Professor Mark Sims on the discovery that Beagle 2 made it to the surface

Intermittent flows that appear on steep slopes on Mars are likely formed by flowing sand, and not water as some scientists previously suspected, according to a new study.

Unlike the Earth, Mars lost a global protective magnetic field billions of years ago, so solar particles can directly strike the atmosphere. NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft recently detected extensive auroral activity in the Red Planet’s northern hemisphere, plus an unexplained high-altitude dust cloud.

A flotilla of spacecraft orbiting Mars will be turning their instruments in two directions – one towards Comet Siding Spring, and the other towards Mars itself, to find out what happens when a planetary atmosphere brushes against the fuzzy atmosphere of a comet.