Pumice-like rafts of lightweight material could have carried volcanic debris across an ancient Martian ocean to build one of the most puzzling features on the Red Planet.
Mars
Posted inNews
The Massive Ice Avalanches of Mars
Ice avalanches may have traveled at speeds of up to 80 meters per second.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
How Fast Did an Ancient Martian Delta Form?
Terrestrial meander migration rates are used to estimate a formation timescale of decades for Jezero delta on Mars.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
How Mars’s Magnetic Field Let Its Atmosphere Slip Away
A planet’s magnetic field usually protects its atmosphere from being blown away by its star. But new research suggests Mars’s weak magnetic field may have helped its atmosphere escape.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
Mapping Martian Dunes from Orbit
New research shows how fast the sands shift on the Red Planet and how useful imagery from different orbiting cameras can be in studies of Mars’s dunes.
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How Scientists Search for Martian Methane
Finding subsurface reserves of methane on Mars could revolutionize human space travel, but it won’t be an easy hunt.
Posted inFeatures
A Modern Manual for Marsquake Monitoring
Thanks to some extraordinary engineering, the InSight mission has led the new field of Martian seismology to the development of a new planetary magnitude scale in less than a year.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Why Is the Red Planet Red? Chlorate May Oxidize Mars’ Surface
Laboratory experiments and geochemical model suggest that chlorate is very effective to oxidize reducing iron to reddish iron oxides on Mars when liquid water was present on the surface.
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 inResearch Spotlights
Explaining the Missing Energy in Mars’s Electrons
Electrons energized and trapped at Mars were thought to lose energy inside the planet’s magnetosheath, but new research suggests a different explanation of spacecraft data.