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Here we go: we might not need liquid water after all on mars to get some nice flowering plants there! ... and terraform ? :-) Thirsty plants can extract water from the crystalline structure of gypsum, a rock-forming mineral found in soil on Earth and Mars.

Some plants grow on gypsum outcrops and remain active even during dry summer months, despite having shallow roots that cannot reach the water table. Sara Palacio of the Pyrenean Institute of Ecology in Jaca, Spain, and her colleagues compared the isotopic composition of sap from one such plant, called Helianthemum squamatum (pictured), with gypsum crystallization water and water found free in the soil. The team found that up to 90% of the plant's summer water supply came from gypsum.

The study has implications for the search for life in extreme environments on this planet and others.

Nature Commun 5, 4660 (2014)

Very interesting indeed. Attention is to be put on the form of calcium sulfate that is found on Mars. If it is hydrated (gypsum Ca(SO4)*2(H2O)) it works, but if it is dehydrated there is no water for the roots to take in. The Curiosity Rover tries to find out, but has uncertainty in recognising the hydrogen presence in the mineral: Copying : "(...) 3.2 Hydration state of calcium sulfates Calcium sulfates occur as a non-hydrated phase (anhydrite, CaSO4) or as one of two hydrated phases (bassanite, CaSO4.1/2H2O, which can contain a somewhat variable water content, and gypsum, CaSO4.2H2O). ChemCam identifies the presence of hydrogen at 656 nm, as already found in soils and dust [Meslin et al., 2013] and within fluvial conglomerates [Williams et al., 2013]. However, the quantification of H is strongly affected by matrix effects [Schröder et al., 2013], i.e. effects including major or even minor element chemistry, optical and mechanical properties, that can result in variations of emission lines unrelated to actual quantitative variations of the element in question in the sample. Due to these effects, discriminating between bassanite and gypsum is difficult. (...)"

forgot the reference http://www.msl-chemcam.com/doc/documents/577/Nachon%20et%20al%20Calcium%20sulfate%20veins%20characterized%20by%20ChemCam%20Curiosity%20at%20Gale%20Crater%20Mars_2013.pdf

ever wanted to know exactly the time on Mars ....

Looking for some Mars images? You don't have to steal from www.google.com/mars... Take them directly from the provider :-)

interesting idea to produce O2 differently on Mars

Also, let's see how MOXIE does onboard the Mars2020 rover! https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/mission/instruments/moxie/for-scientists/

In the Planetary Science Vision 2050 Workshop a cool concept for a magnetic dipole sitting at Mars L1 with an estimated field of 1-2 Tesla was proposed to shield Mars from Solar Winds and provide an elementary magnetic shielding to Mars.

slashdot describes the drill as "a self-driving mole developed by the German space agency (DLR)". This seems to be the drill: GEMS - a mole to explore the interior of Mars, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/OCEANSE.2009.5278132. Interesting news for all the roots people :)

HiRISE team gives public the oppotunity to propose imaging targets on Mars... i.e., they kind of stole our idea from the secondary payload brainstorm!

More arguments for a lunar base? "They found the most mass-efficient path involves launching a crew from Earth with just enough fuel to get into orbit around the Earth. A fuel-producing plant on the surface of the moon would then launch tankers of fuel into space, where they would enter gravitational orbit. The tankers would eventually be picked up by the Mars-bound crew, which would then head to a nearby fueling station to gas up before ultimately heading to Mars."

There was a paper with a very similar concept (reaching Mars via DRO) at the AAS meeting in January by Conte et al. First, the total Delta V required for a trip Earth -> LLO -> MLO is higher than Earth -> MLO. The trick is that Earth -> LLO requires less Delta V than Earth -> MLO and hence less mass has to be carried along *from Earth*. Essentially what both approaches have in common is that they say "if there's a free gas station orbiting the moon, it's cheaper to fly empty and fill up there on the way". The AAS paper actually does a decent job at estimating the "real" cost by also including estimates of the cost of a lunar base. https://pure.strath.ac.uk/portal/files/44275737/Conte_etal_AAS2015_Earth_Mars_transfers_through_Moon_distant_retrograde_orbit.pdf

RIP Mars One, you were stupid to begin with.

Who would have thought?

while the whole project was obviously a scam and i'm surprised how long it took courts to figure that out, it managed to get an enormous amount of people interested in space and ignited a conversation (even if that one was just about bashing the project :D)

lots still to discover on Mars

An hypothesis for explaining missing shoreline traces of ancient water ocean on mars: Some 3.4 billion years ago, giant meteoroids slammed into a frigid ocean covering Mars's northern hemisphere. The impacts kicked up enormous waves that raced across the water and swamped the shoreline, research suggests. On the scale of planetary catastrophes, such tsunamis would have dwarfed most Earthly ones.

Superconducting technology developed for the International Space Station could protect humans on the way to the asteroids or Mars. But will it be worth the cost?

On Saturday at 10:02 a.m. EST an Atlas V rocket carrying its precious cargo, the Mars Science Laboratory and Curiosity rover, took off successfully from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral. A statement from NASA Project Manager Peter Theisinger confirmed that all had gone according to plan.

Some sort of organic carbon has been detected by the sampling of Curiosity; the contamination source was isolated and the signal persists. The scientists suggest as a source meteorites transporting interstellar matter, or maybe some sort of ancient life whose biomass production only survived cosmic radiation as it was buried underground. a big deal: six relevant articles were published simultaneously online: http://www.sciencemag.org/site/extra/curiosity/index.xhtml?utm_content=&utm_medium=Facebook&utm_campaign=Science&utm_source=shortener

Mars Society, which advocates for manned exploration of the Red Planet, has released its requirements for the six volunteers who will be expected to spend 12 months at the society's Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station on Canada's Devon Island, which is about 1,450 kilometers from the North Pole, beginning in July 2014. Crewmembers will spend most of their time doing science, studying things such as carbon release from the permafrost and human performance in extreme conditions. If they want to go outside their base, they'll have to wear a spacesuit. If something breaks, they're the ones who are going to have to fix it.

New images of caves on Mars: http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2011/01/nasa-spots-caves-on-red-planet.html

cool !

Is there life on Mars? - We should try to compress those images!

"Is there life on Mars?" Yes, mostly on Saturday night...

nice article on Russian Mars exploration pioneers ...

Planting real trees on Mars.