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Kissing may have evolved in an ape ancestor 21 million years ago
What's Driving Dark Energy?
To be fair, all scientific models are in some sense wrong
The Andromeda Galaxy Quenches Its Satellite Galaxies Long Before They Fall In
Galaxies grow massive through mergers with other galaxies. Massive galaxies like the Milky Way and Andromeda not only merge with other large galaxies, they also absorb their much smaller satellite dwarf galaxies. But these smaller galaxies can become quenched long before they're absorbed, and new research examines this process at Andromeda (M31).
Five Essential Books on Plastic, Power, and Pollution
If you enjoyed Beth Gardiner’s feature about big oil’s bet on plastics, here are more books curated by Scientific American
Curiosity Blog, Sols 4716-4722: Drilling Success at Nevado Sajama
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2 min read
Curiosity Blog, Sols 4716-4722: Drilling Success at Nevado Sajama NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image of the “Nevado Sajama” drill hole, using its Left Navigation Camera on Nov. 13, 2025 — Sol 4718, or Martian day 4,718 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — at 19:46:43 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech
Written by Michelle Minitti, MAHLI Deputy Principal Investigator at Framework
Earth planning date: Friday, Nov. 14, 2025
From Curiosity’s ridge-top perch among the boxwork unit, the highlight of the week was the successful drilling of the “Nevado Sajama” target. The data collected by APXS, ChemCam, and MAHLI from the rover workspace and its immediate vicinity gave the team confidence to proceed with sampling. APXS and ChemCam data from two targets cleared by the DRT — Nevado Sajama (before it was drilled) and “Tesoro del Pangal” — demonstrated that the chemistry of the workspace was in family with the many ridge-top targets analyzed during the boxwork unit campaign. MAHLI imaging revealed the presence of fine veins in both targets, and also confirmed the structural soundness of the drill target after the rover engineers tested the strength of Nevado Sajama by pressing down on it with the drill tip. The types of veins observed by MAHLI were investigated by ChemCam on broken bedrock faces that exposed both bright white and gray materials. These targets, “Arenas Blancas,” “Camarones,” and “Exaltación,” will provide more insight into the fluids that penetrated the boxwork ridges, perhaps contributing to their erosion resistance. DAN collected data for long stretches across the sols over which all these activities occurred, gaining data on the hydrogen (and by extrapolation, water) content of the ridge. Mastcam began and will continue to build a large mosaic of our location which will include both Nevado Sajama and the drill target “Valle de la Luna” within an adjacent hollow.
The rover payload was not only focused on studying the ridge and drill target, but also added to the systematic environmental dataset Curiosity has built over the last 13 years. REMS and RAD regularly recorded Martian and space weather, respectively, throughout the week. Mastcam and Navcam measured dust loading in the atmosphere, and looked for clouds and dust devils while ChemCam and APXS took turns measuring different chemical components in the atmosphere.
The drill activity itself completed on Sol 4718. This weekend, the first portions of the drilled material will be delivered to and analyzed by CheMin. The whole team is anxiously awaiting the CheMin results in order to compare them to the Valle de la Luna mineralogy derived from the hollow below us. We hope their comparison will provide us with new insights into how the boxwork unit came to be.
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23 minutes ago
4 min read Curiosity Blog, Sols 4702-4708: It’s Only Spooky Here on Earth Today!
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5 days ago
3 min read Curiosity Blog, Sols 4695-4701: Searching for Answers at Monte Grande
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5 days ago
Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun, and the seventh largest. It’s the only planet we know of inhabited…
All Mars Resources
Explore this collection of Mars images, videos, resources, PDFs, and toolkits. Discover valuable content designed to inform, educate, and inspire,…
Rover Basics
Each robotic explorer sent to the Red Planet has its own unique capabilities driven by science. Many attributes of a…
Mars Exploration: Science Goals
The key to understanding the past, present or future potential for life on Mars can be found in NASA’s four…
Curiosity Blog, Sols 4716-4722: Drilling Success at Nevado Sajama
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- Mars Home
2 min read
Curiosity Blog, Sols 4716-4722: Drilling Success at Nevado Sajama NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image of the “Nevado Sajama” drill hole, using its Left Navigation Camera on Nov. 13, 2025 — Sol 4718, or Martian day 4,718 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — at 19:46:43 UTC. NASA/JPL-CaltechWritten by Michelle Minitti, MAHLI Deputy Principal Investigator at Framework
Earth planning date: Friday, Nov. 14, 2025
From Curiosity’s ridge-top perch among the boxwork unit, the highlight of the week was the successful drilling of the “Nevado Sajama” target. The data collected by APXS, ChemCam, and MAHLI from the rover workspace and its immediate vicinity gave the team confidence to proceed with sampling. APXS and ChemCam data from two targets cleared by the DRT — Nevado Sajama (before it was drilled) and “Tesoro del Pangal” — demonstrated that the chemistry of the workspace was in family with the many ridge-top targets analyzed during the boxwork unit campaign. MAHLI imaging revealed the presence of fine veins in both targets, and also confirmed the structural soundness of the drill target after the rover engineers tested the strength of Nevado Sajama by pressing down on it with the drill tip. The types of veins observed by MAHLI were investigated by ChemCam on broken bedrock faces that exposed both bright white and gray materials. These targets, “Arenas Blancas,” “Camarones,” and “Exaltación,” will provide more insight into the fluids that penetrated the boxwork ridges, perhaps contributing to their erosion resistance. DAN collected data for long stretches across the sols over which all these activities occurred, gaining data on the hydrogen (and by extrapolation, water) content of the ridge. Mastcam began and will continue to build a large mosaic of our location which will include both Nevado Sajama and the drill target “Valle de la Luna” within an adjacent hollow.
The rover payload was not only focused on studying the ridge and drill target, but also added to the systematic environmental dataset Curiosity has built over the last 13 years. REMS and RAD regularly recorded Martian and space weather, respectively, throughout the week. Mastcam and Navcam measured dust loading in the atmosphere, and looked for clouds and dust devils while ChemCam and APXS took turns measuring different chemical components in the atmosphere.
The drill activity itself completed on Sol 4718. This weekend, the first portions of the drilled material will be delivered to and analyzed by CheMin. The whole team is anxiously awaiting the CheMin results in order to compare them to the Valle de la Luna mineralogy derived from the hollow below us. We hope their comparison will provide us with new insights into how the boxwork unit came to be.
-
Want to read more posts from the Curiosity team?
-
Want to learn more about Curiosity’s science instruments?
Article
23 minutes ago
4 min read Curiosity Blog, Sols 4702-4708: It’s Only Spooky Here on Earth Today!
Article
5 days ago
3 min read Curiosity Blog, Sols 4695-4701: Searching for Answers at Monte Grande
Article
5 days ago
Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun, and the seventh largest. It’s the only planet we know of inhabited…
All Mars Resources
Explore this collection of Mars images, videos, resources, PDFs, and toolkits. Discover valuable content designed to inform, educate, and inspire,…
Rover Basics
Each robotic explorer sent to the Red Planet has its own unique capabilities driven by science. Many attributes of a…
Mars Exploration: Science Goals
The key to understanding the past, present or future potential for life on Mars can be found in NASA’s four…
Curiosity Blog, Sols 4709-4715: Drilling High and Low in the Boxwork Unit
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3 min read
Curiosity Blog, Sols 4709-4715: Drilling High and Low in the Boxwork Unit NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image of the “Nevado Sajama” drill site workspace, which is on the patch of more coherent ridge bedrock in front of the hollow, towards the right-hand side of the image. Curiosity used its Left Navigation Camera on Nov. 4, 2025 — Sol 4709, or Martian day 4,709 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — at 15:10:44 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech
Written by Catherine O’Connell-Cooper, APXS Strategic Planner and Payload Uplink/Downlink Lead, University of New Brunswick, Canada
Earth planning date: Friday, Nov. 7, 2025
We are in the most intensive phase of the boxwork structures investigation — the drill campaign. The boxwork campaign group requested a pair of drilled targets — one in a hollow (the topographic low) and one on an adjacent ridge, surrounding the hollow.
As we noted in a previous blog, finding a drill target in the hollows proved to be tricky, as the hollow floors are often covered by sand and pebbles, with minimal bedrock exposed. But over the past two weeks, we successfully drilled the bedrock target “Valle de la Luna” in a large hollow called “Monte Grande.” We finished up at Valle de la Luna on Monday and moved quickly up onto the ridge to get our second target, about 10 meters away (about 33 feet).
We wanted to name our targets to reflect the difference in location — from the topographic low to the (relatively speaking) high point on the nearby ridge. Our hollow target, Valle de la Luna, was named after an area of valleys in the Atacama Desert, in Chile. This area is one of the driest on Earth, with a unique environment and an incredible sculpted landscape with geological formations that would not look out of place in Gale crater.
Although there is a mere 2-meter difference in elevation (about 6½ feet) between the hollow floor and the ridge top, we decided to name our ridge target “Nevado Sajama,” which is an extinct volcano and the highest peak in Bolivia. Go big or go home!
Wednesday’s plan centered around our “Drill Sol Zero” activities. We use this day to finesse our position for drilling with a small drive (we refer to this kind of positioning drive as a “bump” as it is usually less than a couple of meters, which is less than 6 feet) to the most suitable potential drill target. On Wednesday, we bumped our way forward very slightly on the workspace, and this morning (Friday) the best potential target for drilling was in the perfect location. Today we do our Drill Sol 1 activities, which focus on triaging the Nevado Sajama bedrock block for drilling (the center of this Mastcam image; the lower block in this Navcam image). The Rover Planners (RPs) will test the coherency of the rock, to assess how it will hold up under the pressure of drilling. APXS and ChemCam will analyze the brushed bedrock in the intended drill area. We can compare this to targets from the very nearby Wednesday workspace (“Volcan Isluga” for APXS and “Luna Muerte” for ChemCam), so we can determine how homogenous or heterogenous this area is. MAHLI will image the bedrock here too, and again compare to targets from the Wednesday workspace (Volcan Isluga and the MAHLI-only target “Sipe Sipe,” which was an area of freshly broken rock, broken as we drove over it).
The drill campaign for the boxwork area has been two years in the planning. Over those years, the boxwork campaign focus group (including me) have had regular meetings and presentations and brainstorming sessions. It is so rewarding to finally be here, in the middle of this active drill campaign.
-
Want to read more posts from the Curiosity team?
-
Want to learn more about Curiosity’s science instruments?
Article
19 minutes ago
4 min read Curiosity Blog, Sols 4702-4708: It’s Only Spooky Here on Earth Today!
Article
5 days ago
3 min read Curiosity Blog, Sols 4695-4701: Searching for Answers at Monte Grande
Article
5 days ago
Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun, and the seventh largest. It’s the only planet we know of inhabited…
All Mars Resources
Explore this collection of Mars images, videos, resources, PDFs, and toolkits. Discover valuable content designed to inform, educate, and inspire,…
Rover Basics
Each robotic explorer sent to the Red Planet has its own unique capabilities driven by science. Many attributes of a…
Mars Exploration: Science Goals
The key to understanding the past, present or future potential for life on Mars can be found in NASA’s four…
Curiosity Blog, Sols 4709-4715: Drilling High and Low in the Boxwork Unit
- Curiosity Home
- Science
- News and Features
- Multimedia
- Mars Missions
- Mars Home
3 min read
Curiosity Blog, Sols 4709-4715: Drilling High and Low in the Boxwork Unit NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image of the “Nevado Sajama” drill site workspace, which is on the patch of more coherent ridge bedrock in front of the hollow, towards the right-hand side of the image. Curiosity used its Left Navigation Camera on Nov. 4, 2025 — Sol 4709, or Martian day 4,709 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — at 15:10:44 UTC. NASA/JPL-CaltechWritten by Catherine O’Connell-Cooper, APXS Strategic Planner and Payload Uplink/Downlink Lead, University of New Brunswick, Canada
Earth planning date: Friday, Nov. 7, 2025
We are in the most intensive phase of the boxwork structures investigation — the drill campaign. The boxwork campaign group requested a pair of drilled targets — one in a hollow (the topographic low) and one on an adjacent ridge, surrounding the hollow.
As we noted in a previous blog, finding a drill target in the hollows proved to be tricky, as the hollow floors are often covered by sand and pebbles, with minimal bedrock exposed. But over the past two weeks, we successfully drilled the bedrock target “Valle de la Luna” in a large hollow called “Monte Grande.” We finished up at Valle de la Luna on Monday and moved quickly up onto the ridge to get our second target, about 10 meters away (about 33 feet).
We wanted to name our targets to reflect the difference in location — from the topographic low to the (relatively speaking) high point on the nearby ridge. Our hollow target, Valle de la Luna, was named after an area of valleys in the Atacama Desert, in Chile. This area is one of the driest on Earth, with a unique environment and an incredible sculpted landscape with geological formations that would not look out of place in Gale crater.
Although there is a mere 2-meter difference in elevation (about 6½ feet) between the hollow floor and the ridge top, we decided to name our ridge target “Nevado Sajama,” which is an extinct volcano and the highest peak in Bolivia. Go big or go home!
Wednesday’s plan centered around our “Drill Sol Zero” activities. We use this day to finesse our position for drilling with a small drive (we refer to this kind of positioning drive as a “bump” as it is usually less than a couple of meters, which is less than 6 feet) to the most suitable potential drill target. On Wednesday, we bumped our way forward very slightly on the workspace, and this morning (Friday) the best potential target for drilling was in the perfect location. Today we do our Drill Sol 1 activities, which focus on triaging the Nevado Sajama bedrock block for drilling (the center of this Mastcam image; the lower block in this Navcam image). The Rover Planners (RPs) will test the coherency of the rock, to assess how it will hold up under the pressure of drilling. APXS and ChemCam will analyze the brushed bedrock in the intended drill area. We can compare this to targets from the very nearby Wednesday workspace (“Volcan Isluga” for APXS and “Luna Muerte” for ChemCam), so we can determine how homogenous or heterogenous this area is. MAHLI will image the bedrock here too, and again compare to targets from the Wednesday workspace (Volcan Isluga and the MAHLI-only target “Sipe Sipe,” which was an area of freshly broken rock, broken as we drove over it).
The drill campaign for the boxwork area has been two years in the planning. Over those years, the boxwork campaign focus group (including me) have had regular meetings and presentations and brainstorming sessions. It is so rewarding to finally be here, in the middle of this active drill campaign.
-
Want to read more posts from the Curiosity team?
-
Want to learn more about Curiosity’s science instruments?
Article
19 minutes ago
4 min read Curiosity Blog, Sols 4702-4708: It’s Only Spooky Here on Earth Today!
Article
5 days ago
3 min read Curiosity Blog, Sols 4695-4701: Searching for Answers at Monte Grande
Article
5 days ago
Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun, and the seventh largest. It’s the only planet we know of inhabited…
All Mars Resources
Explore this collection of Mars images, videos, resources, PDFs, and toolkits. Discover valuable content designed to inform, educate, and inspire,…
Rover Basics
Each robotic explorer sent to the Red Planet has its own unique capabilities driven by science. Many attributes of a…
Mars Exploration: Science Goals
The key to understanding the past, present or future potential for life on Mars can be found in NASA’s four…
NASA Telescopes View Spiral Galaxy
NASA Telescopes View Spiral Galaxy
NGC 1068, a relatively nearby spiral galaxy, appears in this image released on July 23, 2025. The galaxy contains a black hole at its center that is twice as massive as the Milky Way’s. NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory data shows a million-mile-per-hour wind is being driven from NGC 1068’s black hole and lighting up the center of the galaxy in X-rays.
The image contains X-rays from Chandra (blue), radio data from the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (pink), and optical data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (yellow, grey and gold).
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical/IR: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI (HST and JWST); Radio: NSF/NRAO/VLA; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/J. Schmidt and N. Wolk
NASA Telescopes View Spiral Galaxy
NGC 1068, a relatively nearby spiral galaxy, appears in this image released on July 23, 2025. The galaxy contains a black hole at its center that is twice as massive as the Milky Way’s. NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory data shows a million-mile-per-hour wind is being driven from NGC 1068’s black hole and lighting up the center of the galaxy in X-rays.
The image contains X-rays from Chandra (blue), radio data from the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (pink), and optical data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (yellow, grey and gold).
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical/IR: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI (HST and JWST); Radio: NSF/NRAO/VLA; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/J. Schmidt and N. Wolk
Four-fifths of the world's population now live in urban areas
Four-fifths of the world's population now live in urban areas
How Is Botulism Getting into Baby Formula? Here’s How to Keep Kids Safe
In recent weeks, dozens of infants in the U.S. have been infected with botulism in an outbreak linked to ByHeart powdered infant formula
We can finally hear the long-hidden music of the Stone Age
We can finally hear the long-hidden music of the Stone Age
Comet K1/ATLAS Crumbles, Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS Delights
Watch an Oort Cloud comet disintegrate before your eyes. Meanwhile, interstellar intruder 3I/ATLAS is brighter than expected.
The post Comet K1/ATLAS Crumbles, Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS Delights appeared first on Sky & Telescope.
How Three Runaway Stars Solved A Galactic Mystery
All motion is relative. That simple fact makes tracking the motion of distant objects outside our galaxy particularly challenging. For example, there has been a debate among astronomers for decades about the path that one of our nearest neighbors, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), took over the last few billion years. A new paper from Scott Lucchini and Jiwon Jesse Hand from the Harvard Center for Astrophysics grapples with that question by using a unique technique - the paths of hypervelocity stars.