Feed aggregator

The shooting star was part of the Perseid and Alpha Capricornids meteor showers.

The M4.4 solar flare unleashed a coronal mass ejection (CME) into space — and Earth might just receive a glancing blow.

Insights from human brains could inform how scientists search for awareness in all its possible forms

Apple TV+'s absorbing sci-fi series intensifies as our heroes enter the alien mothership starting Aug. 22.

NASA faces historic budget cuts that could shutter missions and stall vital research, prompting a bipartisan outcry from all of the agency’s living former science chiefs.

The caldera may have blasted out its cryomagma in a single explosive event, or it may have spread its eruptions over time.

In its latest postcard from Mars, the European Space Agency’s Mars Express returns to Acheron Fossae: a dramatic network of chasms carved into the surface of the Red Planet.

Our Sun frequently erupts in loops.

Just eight sessions of a bespoke form of psychotherapy seems to ease lower back pain even three years later

Just eight sessions of a bespoke form of psychotherapy seems to ease lower back pain even three years later

I don’t think space or lunar tourism is going to be the big draw that transforms the moon into something unrecognizable.

Scientists have achieved a groundbreaking milestone by creating the first detailed map of magnetic fields in one of the most chaotic regions of space, the turbulent center of our own Milky Way. Using innovative techniques to track microscopic dust grains, researchers have finally decoded the invisible forces that govern star formation in this extreme galactic environment. Their discoveries not only solve a 40 year mystery surrounding strange high speed electron streams racing through space, but also reveal how magnetic fields, stellar winds, and gas clouds perform an intricate dance that shape our Galaxy.

Science is driven by our desire to understand things. In some cases, where it requires significant effort and investment to develop systems that can understand new things, science benefits from a game plan that the community of researchers focused on a particular niche can rally around, even if they don’t necessarily agree on the details. In astronomy and space science, those game plans typically take the form of Decadal Surveys, produced by the National Academies to define the path forward in a specialization or sub-field. However, there are almost always follow-up reports that break down the suggestions from the Decadal Surveys into actionable plans that experts in the field then spend the next ten years executing on. One of those “tactical” plans was recently released on arXiv by the two lead scientists of NASA’s Exoplanet Exploration Program (ExEP), though it was listed as Rev H and released at least internally back in January 2025. In it, Drs. Karl Stapelfeldt and Eric Mamajek lay out 17 scientific goals that ExEP plans to work on over the next 3-5 years.

Life arose early in Earth's history. Was this an inevitable process, or an extremely unlikely event that happened early on, and what does this tell us about the likelihood of life on other worlds? In a new paper, a researcher calculated the variables that went into the formation of life and found that a spontaneous emergence is theoretically feasible, but extremely unlikely. Instead, he suggests that there could be protection mechanisms or unknown self-organising principles that got life going.

If you've ever dreamed of traveling through space as an explorer, you know there'll be some serious "downside dangers". One of them is cosmic rays. These high-speed particles slam through anything, including our bodies, damaging DNA and ripping molecules apart. As dangerous as they sound to unprotected spacefarers, they could actually help microscopic life survive hiding under the icy surfaces of places like Europa or Enceladus.

Unravelling Earth’s 4.5-billion-year history with rocks is tricky business.

Piles of dirt can cheaply store renewable energy as heat – and that stored energy can reactivate the machinery of retired coal power plants, letting them provide backup power for the electricity grid

Piles of dirt can cheaply store renewable energy as heat – and that stored energy can reactivate the machinery of retired coal power plants, letting them provide backup power for the electricity grid

NASA has awarded Firefly Aerospace a $176.7 million contract to deliver a pair of rovers and three scientific instruments to the moon's south pole.

Curiosity Navigation

• Curiosity Home
• Science
• News and Features
• Multimedia
• Mars Missions
• Mars Home

3 min read

Curiosity Blog, Sols 4618-4619: The Boxwork Structures Continue to Call to Us NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image using its Left Navigation Camera on Aug. 1, 2025 — Sol 4616, or Martian day 4,616 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — at 03:36:56 UTC.NASA/JPL-Caltech

Written by Ashley Stroupe, Mission Operations Engineer and Rover Planner at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Earth planning date: Friday, Aug. 1, 2025.

Now that we have reached August, our “landiversary” (anniversary of landing — Aug. 5 PDT) is less than a week away! The team is looking forward to being able to celebrate the milestone of our rover becoming a teenager at 13. Today’s image is a beautiful back-lit late afternoon image of the nearby mountains and the distant crater rim. These views make working on Mars never get old!

The first sol of today’s plan is very busy because we will only have data from the first sol down in time for planning on Monday. Today I was working as a Rover Planner, supporting both arm and drive activities. We start first thing with arm activities; we DRT brush and do APXS integration on the target “San Cristóbal,” which is a bedrock target, and the only place in the workspace smooth and flat enough for us to brush. 

After a brief nap, we have an extensive imaging campaign. We take Mastcam images of the AEGIS target from the previous plan and two potential vein targets “Rio Satja” and “Río Ichilo.”  We then take Mastcam stereo mosaics of boxwork targets “Pontezuelo” and “Catedrales de Tara.”  Additionally we have stereo mosaics of “Llanos de Challe,” a transition between the bedrock in the boxwork hollow and the boxwork ridge, a nearby light-toned exposure, and some additional troughs and ridges. ChemCam then takes a LIBS observation of “Airport Domes,” which is another hollow in the boxworks. Finally, we take a ChemCam RMI and a Mastcam of Pontezuelo.

After finishing all the imaging, we continue with the rest of the arm activities. We split the arm activities to accommodate conflicting constraints — both APXS and ChemCam both need to be as early as possible. In this set of arm activities, we begin with MAHLI imaging of the two targets, San Cristóbal and “Salar de Agua Amara,” which consists of delicate branching structures likely made by groundwater. 

After another short nap, we do a small adjustment in our position to get another interesting piece of bedrock ridge in our workspace. In order to approach it at a good angle, we first drive parallel to the ridge to be lined up with the target, and then we turn and drive straight to it. Due to constraints on how we like to park at targets, sometimes these shorter drives can be more complicated than longer ones — but today it was simpler. After completing the drive, we unstow the arm to get a clear view of our workspace for Monday’s planning as well as our standard post-drive imaging and then Curiosity goes to sleep for the night. 

The second sol of the plan is a bit more leisurely. Around midday, Curiosity will be taking some atmospheric observations, including a Navcam dust-devil survey and a south-facing suprahorizon movie, followed by an AEGIS activity where the rover gets to pick targets and observe them herself. Then, early the next morning, Curiosity will wake up to take some additional atmospheric observations, including Navcam zenith and suprahorizon movies, Navcam line-of-sight toward the crater rim, and a Mastcam solar tau to measure dust in the atmosphere. Finally, she’ll get a short nap before waking up to start the next plan.

Learn more about Curiosity’s science instruments For more Curiosity blog posts, visit MSL Mission Updates Share

Details Last Updated Aug 05, 2025 Related Terms

• Blogs

Explore More 4 min read Curiosity Blog, Sols 4616-4617: Standing Tall on the Ridge Article 1 day ago 2 min read Curiosity Blog, Sols 4614-4615: Driving Along the Boxwork Article 7 days ago 3 min read Spheres in the Sand Article 7 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…