Like much of Mars, the butterscotch plain is inhospitable, empty, ancient, and, when it comes down to it, pretty dull. But a few hundred meters to the south, over a shoal of low, uneven hummocks ...
The red planet Mars, named for the Roman god of war, has long been an omen in the night sky. And in its own way, the planet’s rusty red surface tells a story of destruction. Billions of years ...
Mars has been born afresh in the human mind with each exploratory thrust. Now it was happening again under the astonished gaze of Ken Edgett as he sat at his computer, tucked away in a leafy ...
This story appears in the November 2016 issue of National Geographic magazine. In winter the temperature at the poles of Mars can reach 200° below zero Fahrenheit. But make no mistake ...
This story appears in the August 2017 issue of National Geographic magazine. Carl Sagan spent his childhood immersed in Mars. The future scientist, an avid reader of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s ...
This story appears in the November 2018 issue of National Geographic magazine. If there’s ever been life on Mars, she could be the one to find it. To discover the earliest signs of life on Earth ...
I’m one of a team of more than 500 travelers exploring Mars from California with the ... reason it was selected as America’s first national park in 1872. Photographer William Henry Jackson ...
Advances in technology are helping explorers fulfill their purpose: Mapping the ocean floor in tiny detail for the first time.
And, their weight and design mean they can also travel beyond Earth’s immediate neighborhood, potentially ferrying humans to the moon, Mars, and beyond. By moving into orbit with its Commercial ...
David Bowie called his bandmates the Spiders From Mars—but the real spider called Heteropoda davidbowie hails from Southeast Asia. The scientist who found the orange-haired species named it in ...