Elon Musk hit the ground running on advancing his mission to colonize Mars, after departing the White House with a strained relationship with the Trump administration. Musk detailed his company SpaceX’s plan to send humans to the Red Planet at an event on Thursday.

NASA hasn’t landed humans on Mars yet. But thanks to robotic missions, scientists now know more about the planet’s surface than they did when the movie was released.

In the distance, a twisting plume of red dust - what scientists call a dust devil - spiraled across the landscape near the Perseverance rover

What if billions of years ago, the Red Planet had rain, snow, and even rivers that carved out landscapes much like those we see on Earth?

Sterilizing robotic spacecraft to prevent contamination is one thing, but sterilizing human beings is impossible. We are substantially made of bacteria, and those organisms will travel with us to Mars.

It might be surprising to hear planetary scientist Nina Lanza use the word “disappointing” in the same sentence as “Mars.” After all, the Los Alamos National Laboratory researcher has dedicated her entire career to the Red Planet.

Visit Mars as it might have looked billions of years ago. Not frozen and dry, but wet, warm, and alive with flowing water.

Seybold's study compared valley networks on Mars with valley networks on Earth to see if groundwater was important to forming Red Planet valley connections. They found that the Martian valleys ...

Scientists directed NASA’s Perseverance rover to take an image of the Martian sky after a solar storm in hopes that an aurora would show up