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The “quarantine fatigue” of 2020 became an ongoing “pandemic fatigue,” a complex set of emotions that continues to affect the nation

How sexual reproduction came about has long been a mystery, but an evolutionary model suggests it could have started with cells fusing to increase their food reserves

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The Gaia Hypothesis theorizes that all of Earth's systems are tied together, making one large, living organism. While there's still some disagreement about whether or not that hypothesis is true, it is undeniable that many of Earth's systems are intertwined and that changes in one can affect another. As our technology advances, we are becoming more and more capable of detecting changes in those systems and how those changes affect other systems as well. A new proposal from a robotics expert at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) takes that exploration one step further by trying to develop a system that takes the "pulse" of a planet.

The upper stage of SpaceX's huge Starship rocket exploded over the Atlantic Ocean this evening (March 6), creating a dramatic sky show for people in The Bahamas, Florida and elsewhere.

The mystery of Dark Matter endures. Despite sixty years of observation and research, scientists still haven't isolated the particle that accounts for roughly 85% of the Universe's mass. However, ongoing experiments and studies have provided insight into how this mysterious mass works. For instance, a research team led by a member of the Tokyo Metropolitan University relied on a new technique that has set new limits on the lifetime of Dark Matter (DM), bringing scientists a step closer to resolving this cosmological mystery.

SpaceX managed to catch the Super Heavy booster on Starship's eighth test flight today (March 6), but the vehicle's upper stage was lost about nine minutes after liftoff.

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2 min read

Sealing the Deal NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover acquired this image using its onboard Sample Caching System Camera (CacheCam), located inside the rover underbelly. It looks down into the top of a sample tube to take close-up pictures of the sampled material and the tube as it’s prepared for sealing and storage. This shows the “Green Gardens” sample after its successful sealing on March 1, almost two weeks and multiple sealing attempts after it was collected. This image was acquired on March 2, 2025, at the local mean solar time of 20:30:12, on sol 1433 — Martian day 1,433 of the Mars 2020 mission. NASA/JPL-Caltech

Written by Melissa Rice, Professor of Planetary Science at Western Washington University 

This week, the Perseverance team faced a stubborn engineering challenge. After successfully collecting a core called “Green Gardens” from the “Tablelands” location, the rover struggled to seal the sample tube, despite multiple attempts. This isn’t entirely unprecedented — for a previous sample called “Mageik,” it took 40 days before being successfully sealed. The Green Gardens core is particularly exciting for our science team because it contains serpentine minerals, which may have formed billions of years ago when water interacted with rocks before the Jezero crater impact. On Earth, serpentine-rich environments can support microbial communities, making this sample particularly important to understanding ancient Mars’ potential for life.  

The science team was torn with competing priorities: sealing up Green Gardens as quickly as possible vs. continuing to our next important science stop, “Broom Point.” Several options were considered: (1) stay put and focus on sealing, (2) start driving and keep trying to seal Green Gardens on the road, or (3) dump the Green Gardens sample from the tube and try extracting another core at Tablelands (this was the most drastic option). The science team went with (2), a dual-track strategy that would allow us to keep mission momentum while giving our engineers time to develop new approaches to the sealing challenge. The risk was that option (2) would keep the Green Gardens sample open for potentially a long time — depending on how obstinate the sample sealing would be — leaving the rock core exposed to the harsh conditions of Mars’ surface. 

It was a trade that mission scientists were willing to make, and Perseverance has been making impressive progress down the west side of Jezero crater’s rim. With a downhill tilt there of 16 degrees, rover imagery is providing sweeping views of the landscape ahead toward Broom Point, where the rover will be tasked with studying the bright bedrock bands in the week to come.  

And our optimistic approach paid off, because — voila! — our latest attempt to seal Green Gardens worked! The image above shows the seal successfully topping the sample tube. The next time the science team sees Green Gardens will be in a laboratory here on Earth, when we will finally learn what story the serpentine minerals have to tell. Until then, this sample’s lips are sealed, so to speak. 

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Mar 06, 2025

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