentration in the atmosphere, implying both types of activity occur in the modern environment of Mars.

There’s big news coming out of the Sample Analysis at Mars instrument suite (SAM) on NASA’s Curiosity rover. For the first time, organic matter has definitively been detected on Mars. In addition to finding organic compounds in rocks, SAM has also detected sharp increases and decreases in methane levels in the atmosphere. MSL participating scientist Danny Glavin explains these findings and what they tell us about our search for life on the Red Planet.

On August 5, 2012 (PDT), NASA's Curiosity rover touched down on the Red Planet. Aboard was the Sample Analysis at Mars instrument, or SAM, the most sophisticated chemistry lab ever sent to another planet. Now, on the first anniversary of the landing, engineers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center are using SAM to "sing" Happy Birthday to Curiosity.

NASA's Curiosity rover analyzed its first solid sample of Mars with a variety of instruments, including the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument suite. Developed at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., SAM is a portable chemistry lab tucked inside the Curiosity rover. SAM examines the chemistry of samples it ingests, checking particularly for chemistry relevant to whether an environment can support or could have supported life.

This video is a collection of various SAM assets, including sections of the Mars Science Laboratory (Curiosity) rover animation and Kennedy Space Center footage of MSL assembly and payload fairing.

Broadcast-quality b-roll clips of integration, testing, and fabrication of instruments on board the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) suite of instruments.

Interviews with various Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) personnel, including Paul Mahaffy, SAM Principal Investigator.

Overview of the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) suite of instruments inside the Curiosity Rover.

These videos give an inside perspective on what it's like to work on the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) suite of instruments! Learn more about the people who work on SAM here.

Short teaser trailer for the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument suite installed in the Mars Science Laboratory (Curiosity) rover.

The Mars chamber is a box—about the size of a refrigerator—that re-creates the temperatures, pressures, and atmosphere of the Martian surface, essentially creating a Mars environment on Earth! Scientists and engineers use this chamber to test experiments on the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument suite—a fully functioning chemistry lab aboard the Curiosity Mars rover. By re-creating Mars on Earth and using an exact duplicate of SAM, scientists can "pre-run" experiments on SAM to make sure everything will work properly on the Mars rover. Learn more about the Mars chamber by watching this video!

What do you do if you have a sample from another planet, and you want to find out if it contains a certain molecule...maybe even one that will reveal that the planet can sustain life? When scientists face a situation like this, they employ an amazing tool: the mass spectrometer. It does the hard work of separating out materials, allowing scientists to look very closely at a sample and see what's inside. Watch this video for an introduction to mass spectrometry.

Interviews with NASA scientists and engineers on February 17-18, 2021.

On February 18, NASA begins an epic and unparalleled exploration of Mars with the landing of its newest rover. As the first rover to land on the red planet since 2012, the Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover is the agency’s most ambitious rover yet. The SUV-sized rover will explore Mars in search of signs of ancient life, collect samples of Martian rocks and sediment for future return to Earth, study the planet’s geology and climate, and pave the way for human exploration beyond the Moon.

Interviews with NASA scientists and engineers on July 29-30, 2020.

For decades now, NASA has been sending robotic emissaries to explore the planet Mars. Our most recent rover, Curiosity, answered many profound questions about Mars, but each time a question gets answered, many more questions get opened up. Now we are anticipating the launch of the next mission to Mars, this one called Perseverance. It will take the next step in Mars exploration by seeking to answer the question: Are there any signs that life once existed on Mars?

This animation takes images from the Curiosity rover's MARDI camera and composites them together into a close-up trek over the Martian surface.

Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos. Both are small, airless bodies with irregular shapes. Because they lack protective atmospheres and magnetospheres, Phobos and Deimos are directly exposed to the solar wind for part of their orbits, creating complex electrical environments around the two moons.

When the Hubble Space Telescope observed Mars near opposition in May 2016, a sneaky companion photobombed the picture. Phobos, the Greek personification of fear, is one of two tiny moons orbiting Mars. In 13 exposures over 22 minutes, Hubble captured a timelapse of Phobos moving through its 7-hour and 39-minute orbit.

The Hubble Space Telescope is more well known for its picturesque views of nebulae and galaxies, but it's also useful for studying our own solar system's planets, including Mars. Hubble imaged Mars on May 12, 2016 - ten days before it would be on the exact opposite side of the Earth from the Sun.

Goddard Mars Model (GMM) 3 is a global map of the gravity field of Mars. It was created by studying the flight paths of three Mars-orbiting spacecraft — Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Odyssey, and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The travel time and Doppler shift of radio signals sent between the spacecraft and the Earth-based dish antennas of the Deep Space Network are used to measure the position and velocity of each spacecraft. Over time, small variations in these orbital parameters allow scientists to build up an accurate and detailed gravity map of the red planet.

A fleet of robotic spacecraft is exploring the Red Planet, sending back an ever-growing flood of data. While rovers like Curiosity blaze tracks through the fine Martian soil, orbiters like MAVEN and MRO circle high overhead, gazing down at the planet's atmosphere and surface and relaying ground-based data back to Earth. The Mars fleet is providing mission controllers at NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Indian Space Research Organisation with a remote presence on Mars.

Weird marks on Phobos’s surface are early signs of the end for this moon of Mars.

For decades, planetary scientists have suspected that ancient Mars was a much warmer, wetter environment than it is today, but estimates of just how much water Mars has lost since its formation vary widely. Now, new isotopic measurements by researchers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center reveal that an ocean once covered approximately twenty percent of the Martian surface. This new picture of early Mars is considerably wetter than many previous estimates, raising the odds for the ancient habitability of the Red Planet.

On October 19, 2014, Comet Siding Spring passed within 88,000 miles of Mars – just one third of the distance from the Earth to the Moon! Traveling at 33 miles per second and weighing as much as a small mountain, the comet hailed from the outer fringes of our solar system, originating in a region of icy debris known as the Oort cloud. The encounter was a rare opportunity for scientists to learn more about Oort cloud comets, the Martian atmosphere, and the solar system’s earliest ingredients.

Artist concept animations depicting Comet Siding Spring's close flyby of Mars. This page provides views of the celestial encounter from the perspective of a spacecraft near Mars, and that of an explorer standing on the planet's surface.

This visualization shows NASA’s fleet of Mars orbiters, landers, and rovers during the planet’s close encounter with Comet Siding Spring on October 19, 2014. During the flyby, NASA positioned its Mars fleet both to protect it from comet dust, and to make observations of the comet and its effects on the upper atmosphere of Mars.

These visualizations show MAVEN and Comet Siding Spring making their way through the solar system to a close encounter near Mars. Two wide angle views are included. The first one maintains a fixed camera above the ecliptic plane of the solar system. The second one moves the camera in a bit closer and more parallel with the ecliptic plane as the comet and MAVEN encounter the Martian region.

Explore different views of the two natural satellites of Mars.

Mike Mumma and his team of researchers at Goddard Space Flight Center have made the first definitive observations of methane in the atmosphere of Mars. The evidence of methane plumes only during certain seasons and the chemical processes that could lead to its possible sources both raise intriguing questions for future study.

The first definitive detection of methane in the atmosphere of Mars indicates the planet is alive in the sense that it still has geologic activity powered by heat from its interior, according to a team of NASA and university scientists. The team used spectrometer instruments attached to several telescopes to detect plumes of methane that were emitted from specific sites during the warmer seasons - spring and summer. Though nothing conclusive can yet be determined, it is possible that the detected methane was either produced by geologic processes such as the oxidation of iron (serpentinization) or by microscopic Martian life below the planet's surface. The methane released today could be produced currently, or it could be ancient methane trapped in ice 'cages' called clathrates or as gas below a sub-surface ice layer.

Conceptual animation depicting how biological organisms (shown as oval-shaped translucent structures) living beneath the surface of Mars may have produced methane (shown as blue spheres).

Conceptual animation depicting how geochemical processes during the course of Mars' history may have produced the methane plumes now seen in Mars' atmosphere. Here, through a process called serpentinization, methane is generated as part of a reaction involving the conversion of liquid water (seen seeping into the planet's crust), iron oxide, and carbon dioxide energized by the planet's internal heat into serpentine minerals.

Animation depicting how 'extreme microbes' on Earth produce methane.

Conceptual animation demonstrating the process of spectroscopy. The first animation demonstrates the general concept of visible-light spectroscopy by which white light is separated into its component wavelengths (colors) using a prism. The second animation demonstrates how this idea is applied to the discovery of methane in Mars' atmosphere. Because it absorbs specific wavelengths of electromagnetic energy, methane has a 'fingerprint' that can be seen as missing lines on the resulting spectograph.

Mars has long been a focus of NASA missions and research. This gallery contains standard-definition visualizations of NASA's Mars data, missions, and science.