Mars

ESA's Mars Express has released a new HRSC image of Shalbatana Vallis, a 1,300 km equatorial channel that was carved when groundwater erupted onto the Martian surface roughly 3.5 billion years ago.

On Feb. 24, a JPL-led team ran a lithium-vapor magnetoplasmadynamic thruster at 120 kilowatts inside the CoMeT vacuum chamber, more than 25 times the power of the electric engines on NASA's Psyche spacecraft.

Psyche will pass 4,500 kilometers above Mars on May 15 at 12,333 mph, harnessing the planet's gravity to redirect itself toward the metal-rich asteroid Psyche and calibrate its imager, magnetometer, and gamma-ray spectrometer.

A Nature Communications paper published April 21 reports that the first off-Earth TMAH thermochemolysis experiment, performed on a clay-rich sample in Gale crater, expanded Mars's known organic inventory and detected a candidate nitrogen heterocycle for the first time on the surface.

A new Nature study identifies a continental-shelf-like band wrapping the Martian northern hemisphere, suggesting a stable ocean once covered roughly a third of the planet's surface.

NASA's Ignition initiative pauses the Lunar Gateway to redirect $20 billion over seven years toward building a permanent moon base, while repurposing Gateway hardware into SR-1 Freedom, a nuclear-powered spacecraft that will carry Ingenuity-class helicopters to Mars before the end of 2028.

NASA's Perseverance rover gains autonomous navigation and AI-planned driving while the ESCAPADE twin spacecraft head for Mars orbit, but Congress's cancellation of Mars Sample Return hands the prize of returning Martian rocks to China's Tianwen-3 mission.