Curiosity’s detection of the gas, if atmospheric, could be an indicator of life on the Red Planet. But skeptics say further work is needed to rule out the rover itself as the source of the methane.
Mars Curiosity Rover
Posted inNews
Curiosity Digs Up Evidence of a Cold, Wet Martian Past
Amorphous materials, which are rarely studied on Earth, yield insights into the history of Gale Crater and the early Martian environment.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Salty Soil May Release Methane on Mars
Through roving and drilling, Mars Curiosity Rover may be breaking up the ground’s salty, hardened soils that seal methane, possibly causing a temporal, local methane spike.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
Scientists Turn Back Time to Track Methane Emissions on Mars
Period spikes of methane on Mars could originate inside Gale crater, where NASA’s Curiosity rover is currently exploring.s
Posted inResearch Spotlights
Machine Learning Algorithms Help Scientists Explore Mars
Researchers applied machine learning algorithms to several distinct chemical compositions of Mars and suggest that these algorithms could be a powerful tool to map the planet’s surface on a large scale.
Posted inEditors' Vox
Curiosity Solves the Mystery of Gale Crater’s Hematite Ridge
A new special issue of JGR: Planets details the water-rich history of a distinctive geomorphic feature on Mars dubbed Vera Rubin ridge, as investigated by the Curiosity rover.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
Curiosity Rover Reveals Oxygen Mystery in Martian Atmosphere
An air-sampling study has captured long-term trends in the concentrations of five key atmospheric gases for the first time.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Curiosity Monitors Rare Global Dust Storm From Mars’s Surface
Since the 1970s, no surface platform had made meteorological measurements of a global dust storm on Mars, but last summer NASA’s Curiosity rover witnessed one of these rare events.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
Rover and Lasers Unlock Clues to Early Martian Atmosphere
Sediments from the Curiosity rover and experiments using tanks of gas and laser beams helped reveal how water continued to flow on Mars after the planet lost its atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Posted inEditors' Vox
A Rover’s Eye View of Moving Martian Dunes
A new special issue of JGR: Planets presents findings on sand motion, morphology, and mineralogy from the Curiosity rover’s traverse of the active Bagnold dune field in Gale crater.