Curiosity rover finds more coral-shaped rocks on Martian surface
The Curiosity Mars rover photographed more rocks that are shaped like coral on the red planet's surface.
Researchers said the rocks were evidence that at one point water was on Mars.
The Curiosity rover has been on the red planet for over 13 years.
NASA's Curiosity rover has spotted some unusually-shaped rocks on Mars' surface.
Coral on Mars?
Dig deeper
Photos shared on NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory website show wind-eroded rocks that are shaped like pieces of coral.
The rover discovered these specimens on July 24, 2025.
Researchers nicknamed the rock "Paposo."
The backstory
Many rocks like Papaso litter the red planet's surface, which researchers said formed billions of years ago when liquid water still existed on Mars.
In 2022, NASA shared images of another rock that also looked like coral but more flower-shaped.
The flower-shaped rock was found in the Gale Crater.
What they're saying
"Water carried dissolved minerals into rock cracks and later dried, leaving the hardened minerals behind. Eons of sandblasting by the wind wore away the surrounding rock, producing unique shapes," NASA said.
Curiosity has been roving Mars' surface for 13 years, according to JPL's website.
The Source
Information for this article was taken from the JPL website.
Solve the daily Crossword
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
USA Today
41 minutes ago
- USA Today
Perseid meteor shower nears its 2025 peak, but viewing might be 'hampered'
It's that time of year again, and the peak of what's revered as the 'best meteor shower of the year' is approaching. The Perseid meteor shower is considered the best of the year due to how many meteors viewers can see, about 50 to 100 per hour, according to NASA. Meteor showers occur when Earth passes through streams of debris left behind by comets and asteroids, according to the Natural History Museum in London. A meteor shower peak occurs when Earth passes through the thickest part of the debris stream; that's when viewers see the highest rate of meteors. Here's more on the Perseids, how to check them out, and why this year's display could be diminished. When is the Perseid meteor shower? While the Perseid meteor shower is active from July 17 to Aug. 23, the peak is between Aug. 12 and 13 during pre-dawn hours, NASA said. It may be possible to see meteors from the shower as early as 10 p.m. though, according to NASA. Why this year's Perseid shower might be 'hampered' During this year's peak on Aug. 12, the Perseid meteor shower may be "hampered" due to an 84%-full moon, NASA said. "Unfortunately, this year the Moon is nearly full on the peak night, and its glare will wash out all but the brightest meteors," NASA wrote. 'A few bright meteors may still be seen in the pre-dawn hours, but viewing conditions are not ideal,' NASA wrote, adding that skywatchers could look forward to another favorite meteor shower, the Geminids, which is set for "moon-free viewing in December." Sky condition, or the average amount of the sky covered with thick clouds, also plays a role in how well viewers can see the meteor shower. The night of Tuesday, Aug. 12, sky cover will be higher in southeastern U.S. states such as Georgia and North Carolina. Gray areas on the below map are expected to have higher sky cover in the early morning hours of Tuesday, Aug. 12, according to a National Weater Service forecast posted Aug. 8. How to see the Perseid meteor shower According to NASA, some tips for seeing meteor showers include: Perseid meteor shower has bright lights, fireballs The Perseid meteor shower peaks in mid-August each year, NASA said, giving viewers the chance to peer at bright meteors that leave long "wakes" of light and color behind them as they move through the Earth's atmosphere. Perseids are also known for fireballs, or larger explosions of light and color that can last longer than the average meteor streak and are brighter, NASA said. The meteor shower moves at the fast rate of 37 miles per second or 133,200 miles per hour, according to the American Meteor Society (AMS). Where did the Perseid meteor shower get its name? The meteors are called Perseids since they come from the part of the sky near the constellation of Perseus, named after the Greek hero, the AMS said. 'The constellation for which a meteor shower is named only serves to aid viewers in determining which shower they are viewing on a given night,' NASA said about the name. 'The constellation is not the source of the meteors.' The Perseids are particles released from comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle as it returns to the inner solar system, the organizations said. Comet Swift-Tuttle takes 133 years to orbit the Sun once, and it last visited the inner solar system in 1992. Saleen Martin is a reporter on USA TODAY's NOW team. She is from Norfolk, Virginia – the 757. Email her at sdmartin@
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
The Largest Space Tech IPO of the Year Just Launched, With a $6.3 Billion Valuation. Can the Stock Go to the Moon?
Key Points Firefly Aerospace has notched some operational successes with its rockets and lunar lander. The company's partnerships with major industry players could be advantageous. But Firefly's incomplete financial and management picture should give investors pause. 10 stocks we like better than Firefly Aerospace › Firefly Aerospace (NASDAQ: FLY) just pulled off its second-most impressive launch of the year. The most impressive launch came in January, when the company sent its new uncrewed Blue Ghost module to the moon. The mission's success gave Firefly bragging rights as the first U.S. company to execute a fully successful soft lunar landing (that is, landing without causing serious damage to the module). It also generated a huge wave of interest in the company. That interest is clearly still white-hot, because Firefly's Thursday IPO launched the company onto the Nasdaq at a valuation of $6.3 billion. Can it rocket even higher? Or will it fall back to earth? What Firefly actually does Fans of the canceled-way-too-soon space Western Firefly will be sad to learn that the company's name isn't actually related to the TV series. Instead, it's a name Firefly founder Tom Markusic -- a former SpaceX and Virgin Galactic (NYSE: SPCE) engineer -- selected to embody a hypothetical future in which rocket launches are as common in the night sky as fireflies. Indeed, Firefly Aerospace has gone all-in on making launches more frequent and more accessible. It developed the Alpha rocket, a smaller, lighter rocket manufactured from carbon fiber composites that launched a satellite into orbit with just 24 hours' notice in 2023. While the Alpha is certainly lighter (and thus, less expensive to launch) than most other commercial rockets, the roughly one-ton payload capacity is somewhat restrictive: Firefly's Blue Ghost lunar lander, for example, was too heavy for the Alpha rocket and had to be launched using a SpaceX Falcon 9. Firefly is also working on the Elytra orbital vehicle and lunar imaging service Ocula. The company has nine planned non-test missions through 2029: five for NASA, one for the U.S. Space Force, and three for commercial clients, for a total current project backlog of $1.1 billion. Why its stock might take off... With more companies (and people) heading to space, demand for cheaper spaceflight is likely to skyrocket (no pun intended). As a company offering a more affordable rocket that has already had successful launches, Firefly is well ahead of many would-be competitors. Additionally, Firefly is receiving investment and support from industry heavyweights including Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) and L3Harris (NYSE: LHX). In May, Firefly received a $50 million investment from Northrop Grumman (NYSE: NOC). Being in the good graces of such major aerospace players is a big advantage for the start-up, both financially and reputationally. Today's commercial space industry is a fairly crowded place, with companies big and small jockeying for limited funds and contracts. However, early success tends to encourage investment, which fuels future success. Firefly seems to have all the right ingredients, including an active contract pipeline, major industry partnerships, and a few successful early missions. If it can keep it up, it could be the next maybe an even bigger success story. ...and why it might not For an 11-year-old company, Firefly has had a checkered past, which includes IP issues, a 2017 bankruptcy, government intervention over national security concerns, and an abrupt July 2024 CEO departure (current CEO Jason Kim took the helm in October 2024). Meanwhile, private equity firm AE Industrial Partners controls the company with a 40.9% stake; the firm's employees currently hold five of Firefly's nine board seats. As the IPO prospectus notes, "AE Industrial Partners controls us, and its interests may conflict with ours or yours in the future." That's...a lot, and we haven't even gotten to the company's financials. Because it's an IPO, we don't even have a full quarterly financial report from Firefly yet. But its IPO prospectus shows a net loss of about $125 million in the first half of 2025, along with negative free cash flow of about $97.5 million, with just $205.3 million in cash on its balance sheet and $173.6 million in debt. Not a pretty picture. Now, it's not unusual for new start-ups to have high net losses and negative free cash flow, but given the lack of context and details, it's worth asking: Does this business deserve a $6.3 billion valuation? How about $8.4 billion, which the company briefly hit on its first day of public trading Thursday? To me, that seems pretty expensive for an unproven business with opaque financials in a competitive, high-risk industry that's controlled by a venture capital firm and led by a brand new CEO. Before I'd buy shares, I'd want to at least see a few quarterly reports to get a clearer picture of how the company operates. It would still be a risky bet, but right now it feels too risky to buy. Should you buy stock in Firefly Aerospace right now? Before you buy stock in Firefly Aerospace, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the for investors to buy now… and Firefly Aerospace wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $653,427!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $1,119,863!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 1,060% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 182% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor. See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of August 4, 2025 John Bromels has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends L3Harris Technologies. The Motley Fool recommends Lockheed Martin. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. The Largest Space Tech IPO of the Year Just Launched, With a $6.3 Billion Valuation. Can the Stock Go to the Moon? was originally published by The Motley Fool Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Astronauts and scientists explain why living in space is almost impossible
Billionaires make it seem that we have all the tech we need to settle on the moon and Mars. But the hard part of living in space is adapting the human body to extraterrestrial conditions. Business Insider talked to astronauts and engineers about the complexities of space habitation. Pop stars are floating in zero-G while billionaires speak of building cities in space and on Mars. This is the wild reality we live in that's supposed to help pave the way for long-term space exploration and habitation. The hardest part of living in space, however, isn't rockets and robots — it's the squishy human body. Until we can fix that or find a feasible workaround, life beyond Earth remains impossible. To understand just how much of a long shot life in space is, Business Insider spoke with astronauts, scientists, and medical professionals, and one guy who paid $30 million to join Russia's space program. Here's what they said. Only 757 people have made it to space — and even fewer have stayed for very long. One of the biggest problems of living in space or on another world is the unknown. We simply aren't certain of what it will do to the human body because no one has lived in space for longer than 14 months at a time, and only 757 people have ever entered space. What we do know, so far, is that it's not the healthiest way to live. Common side effects of long-duration stays in microgravity include muscle and bone loss, decreased blood pressure, and blurred vision. While most of these return to normal once an astronaut is back on Earth, some effects of space radiation — like an increased risk of cancer, cataracts, and damage to the central nervous system — can be permanent. In all probability, the longer a person remains in space, the worse their health becomes. Even brief trips to other worlds like a return trip to Mars, would take two to three years, and "we just don't have a large enough data sample to understand how that would impact human biology," NASA astronaut Frank Rubio, who spent a US record of 371 consecutive days on the International Space Station, told BI. He said it took him six months to return to normal after experiencing "puffy head bird legs" syndrome — astronaut slang to describe how the face puffs up and the legs grow thin as your bodily fluids react to microgravity in space. Another issue is location: There are only three feasible destinations — and all of them suck. Low Earth orbit, or "LEO," is convenient, but it's getting crowded with over 9,000 metric tons of space junk, which raises the risk of a devastating collision that could kill everyone on board an orbital craft. The moon is close but has no breathable air, hardly any atmosphere to protect against deadly space radiation, and nights there can last up to two Earth weeks. Mars has a thicker atmosphere than the moon, but it also lacks breathable air and has toxic dirt and harmful dust storms. "The single thing that differentiates the Earth from every other place in the solar system is that there is free oxygen in the atmosphere," said Mike Shara, astrophysicist at the American Museum of Natural History. "So we can go take a nice breath, and if you were to do that on essentially any other planet, you would die, almost instantly," he said. There may be other planets outside our solar system more similar to Earth, but they're just too far away for current technology. "We're talking decades or at least a decade to get to the outer solar system. And 1,000, 2,000, or 10,000 years to get to the nearest star. Not practical," Shara told BI. Therefore, to survive anywhere beyond Earth, we need to build protective structures to live inside, which comes with its own challenges. Many companies worldwide are exploring how to build livable complexes in space, and on the moon and Mars. Blue Origin and NASA, for example, want to 3D print structures and extract oxygen from lunar soil on the moon. Meanwhile, SpaceX plans to transform Martian air into methane fuel to power colonies and rockets for return journeys to Earth. Space engineers call this ISRU: in-situ resource utilization. However, no one has proven ISRU works at scale in real life. "These are not unsolvable problems. The reason they haven't been solved yet is because it hasn't been tried," said Miguel Gurrea, a graduate student who published a paper in 2022 for the Mars Society outlining the weak points of SpaceX's proposed mission to Mars. Some space visionaries, including Jeff Bezos, say building on another, pre-existing world isn't the best idea. We should just build our own. Some space enthusiasts, including Jeff Bezos, believe the best option isn't the moon or Mars, but a massive rotating habitat built in free space — an idea fleshed out in the '70s by particle physicist Gerard K. O'Neill. Such a structure could generate artificial gravity through centrifugal force, but it would be the most ambitious — and expensive — construction project in human history, possibly taking centuries to realize. "Dr. O'Neill's idea was maybe the moon people will do their thing, and the Mars people will do their thing. But if you want to be able to freely go back and forth to the Earth, you need to be able to grow up in a simulated gravity field," said Rick Tumlinson, space activist and former student of O'Neill. Regardless of location, there's the serious problem that once you leave Earth's shield, space becomes a human flesh barbecue. Astronauts on board the International Space Station absorb about 100x more radiation than people on Earth. Moreover, a person on a 3.5-year round trip to Mars would be exposed to the equivalent of about 16,500 chest X-rays — enough to cause cancer and other long-term health problems. And if you're in the wrong place at the wrong time, a single solar flare could kill your entire crew within hours. Astronauts should prepare to burrow underground and stay there to avoid deadly radiation on the surface of the moon or Mars. The ground provides a natural barrier against radiation. Hence why many fallout shelters are underground. Similarly, astronauts on the moon or Mars should prepare to live underground like "moles or earthworms" to avoid radiation damage, said Dr. James Logan, a former NASA medical officer. Meanwhile, our spacecraft to get between worlds may need to look more like meatballs. Logan says protecting astronauts from radiation might mean ditching long, slim ship designs. Instead? Dense, spherical craft that surround the crew with as much mass as possible. For example, some proposals place the crew's living quarters in the center of a sphere of liquid water that would absorb much of the space radiation, thus protecting the crew within. Then, there's the matter of food. Even if we could build our own structures to safely live off-world, growing food to survive is another challenge entirely. Astronauts grow plants on the ISS under LED lights, but it's not enough to survive on and they rely on food they bring with them from Earth, a luxury that would likely be impossible on Mars. While the moon and Mars have soil, it's nothing like Earth's. Martian soil, for example, contains many toxic compounds. So, you can't simply grow red planet potatoes like Matt Damon. You'd have to process the soil first, likely by flushing it with precious water to wash out the toxic compounds, using energy to bake it at high temperatures, or harnessing engineered bacteria to break the toxins down — all before planting a single seed. There's also no 911 in space. In space, blood doesn't run; it pools in floating blobs. You can't use aerosol anesthetics because in microgravity, leaked gases don't rise or settle — they just linger and spread throughout the cabin. So even a small leak could circulate through the air supply and accidentally sedate or impair the entire crew. Even anesthesia delivered via spinal injection may not flow right without gravity. And on Mars, an emergency signal could take 20 minutes to reach mission control on Earth. That makes surgery in space risky and deeply under-researched. "Most of that research is happening on parabolic flights on pigs," said Kelly Weinersmith, co-author of "A City On Mars," referring to planes that dive bomb to simulate zero-G. "So the answer to when we'll understand this problem better is — when pigs fly." We once built a closed ecosystem on Earth — and it nearly fell apart. In the early 90s, Biosphere 2 tested whether humans could live in a self-contained bubble. Built in the middle of the Arizona desert, it had sun, gravity, backup air — and it still went haywire. Fast-growing microbes in the soil unexpectedly caused oxygen levels to dip and carbon dioxide levels to rise. Crops failed, and the crew split into factions. They made it the full two years inside the sealed ecosystem, but barely. And that was only eight people. Imagine thousands or millions of settlers on Mars. To be fair, NASA has run many self-contained experiments since the 90s — including its HI-SEAS and CHAPEA Mars simulation missions — that did not have the same issues as Biosphere 2. Nobody's had sex in space… we think. Despite a few rodent experiments aboard the ISS, there's never been a successful mammal pregnancy in orbit. And no humans have "done the deed" up there yet, at least not officially. Moreover, trying to start a family off-planet could be unethical because we're unsure how space radiation would affect a growing fetus. It would be as unethical as if people had tried (they didn't) experimenting with human pregnancy in Chernobyl after the nuclear meltdown "just to see what happens," said Zach Weinersmith, co-author of "A City On Mars." Meanwhile, celebrities are already floating in space, albeit very temporarily, for fun. Katy Perry, Star Trek actor William Shatner, and other ultra-wealthy passengers are already taking joyrides to space. Entrepreneur Nik Halik took a similar ride to suborbital space and spent $30 million of his own money to join Russia's space program. "I would gladly walk away, leave Earth, leave everything, and yeah, just be a colonist," said Halik, adding that his life goal is to walk on the moon or Mars. However, riding in a capsule for about 10 minutes, or becoming a backup cosmonaut, isn't the same as building a new civilization. For that, we need a lot more than flower selfies. This story was adapted from Business Insider's video series "The Limit." Watch the full video to see what it might really take to live in space. Read the original article on Business Insider
