Comet Siding Spring Animation

An ultra-sensitive seismometer aboard NASA’s InSight Mars lander finds a huge molten core at the heart of the red planet.

NASA announced Thursday it will fund development of a scientific instrument that will fly on Japan’s Martian Moons Exploration mission, a robotic probe set for launch in 2024 to bring back the first samples from Mars’ largest moon Phobos.

Mars hasn’t always looked like it does today. Some 3 to 3.5 billion years ago, the planet underwent a huge tilt of 20 to 25 degrees. The gigantic Tharsis volcanic dome, which started to form over 3.7 billion years ago, grew so massive that it caused Mars’ crust and mantle to swivel around, shifting the Tharsis dome to the planet’s equator.