Mars News and Discussions

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Finding Water On Mars
By Mark Thompson
January 26, 2026

Introduction:

(Universe Today) Scientists have known that Mars has water for some years, documenting ice beneath the surface, moisture locked in soil, and vapour drifting through the thin atmosphere. The challenge facing future human missions isn't finding water on the Red Planet, it’s figuring out how to actually extract and use it.

Dr Vassilis Inglezakis at the University of Strathclyde has tackled this practical problem in a new study that compares the various technologies capable of recovering Martian water. While previous research focused on identifying where water exists, this analysis examines the crucial next step which is the evaluation of how effectively each extraction method would work under authentic Martian conditions.

Reliable water access would prove essential not just for drinking but for producing oxygen and fuel, dramatically reducing dependence on supplies shipped from Earth at enormous expense. A self sufficient Mars base needs local water, and it needs extraction systems that actually function in an environment far harsher than anywhere on Earth.

Inglezakis compared three primary water sources and their associated technologies.

Subsurface ice…

Soil mosture…

Atmospheric water harvesting…

Read more here: https://www.universetoday.com/articles ... r-on-mars

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Hidden Ancient River System Found Deep Under the Surface of Mars
By Michelle Starr
March 19, 2026

Introduction:

(Science Alert) Far away, alone in a crater on a planet inhabited only by robots, NASA's Perseverance rover explores a dry landscape that was once a river system billions of years ago.

According to a new discovery, however, the Jezero Delta on Mars is not the sole remnant of abundant water that once flowed across the surface. Perseverance's RIMFAX instrument has now probed deeper than ever beneath the Jezero crater, revealing a vast delta system fed by flowing water that existed long before the one the rover now explores.

In turn, this indicates that water flowed across the surface of Mars for much longer than the surface alone implies – a finding with important implications for the planet's past habitability.

"RIMFAX has revealed an earlier subsurface deltaic environment under the present-day delta, thereby extending the period of potential habitability for Jezero back further in time," writes a team led by geomicrobiologist Emily Cardarelli of the University of California, Los Angeles.

"This work also improves the chances of finding evidence for past life, as the formation of the present-day Delta Fan may have been rapid."

Read more here: https://www.sciencealert.com/hidden-an ... e-of-mars

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NASA plans to send a nuclear-powered spacecraft to Mars in 2028

Spacecraft would release helicopters to explore martian surface

24 Mar 20266:15 PM ET

NASA will seek to send a nuclear-powered spacecraft to Mars in December 2028 to deploy three helicopters to scout the surface, NASA’s new administrator, Jared Isaacman, announced today. Such a mission, he said, will “unlock the capabilities necessary for sustained exploration beyond the Moon and missions to Mars and the outer Solar System.”

The ambitious spacecraft, called Space Reactor-1 (SR-1) Freedom, would test nuclear-powered space travel for the first time since the 1960s. But the mission may be more feasible to build than it would seem at first glance, because it would draw on a device already built for Gateway, a small space station planned for lunar orbit. It would convert heat from a small 20-kilowatt fission reactor, which is also mostly already built, into electric power for propulsion. “It is the first freight run on the transcontinental railroad of the Solar System,” said Steven Sinacore, NASA’s program executive of fission surface power.

https://www.science.org/content/article ... -mars-2028



If successfully launched to Mars in 2028, the Space Reactor-1 Freedom craft would host a small nuclear reactor at the end of a long boom. Credit: NASA

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Meet Orpheus - A Hopper Mission Built to Hunt for Life In Martian Volcanoes
By Andy Tomaswick
April 8, 2026

Introduction:

(Universe Today) We’ve spent decades scratching the surface of Mars trying to uncover life there. But we’ve been searching a barren wasteland bombarded by radiation and bathed in toxic perchlorates. The entire time, it's likely that it’s been too hostile to harbor extant life. So if we want a better shot at finding currently living life on Mars, we need to go underground. That is exactly the purpose of Orpheus, a proposed Mars vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) hopper mission put forth by Connor Bunn and Pascal Lee of the SETI Institute at the 57th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC).

In what might be the best naming reference for a space mission ever, Orpheus is named after the Greek hero who tamed the three-headed hound Cerberus to gain access to the Underworld. The actual mission aims to explore the deep volcanic fissures, pits, and cave vents of a region of Mars known as Cerberus Fossae. While there, it plans to unlock some of Mars’ origin story, as well as search for biosignatures that indicate the presence of extant life.

Finding something on another planet that is still alive is the single highest priority of the field of astrobiology. It’s the only way we can perform the protein and genetic analyses needed to prove that the life we found didn’t just hitch a ride from Earth on a meteorite billions of years ago. But so far, we’ve come up with nothing.

Fraser talks about different Mars Helicopter-like missions.

Cerberus Fossae, however, is a good place to look for it. It’s part of Elysium Planitia, and boasts some of the youngest known volcanoes and lava flows on the entire Red Planet. Young volcanoes are thought of as potential astrobiological gold mines - they hold better-preserved erupted materials, and, crucially, fresher biosignatures. Not to mention that life on Earth itself might very well have started next to volcanic fissures in the deep ocean.

Read more here: https://www.universetoday.com/articles ... volcanoes

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