Category Archives: Space

Space

Russia launches NASA astronaut Anil Menon and 2 cosmonauts to the International Space Station

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By Mike Wall

Last updated yesterday (Space.com)

Liftoff occurred at 10:47 a.m. ET, and the spaceflyers reached the ISS three hours later.

The International Space Station has three new residents.

NASA’s Anil Menon and cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina lifted off atop a Russian Soyuz rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 10:47 a.m. EDT (1447 GMT; 7:47 p.m. local time in Baikonur), heading toward the orbiting lab.

Their Soyuz executed nominal side booster separation about two minutes after launch, followed by second stage separation about 2.5 minutes later, as the rocket flew at 105 miles (169 kilometers) in altitude. Third stage orbital insertion and separation was completed at about 8 minutes and 46 seconds, putting Russia’s Soyuz MS-29 spacecraft and crew on course to chase down the International Space Station (ISS).

A rocket launches against a chartreuse-colored sky
A Soyuz rocket launches NASA astronaut Anil Menon and cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina toward the International Space Station from Baikonur Cosmodrome on July 14, 2026. (Image credit: Roscosmos/NASA)

The trio caught up to the ISS after just two orbits, docking with the outpost at 1:52 p.m. EDT (1752 GMT). The two spacecraft were flying 260 miles (418 kilometers) above the Mediterranean Sea at the time, NASA officials said during the agency’s docking webcast.

That webcast will resume at 3:30 p.m. EDT (1930 GMT) ahead of the opening of the hatches between the Soyuz and the ISS, which is expected around 3:55 p.m. EDT (1955 GMT).You may like

The MS-29 trio will join the seven astronauts already living aboard the ISS — NASA’s Jessica Meir, Jack Hathaway, and Chris Williams, the European Space Agency‘s Sophie Adenot, and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, Sergei Mikaev, and Andrey Fedyaev of the Russian space agency Roscosmos.

two male astronauts and a female astronauts, all of them wearing white spacesuits, sit for an official portrait
NASA astronaut Anil Menon (left) and Roscosmos cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina, Soyuz MS-29 prime crew members, pose for a portrait at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Russia. (Image credit: GCTC)

This is the first spaceflight for Menon, who was selected as a NASA astronaut candidate in December 2021, in the agency’s Group 23. He’s married to Anna Menon, who was picked in the next astronaut candidate class, Group 24, in September 2025.

Anna Menon has already been to space, though not with NASA. In September 2024, while an employee of SpaceX, she flew on the company’s Polaris Dawn mission to Earth orbit. That five-day flight, which was funded and commanded by current NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, featured the first-ever commercial spacewalk and reached a maximum altitude of 870 miles (1,400.7 kilometers) — higher than any previous crewed Earth-orbiting mission had gotten.

Anil Menon is a former SpaceX-er as well; he was the company’s first-ever flight surgeon.

MS-29’s flight is the second-ever space mission for both Dubrov and Kikina. Dubrov lived aboard the ISS from April 2021 to March 2022, and Kikina spent five months on the outpost, from October 2022 to March 2023.What to read next

Kikina, the only female member of Russia’s active astronaut corps, flew to and from the ISS back then on SpaceX’s Crew-5 mission. That was a big deal: She was the first Russian ever to fly on a private U.S. spacecraft, and the first cosmonaut to fly on any American space vehicle since December 2002, when cosmonauts Valery Korzun and Sergey Treshchov came back to Earth from the ISS aboard the space shuttle Endeavour.

The MS-29 trio will spend about eight months living and working on the orbiting lab. Menon will help conduct a wide variety of scientific experiments during that stretch.

“He will continue research to refine in-space production of semiconductor crystals to enable the large-scale manufacturing of components needed for high-performance computers, artificial intelligence, and improved medical devices,” NASA officials wrote in a July 9 media advisory.

“Menon also will perform ultrasound using augmented reality and artificial intelligence methods that could eliminate the need for medical support from Earth on future space missions,” they added.

Editor’s note: This story was updated at 1:55 p.m. ET with news of successful docking.

Mike Wall

Mike Wall

Spaceflight and Tech Editor

Michael Wall is the Spaceflight and Tech Editor for Space.com and joined the team in 2010. He primarily covers human and robotic spaceflight, military space, and exoplanets, but has been known to dabble in the space art beat. His book about the search for alien life, “Out There,” was published on Nov. 13, 2018. Before becoming a science writer, Michael worked as a herpetologist and wildlife biologist. He has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the University of Sydney, Australia, a bachelor’s degree from the University of Arizona, and a graduate certificate in science writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz. To find out what his latest project is, you can follow Michael on Twitter.

Space

Voyager 1 Turned Around and Made a Discovery We Can’t Explain

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Proof Jul 5, 2026 Did Voyager 1 really turn around in deep space and make a discovery that scientists can’t explain? The internet is filled with dramatic claims about NASA’s most distant spacecraft—but what does the scientific evidence actually show? Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 has traveled farther from Earth than any other human-made object, venturing into interstellar space and sending back invaluable data about the mysterious region beyond our Solar System. Despite its age and immense distance, the spacecraft continues to provide scientists with unique measurements of cosmic rays, magnetic fields, plasma waves, and the interstellar medium. While viral headlines claim Voyager 1 “turned around” or discovered something impossible, there is no verified evidence that the spacecraft physically turned around or made an unexplained discovery matching those claims. Instead, NASA engineers continue to receive engineering and scientific data that help researchers better understand the boundary between our Solar System and interstellar space. In this video, we’ll explore: The latest updates from Voyager 1. What the spacecraft is actually transmitting. How Voyager communicates across billions of miles. The incredible discoveries it has made beyond the heliosphere. The truth behind sensational online headlines. Join us as we separate science fact from fiction and uncover the remarkable story of humanity’s most distant explorer.

Space

Staffing the moon base: How many astronauts should live in NASA’s lunar outpost?

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By Elizabeth Howell

Published yesterday (Space.com)

“The worst-case scenario consists of four astronauts on the moon at one time, only one month resupply window between Earth and moon, and moderate to high adverse environmental probabilities.”

NASA plans a to build a permanent base on the moon with a step-by-step approach through 2032.
NASA plans a to build a permanent base near the moon’s south pole via its Artemis program. (Image credit: NASA)

The success of NASA’s future moon base depends in large part on mission design, which should allow astronauts to work together well in a way independent from psychological training, a new study asserts.

The goal of the study was to identify “specific conditions” for mission success and to look for any “red flags” that may stand in the way, lead investigator Anamaria Berea, a computational social scientist at George Mason University (GMU), told Space.com via email. (The first author of the PLOS ONE study, which was published in May, was GMU’s Raymond Vera.)

The team conducted the research using agent-based models, which are tools for computational simulations in fields ranging from the study of bird flocks to the spread of disease, Berea said. While a lot of modern-day AI “trains” or “learns” to extrapolate from information provided in a data set, agent-based modeling instead uses a data set to “understand emergent phenomena that don’t have one single cause or direct cause,” she said.

The study team considered scenarios for how many astronauts would be on the moon base and how often resupply missions would occur. In an “initial case,” for example, the assumed mission duration was three months, with a single resupply run at Month 2 with food, water, air and a fresh group of astronauts.

Using a complex probability analysis known as a Monte Carlo simulation, the model astronauts in this scenario showed a productivity rate of about 20% against their expected tasks, “which is acceptable for a typical manufacturing process,” the authors noted.You may like

This productivity rate doesn’t take into account anything unexpected that may crop up during the mission, the authors added. “The low task completion rate suggests that, on average, teams are having challenges to overcoming psychological stressors and environmental disruptions,” they wrote.

Lessons from the International Space Station

NASA tracks productivity a little differently on the International Space Station (ISS). The agency uses a metric called “utilization,” which largely refers to the amount of crew time and number of scientific investigations that are performed on the space station during an increment or expedition. As of 2014, the ISS program suggested that ideal utilization should be 35 hours per crew per week when there are three people working on the U.S. part of the space station, and 68.5 hours if there are four or more. (The Russian side of the ISS works largely independently in this respect.)

“NASA has generally met or exceeded this goal and set a high of 120 average hours per week devoted to research from October 2019 to April 2020,” NASA’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG), which has been tracking all of these productivity figures, stated in a report published in September 2024.

“Starting March 2022 through March 2023, the latest published data, we have seen utilization near 90 hours per week,” the OIG noted. “In addition to the hours spent per week on research, the number of scientific investigations performed on-orbit has increased.”

Figure 1 of the OIG report also shows both crew time and scientific investigations increasing, as a trend, between 2000 and 2023, suggesting that utilization of the space station is continuing to grow. And this is despite periodic and documented disruptions that required astronauts to take a step back from being productive, such as emergency ammonia leaks requiring spacewalks, the 9/11 disaster, or sheltering in place during brief contingencies such as space debris passing within a few miles of the station.What to read next

Not all crew time can be used for utilization even if all goes well, however, as the station requires normal maintenance like cleaning, and astronauts also need daily time for sleep, meals and a little relaxation. Additionally, utilization tends to increase with larger crews on the space station compared with smaller ones, as maintenance becomes less of a burden with more hands to take on these tasks.

But “lack of redundancy” in key supply items to the space station does pose a risk to utilization, the OIG has noted. As just one example, SpaceX Crew Dragon capsules and Roscosmos Soyuz spacecraft are the only two vehicles that bring astronauts to the station right now. “The lack of redundancy and limited capabilities of both cargo and crew transportation increase the risk to NASA’s current and future ability to bring critical supplies, science, and crew to and from the station to maintain safe operations and full utilization of the ISS,” the OIG wrote in the report.

An artist’s concept of astronauts working on the lunar surface.
An artist’s concept of astronauts working on the lunar surface. (Image credit: NASA)

Isolated environments

Those of us who have been on long car rides in a group, or who remember being in tight quarters with roommates or family during the pandemic, have some idea of what an isolated, confined environment (ICE) feels like: crowded, with limited resources, and possessing few connections with the outside world. Space serves as just one example of a true ICE; isolated research bases (like in Antarctica) or submarines have also been studied in the literature, according to a separate 2021 study in the journal Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews.

Put simply, ICE refers to a location where humans must work to a high standard in isolated and often dangerous circumstances, with only long-distance support (if possible) from a mission control or its equivalent. And, as the new study points out, a moon base would be a complex example of an isolated environment — one featuring not only resident astronauts but also rovers, other robots and occasional visiting crews.

“The premise for our modeling approach came from trying to understand better the human factors involved in crewed space missions, particularly the deep-space ones, for which we don’t have a lot of historical data,” Berea said.

That’s because only a handful of people have traveled beyond low Earth orbit — the two dozen who flew to lunar realms on Apollo missions in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and the four astronauts of NASA’s Artemis 2 flight around the moon this past April.

“We ran various scenarios of space mission durations, number of astronauts, potentially unforeseen circumstances that can happen on the lunar surface or the habitat,” she said. The model suggested the missions with the highest probability of success would include six astronauts working on the moon at a time, with fresh supplies coming from Earth every two weeks, and no extreme fluctuations in the environment from things like radiation or a micrometeorite impact.

“In contrast, the worst-case scenario consists of four astronauts on the moon at one time, only one month resupply window between Earth and moon, and moderate to high adverse environmental probabilities,” Berea said. And, when asked if training is a factor in mitigating adverse effects, she did not necessarily agree that the years of work NASA and other agency astronauts put in would be more effective than shorter-duration training used for moon base analogs.

“People can be very, very well trained, but for long-duration or deep-space missions, there will always be a human factor involved,” she said. “We looked at combinations of skills and personalities in a team of astronauts, and there is a fine line between having a team that is too small and a team that is too large, and there are synergies and emergent behaviors that come from people interacting with each other and with their environment.

“The team is more than the sum of its people,” she continued. “The best ways to overcome these is not by more training, but by fine-tuning other aspects of the missions: the duration of the mission, the frequency of resupply missions, and the contingency plans for accidents and unforeseen conditions in extreme environments.”

NASA, however, puts its ISS crews through many years of remote environment training long before they float through the space station hatch — and Artemis 2 commander Reid Wiseman told The New Yorker that extensive psychosocial training led to the obvious closeness seen live among his own four lunar crewmates despite tight quarters (and vent line issues that led to occasional toilet trouble).

That psychological intervention during training was by design. “Preparation starts by recruiting mentally healthy people and then providing training to help them deal with potential situations and issues,” wrote the Canadian Space Agency of this training, citing NASA protocols. “Astronauts repeat this training often enough that they can anticipate their own reactions and those of their teammates. They also receive constant support from teams on the ground and have access to a variety of tools to help them deal with potentially difficult situations.”

Berea noted, however, that psychology forms a part (but is not the focus) of her teams’ simulation, including considering NASA TLX (task load index) scores and data, which measures coping and stress for astronauts. The researchers also considered case studies from analogs including Antarctic research missions and time aboard submarines or oil rigs, as some examples.

“We need to pay attention not only to the astronauts, but the team as a whole, and each team and space mission are unique. We will not be able to model these with statistics or AI,” she said. “But what we can do is to make sure that before we send any human to live and work on the moon, that we understand well the complexity of interactions and scenarios they will face during the mission, and we can help with that.”

Space

NASA’s New Horizons probe just woke up from hibernation 6 billion miles away beyond Pluto. What’s it doing out there?

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By Brett Tingley

Published yesterday (Space.com)

“All these discoveries from pioneering missions like Voyager and New Horizons teach us how little we know about what lies beyond.”

a rectangular spacecraft wrapped in metallic foil with a large, round communications dish floats in the blackness of space near a white, icy-looking planet
Artist’s rendering of NASA’s New Horizons probe. (Image credit: NASA)

NASA’s New Horizons probe has woken up in good health nearly 6 billion miles away beyond Pluto after spending nearly a year in hibernation.

Traveling such vast distances between our solar system’s most remote objects means New Horizons often cruises for months at a time with little to do other than passively collect data. During these periods, the probe goes into a hibernation mode in which its instruments still collect data, but most other systems power down.

New Horizons entered just such a hibernation period last August, and has now woken up in “good health”, according to a NASA statement. The spacecraft is 5.9 billion miles (9.5 billion kilometers) from Earth, so far away that it takes around 9 hours for its radio signals to reach us. Now that it’s awake, New Horizons will begin transmitting the data it has collected over the last 321 days and letting its controllers on the ground know how its systems are faring in the cold, dark reaches of deep space.

So far, the probe appears to be in perfect health. “Every status report through this hibernation period was ‘green,’ meaning all was well aboard New Horizons each and every week,” said Alice Bowman, the New Horizons mission operations manager at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in the NASA statement.

New Horizons is the first and only flyby spacecraft to conduct a flyby of the Pluto system, which it did in 2015. Four years later, the plucky probe studied the most distant object ever explored in our solar system, the snowman-shaped planetesimal Arrokoth, while it was one billion miles (1.6 billion kilometers) past Pluto.You may like

Since then, the long-distance voyager has been probing the edge of our sun’s influence and studying objects in the Kuiper Belt, the cold, donut-shaped ring of icy objects that circles the outer solar system beyond Neptune.

two lumpy space rocks joined together to form a roughly snowman-like shape, on a black background
A processed image made from data gathered by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft on Jan. 1, 2019 during its flyby of Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU69, known as Arrokoth. (Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute)

New Horizons is currently speeding away from Earth at a rate of 300 million miles (483 million km) per year, according to NASA.Space

Three weeks from now, New Horizons will begin conducting a study of hydrogen in the outer heliosphere, the region of space influenced by the stream of charged particles blowing outward from the sun, known as the solar wind.

The data the probe is collecting at the farthest reaches of our solar system is the first of its kind. It could help scientists understand what happens at the boundary between the sun’s region of influence and interstellar space, known as the “termination shock.”

Only two spacecraft have crossed this boundary before, NASA’s twin Voyager probes. However, those far-flung explorers weren’t equipped with the same scientific instruments as New Horizons, which enable it to conduct more sensitive measurements of this distant region of the solar system.

“The data from the termination shock encounter will be a treasure trove for space physicists worldwide who are eager to understand how this vast boundary works,” Pontus Brandt, New Horizons project scientist at APL, previously told Space.com. “All these discoveries from pioneering missions like Voyager and New Horizons teach us how little we know about what lies beyond.”

Space

The Horsehead Nebula

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The Horsehead Nebula (Barnard 33) rises from a cloud of dust and hydrogen some 1,600 light-years from Earth. Illuminated by nearby stars, its familiar silhouette reminds us that form and meaning often emerge together. Through different instruments, the horse may vanish, yet the underlying reality remains—inviting us to see anew. (from New Thinking Allowed)

Space

NASA Moon Base Update (June 30, 2026)

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NASA Streamed live on Jun 30, 2026 Watch a live, virtual conversation with NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman to hear progress on our plans to build a Moon Base on the lunar surface. Administrator Isaacman and Carlos García-Galán, Moon Base program manager, discuss the next set of awards for new lunar lander missions and preview upcoming opportunities as we work toward building a sustained presence on the Moon. More about the Moon Base: https://www.nasa.gov/moonbase Credit: NASA

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NASA Rover Finds “Complex Organic Matter” on Mars

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A “resounding win for Mars science.”

By Victor Tangermann

Published Jun 26, 2026 (Futurism.com)

A photograph of the Perseverance rover on the surface of Mars.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

After more than five years of roaming the desolate and dusty landscapes of the Martian surface, NASA’s Perseverance rover has come across some of the most intriguing evidence yet of ancient microbial life on the Red Planet. As detailed in a new paper published in the journal Science Advances, scientists confirmed that Perseverance had discovered a rock that contained “complex organic matter” — the building blocks of life, in biological parlance — in two rocks in a formation dubbed Bright Angel.

The outcropping is located inside the Jezero crater, which scientists believe is an ancient lakebed that dried out billions of years ago. The scientists found that samples from the rocks that Perseverance originally found in 2024 contained macromolecular carbon (MMC), large networks of carbon atoms commonly found in Earth rocks containing fossilized biological carbon and meteorites.

An initial analysis of the rocks made headlines last year after NASA announced it had spotted “potential biosignatures,” pointing at compelling “leopard spots” that may have been left behind by microbial life.

The latest paper fleshes out the compelling case even further, confirming the detection of MMC in the rocks by using one of Perseverance’s scientific instruments to detect their composition by shining an ultraviolet laser at them.

“Measurements of two mudstones show hundreds of organic detections, making this the most robust organic detection in Jezero crater thus far, and, to our knowledge, the only detection of macromolecular carbon on a natural rock surface on Mars,” the paper reads.

Hold your horses on the idea that they’ve confirmed extraterrestrial life, however: MMC can form both through biotic and abiotic processes.

“While the specific formation mechanism of the MMC detected in the Bright Angel mudstones remains unknown, this is still one of the most exciting findings to date,” said co-lead and Planetary Science Institute postdoctoral researcher Ashley Murphy in a statement, calling the discovery a “resounding win for Mars science.”

The MMCs might also original off world; they could either “be from meteorites or cosmic dust; abiological processes like hydrothermal reactions; or they could be biological in nature,” as Washington University planetary scientist Paul Byrne told Science News.

The scientists suggest fine-grained sediment carried by water through an ancient river channel hardened into the rocks Perseverance analyzed using its Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals (SHERLOC) instrument.

Scientists were baffled how close to the surface — mere microns away — the MMCs were preserved, considering the extreme environment.

“The Martian surface environment includes radiation and chemical oxidants that are destructive to organics, and terrestrial laboratory simulations have shown that the survival time of organics in Martian-like conditions — especially at or near the surface — depends on factors such as the type of organic molecule and the surrounding minerals,” Murphy explained.

“The MMC detected in the Bright Angel mudstones is either resistant to degradation and/or has been sufficiently shielded by other minerals, such as clays, or iron-rich Martian soil,” she added.

It’s yet another intriguing chapter in our efforts to probe the planet’s surface for evidence of ancient microbial life. Intriguingly, more than 2,000 miles away, NASA’s Curiosity rover detected organic molecules as well, raising the possibility that life may have once spread over a vast area.

However, to confirm the presence of microbial life, samples would need to be shipped back to Earth, an extremely complicated and expensive plan that has turned into a painful political football.

“The science payload of the Perseverance rover was not designed to distinguish between organics formed via abiotic and biotic processes but was instead selected to identify compelling rocks to be collected for possible return to Earth for more rigorous testing,” coauthor and NASA Jet Propulsion Lab research scientist Kyle Uckert told Space.com.

Unfortunately, after years on life support, the Trump administration effectively killed NASA’s proposed Sample Return mission, which means it will take some time to get more answers.

More on life on Mars: Now That NASA Found Signs of Life on Mars, It’s Clear Trump Made a Massive Error

Victor Tangermann

Senior Editor

I’m a senior editor at Futurism, where I edit and write about NASA and the private space sector, as well as topics ranging from SETI and artificial intelligence to tech and medical policy.

Space

Did NASA just find evidence of ancient life on Mars? Perseverance rover spots complex carbon in Red Planet rocks

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By Chelsea Gohd published 2 days ago (Space.com)

“Measurements of two mudstones show hundreds of organic detections, making this the most robust organic detection in Jezero crater.”

A "selfie" of the Perseverance rover shows a metal/robotic rover on a brownish bit of land with lots of rocks.
A “selfie” the Perseverance rover took. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

Could Martian mudstones be holding evidence of ancient microbes? New findings strengthen the case that the Red Planet once held life.

New data from NASA’s Perseverance rover has revealed complex carbon in two Martian mudstones found in Mars’ Jezero crater, the same location where previous evidence of possible ancient life has been found. Scientists think this macromolecular (meaning large) complex carbon, could hold evidence that ancient microbial life once existed in the same sedimentary material, according to one new paper describing these observations. “Measurements of two mudstones show hundreds of organic detections, making this the most robust organic detection in Jezero crater,” the paper reads.

This comes soon after the news last year that Perseverance found what has been dubbed the strongest evidence of potential biosignatures, or hints of life, on Mars.

“Carbon is the primary building block for life on Earth, and all living things are made up of complex organic macromolecules,” co-lead author Ashley Murphy, a researcher at the Planetary Science Institute, told Space.com. “On Earth, [macromolecular carbon] is often found in extremely old rocks and in some cases it is the only organic evidence of past microbial life.

“Since early Mars may have been more similar to Earth,” Murphy added, “we may anticipate finding [macromolecular carbon] in old Martian rocks too, so we are searching for these organic macromolecules on Mars and other planetary bodies to determine whether the necessary chemical ingredients and environmental conditions to support life have ever existed there.”You may like

Perseverance landed on Mars in 2021 in Jezero Crater, an expansive crater thought to once be a lake that could have possibly harbored life. This landing site was in fact chosen because scientists thought it could have some of the best evidence for possible ancient life on the planet. And so far, in Perseverance’s extensive explorations — which have now officially taken the rover the distance of a marathon on Mars — that prediction seems like it’s turning out to be true.

In this new research, a team of scientists co-led by Murphy used Perseverance’s spectrometer SHERLOC (the Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals), which uses lasers to identify an area or object’s chemical and mineral makeup, to map the distribution of organic matter in the individual mudstones. The crew found organic carbon inside two mudstones.Space

Furthermore, these carbon-filled mudstones were found in the same location as the last year’s discovery of a potential biosignature found in a sedimentary rock on the Red Planet, which scientists say is still the strongest evidence that life could have once existed on early Mars. In this discovery, Perseverance found a rock now-named “Cheyava Falls” with distinctive “leopard spots.”

These types of rock marking can be created in high heat or extremely acidic temperatures, but neither of these conditions are thought to have existed in the area. However, the markings can also be formed by the presence of life. So, while this rock wasn’t conclusive evidence of past life on Mars, it certainly provided significant evidence that is now supported by this new data.

With these observations, the rover has made two main findings.What to read next

First, Perseverance has found organic, large, complex carbon in mudstones in Bright Angel, a rocky area on the northern and southern edges of Neretva Vallis, which is an ancient river valley in the Jezero area. And not only did Perseverance make hundreds of detections of organic carbon in these rocks, but the researchers also state that this is “the only detection of macromolecular carbon on a natural rock surface on Mars.”

“This is also the first detection of MMC in a mudstone on Mars outside of Gale Crater, suggesting that the availability of organics may have been widespread across the planet billions of years ago,” co-lead author Kyle Uckert, the SHERLOC deputy principal investigator at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told Space.com.

A closeup of "leopard spots" on Mars seen by the Perseverance rover.
A closeup of “leopard spots” on Mars seen by the Perseverance rover on the rock Cheyava Falls, which may show signs of a biosignature, but could also be from geologic processes. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

While both studied mudstones have organic carbon in their interiors, according to these observations from Perseverance, there were some differences between the two rocks. The carbon in one mudstone was found mixed with primarily silicate minerals, while the other was filled with carbon mixed with secondary carbonate and sulfate minerals. The team also found that the carbon in both rocks was relatively intact, meaning the specimens might be resistant to radiation and oxidation or that it may have been recently exposed to the Martian surface.

Secondly, the team found that, in this identified carbon, Perseverance has detected evidence of potential biochemical interactions. These interactions left behind features in the two mudstones that look just like features created by microscopic life in sediments on Earth. This begs the question: Did ancient microbes on Mars really live in the sediments in this once-flowing river?

Maybe, maybe not. While that would certainly be one explanation, it’s also possible that the carbon could have been created without life.

“There are multiple potential pathways to form abiotic organics on Mars,” the authors state in this paper, clarifying that this, even compounded with other existing data, cannot conclusively say whether or not life created what Perseverance has observed.

“The science payload of the Perseverance rover was not designed to distinguish between abiotic and biotic processes, but was instead selected to identify compelling rocks to be collected for possible return to Earth for more rigorous testing,” Uckert told Space.com. Uckert added that there could be many non-life reasons behind the presence of this complex carbon, “for example, it may have been delivered to the surface via meteoritic infall, or formed through hydrothermal geologic processes,” he said.

For now, we can only wait until the next juicy bit of evidence about ancient life on Mars reveals itself.

This work was described in a paper published June 24 in the journal Science Advances.

Space

I went to space and discovered an enormous lie | Ron Garan

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Big Think Dec 14, 2022 Become a Big Think member to unlock expert classes, premium print issues, exclusive events and more: https://bigthink.com/membership/?utm_… What astronaut Ron Garan saw in space changed his life forever – here’s what it taught him. Subscribe to Big Think on YouTube ►    / @bigthink   Up next, Neil deGrasse Tyson: 3 mind-blowing space facts ►    • Neil deGrasse Tyson: 3 mind-blowing space …   A curious phenomenon often occurs when astronauts travel to space and look out on our planet for the first time: They see how interconnected and fragile life on Earth is, and they feel a sudden responsibility to protect it. Astronaut @RonGaran experienced this so-called “overview effect” when he first saw Earth from space. When he looked out on the planet, he saw an iridescent biosphere teeming with life, all protected by a remarkably thin atmosphere. What he did not see was the thing that society often gives top priority: the economy. For Garan, seeing Earth from space revealed problems like global warming, deforestation, and biodiversity loss are not disconnected. They are the symptoms of an underlying flaw in how we perceive ourselves as humans: We fail to realize that we are a planetary species. Learn more about Ron Garan ► https://www.rongaran.com/ Read the video transcript ► https://bigthink.com/life/overview-ef…0:00 The lie humanity is living 1:28 Escaping Plato’s cave 2:15 What astronaut’s see in space 4:07 The orbital perspective 4:50 The ‘dolly zoom’: gain mental altitude ———————————————————————————- About Ron Garan: Former NASA astronaut, serial entrepreneur, humanitarian, and highly decorated combat fighter Ron Garan racked up 178 days in space and more than 71 million miles in 2,842 orbits between tours on the US Space Shuttle, Russian Soyuz spacecraft, and the International Space Station. During his time in space, Garan conducted four spacewalks in support of ISS construction and maintenance. Prior to those space journeys, he lived and conducted research on the bottom of the ocean in the world’s only undersea research lab, Aquarius. Before reaching the summit of his career, Garan, a former test pilot and graduate of the US Naval Test Pilot School, taught hundreds of elite fighter pilots how to “up their game” as a flight instructor at the prestigious USAF Fighter Weapons School, the Air Force version of TOP GUN. He is the author of the critically acclaimed books: The Orbital Perspective, Floating in Darkness: A Journey of Evolution, and the children’s book, Railroad to the Moon. Garan is celebrated not just for his research in space but also for his humanitarian contribution to life on Earth.

NASA astronaut Ron Garan’s epiphany in space | The InnerView

TRT World Jan 16, 2023 When former F-16 fighter pilot Ron Garan went up into space for NASA, the astronaut came back down to earth a changed man. He explains to Imran Garda on The InnerView why he believes we all need to live with an “orbital perspective” to save us from ourselves. More on Ron Garan: https://www.rongaran.com/trt/00:00 Meet Ron Garan 01:10 How space changed how he sees the world 03:04 Experiencing awe 03:54 “We look absolutely ridiculous from the vantage point of space” 04:41 On colonising other planets 05:56 International space cooperation with Russia 09:15 “War is humanity’s greatest failure” 10:59 Tribalism 13:02 Moving from words to action 14:22 Feedback 15:25 Social media manipulation 18:04 On experiencing spiritual enlightenment after space trips 19:25 Militarisation of space 23:36 Billionaires in space

Substack Live with Astronaut Ron Garan

Marianne Williamson Jun 9, 2026 It was great talking live today with astronaut and social entrepreneur Ron Garan. He has a profound understanding of what it will take for humanity to evolve beyond this critical inflection point at which we find ourselves. Much of what he learned came from epiphanies gleaned while working both at the bottom of the ocean and in the further reaches of outer space. How fortunate we are to have his wisdom among us. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did. You can learn more about Ron Garan at RonGaran.com and Ron Garan.Substack.com, where he is currently publishing his novel Infinite Simplicity. Subscribe to Marianne’s Substack: MarianneWilliamson.Susbtack.com