After almost a year of searching, NASA's Curiosity rover has turned up no traces of the four-pronged hydrocarbon known as methane. This special molecule is regarded by many as a chemical signature of past or present life on the red planet. That means there's no life on Mars, right? Wrong.

Can you believe it's been a full year since the Mars Curiosity rover made its absolutely spectacular red, dusty landing? Millions watched with bated breath the day that NASA's Mars Science Laboratory began its historical journey. It may have taken everyone's favorite interplanetary robot a little while to get up and…

Tuesday, August 6th will mark the one-year anniversary of Curiosity's epic arrival on the surface of Mars. To celebrate, here now is a rover's-eye-view of the Mars Science Laboratory's first twelve months on the Red Planet – full of scooping, drilling, laser-ing and plenty of driving.

Next Tuesday, NASA's Mars Curiosity rover will have been on the surface of Mars for one year. To celebrate, a team of scientists and engineers from the Mission just hosted an epic AMA over on Reddit. Go check it out.

At one time, Mars had a thick, protective atmosphere — possibly even cushier than Earth’s — but the bubble of gases mostly dissipated about 4 billion years ago and has never been replenished, new research shows.

Last August, NASA landed Curiosity on the surface of Mars. Now, after almost one year of preliminary investigations, the most scientifically capable rover in history has its sights set on its primary scientific target, Mount Sharp – a three-mile-high peak at the center of Gale Crater.

How does Curiosity compare to NASA's other roving Martian robots?

The GIF featured here comprises seven photographs of the Curiosity Rover's parachute on the surface of Mars. Photographed from orbit between August 2012 and January 2013 by the Agency's HiRISE camera, it shows the massive (and it is massive) chute moving from month-to-month, presumably due to gusts of wind.

The good news: last week, NASA's Curiosity Rover confirmed that Mars was once capable of harboring life. The bad news: for the second time in as many months, the Agency's new robotic rover has had its scientific mission compromised by technical difficulties. The good news again: if all goes well, Curiosity should be…

Rovers, landers and satellites have been turning up evidence of a wet Martian history for years. Now, NASA's recently landed Curiosity rover has happened upon even more signs of the planet's watery past: veins of hydrated calcium sulfate (visible in the outrcrop pictured above) stretching across the planet's surface —…

Four months ago, NASA landed a one-ton, nuclear-powered rover on the Red Planet, scattering the Martian terrain with heaps of debris in the process. Curiosity, upon arrival, shed so much of its Entry Descent & Landing hardware that high resolution images of the planet's surface are still turning up traces of the…

Right before Thanksgiving, Curiosity project scientist John Grotzinger told NPR that NASA's rover had discovered something earthshaking on the Red Planet. "This data is going to be one for the history books," he crowed, declining to say more until results from the rover's SAM instrument — an onboard chemistry lab…

The Mars Science Laboratory team has hinted that they might have some big news to share soon. But like good scientists, they are waiting until they verify their results before saying anything definitive. In an interview on NPR today, MSL Principal Investigator John Grotzinger said a recent soil sample test in the SAM…

Looking at photos of the surface of Mars as a kid, NASA scientist Ashwin Vasavada says he viewed Mars as exotic, but not that exotic. And when you think about it, that description makes a lot of sense; after all, Mars is likely to be the first planet in the galaxy (other than Earth, obviously) to host a human…

Is there (or was there ever) life on Mars? In this great little video — produced by the folks over at thinkrtv — Dr. Ashwin Vasvada, NASA's Deputy Project Scientist for the Mars Curiosity mission, presents three theories surrounding life on the Red Planet, and describes how rovers like Curiosity are helping us paint…

Most of us have witnessed a solar eclipse from here on Earth, but here's a sight you're less likely to have seen: a view of the Sun, as seen from Mars, being blocked by Phobos — the larger and closer of the Red Planet's two moons.

Think you've seen the internet's best video of Curiosity descending to the surface of Mars? Think again. Featured above is likely the world's first "true motion-flow" version of Curiosity's touchdown, and it is nothing short of remarkable. Trust us — you need to see this.

Since 2006, NASA's HiRISE camera has been orbiting the Red Planet aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, snapping photos of the planet's surface. In that time, it's also managed to photograph several of NASA's biggest Martian milestones as they happen. This is an image of one of those milestones.

You're looking at a small section of a vast and colorful panoramic view of Mars, one of the latest to be beamed back by NASA's Curiosity rover. The panorama (click here for full-res) shows a 360-degree view of the rover's landing site, and a clear shot of the highest visible reaches of Mount Sharp, the rover's primary…