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Robotic and planned human efforts to study and visit Mars, spanning rovers, orbiters, sample science, planetary protection rules, and mission support systems.
Japan's MMX probe is due to launch on an H3 rocket on Oct. 19 to bring back more than 10 grams of Phobos soil. A sample rich in Martian material would favor a giant impact, and one matching known meteorites would favor capture, phys.org reports.
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NASA is accelerating SkyFall, three Mars helicopters that will ride the SR-1 Freedom spacecraft when it launches in 2028. Project scientist Matthew Golombek says each is designed to last six months, and the landing site has yet to be chosen.
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Pioneer Labs unveiled sPL.001 on September 22, the first of five planned engineered microbes for Mars. It is meant to make habitat bioplastic, and Scientific American calls the larger terraforming goal deeply speculative.
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NASA's Perseverance reached 28.10 miles on Mars on October 11, passing Opportunity's 28.06-mile off-world driving record. NASA says its AutoNav software has guided more than 90% of the rover's total distance.
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NASA's Curiosity rover has climbed 1 km up Mount Sharp, by NASA's count the most elevation gained on Mars. Arm work on the wind-carved yardang cliffs ahead, the study meant to show how they formed, is hoped for in 2027.
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Curiosity has drilled its 48th Gale crater rock, a target called Basque Lakes, in the newly entered Cache Creek quad. A weekend X-ray diffraction run will give the first mineral data on how this rock formed and was later altered.
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Curiosity's team planned four chemistry readings on blocks covered in disc-shaped lumps, a texture Earth rocks can show where evaporating fluid left minerals. Settling whether that happened on Mars will likely take the rover's next drill sample and its CheMin instrument.
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NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman has returned NASA's Mars missions to COSPAR's 1964 limit of one-in-10,000 contamination odds per mission. The looser rule applies now, and a review due in December 2026 is meant to recommend lowering the threshold further.
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Perseverance's SuperCam survey of more than 185 targets shows Jezero's Margin Unit is magma-formed olivine rock that met water at least three times. Groundwater and later hot fluids joined the crater lake in reworking it, so its carbonate is a harder record to read.
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The mission's project scientist describes three hours to triage telemetry and agree on targets, then four more to compile commands that must fit the rover's available time and energy before sunrise on Mars.
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NASA split $650,000 among five Mars to Table winners, led by a $300,000 design meant to produce half the food for 15 astronauts over 513 days on Mars. The entries are design concepts judged partly on how little crew time they need, so that 50% is a target until someone builds and measures it.
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Orbiters read the carbonate at Jezero's margin as lake chemistry; Perseverance found volcanic rock that water altered at least three times, in a sequence the team can order but cannot date.
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A Circulation study co-led by UT Southwestern measured astronaut hearts during six-month station missions, the window earlier work left blank, and reports the early shrinkage stayed inside what Mars-level gravity would demand.
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A Circulation study followed cardiac structure through full six-month missions using ultrasound the crews ran themselves. Because every astronaut completed the prescribed exercise, it cannot separate the countermeasure from the adaptation.
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The recommended limit is a quarter of the lunar standard, and it exists chiefly so engineers can size filters, airlocks and suit-cleaning hardware years before a crew flies.
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A fabric Vivaldi antenna sheathed in Vectran has cleared testing at JPL, letting SkyFall drag a 500-2,500 MHz radar about 15 cm above the regolith and still survive dozens of landings.
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