When a rose-colored meteorite was found in the Sahara Desert in 2022, no one knew how old it was or where it came from. Not until NASA-funded scientists age-dated its minerals did they realize the nearly 2-pound (800-gram) rock was a piece of Mars that formed more than 4.1 billion years ago, making it one of the oldest Martian meteorites ever found. Named Teghaza 001 after the salt plain in Mali where it was discovered, the meteorite is one of roughly 435 from the Red Planet.

In a paper published Thursday in Science, researchers offered an initial characterization of Teghaza 001, providing a rare snapshot of Mars’ ancient crust and formation. What scientists learn from future studies could help answer many questions, including how water and rocks interacted on ancient Mars. A separate paper published in Science Advances in June detailed the meteorite’s water content, offering a look at how water shaped the early planet’s surface.

“It was only after we started looking closely that we realized this meteorite is really unique,” said the paper’s lead author, Yang Liu of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “One of the paper’s reviewers called it a Rosetta Stone for Mars.”

Rose-colored stone

What sets Teghaza 001 apart from other Martian meteorites is its texture and age as well as the uniqueness of its igneous, or volcanic, minerals. It is one of the three most ancient Martian meteorites found on Earth. While invaluable, the others provide more limited glimpses of Mars’ geological history. They include ALH84001, which is composed almost entirely of one mineral and is similar in age to Teghaza 001. The other meteorite, nicknamed “Black Beauty,” formed about 2.1 billion years ago and is composed of small, volcanic rock fragments.

Unlike its ancient peers, Teghaza 001 has a mix of igneous minerals that tells a story about how the planet’s crust formed from cooling magma before it was eventually altered by subsurface water. The meteorite’s distinctive mineralogy matches what NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has observed in the planet’s cratered southern highlands. No one will ever know exactly where the meteorite originated on Mars, but the paper identifies several potential locations that match Teghaza 001’s mineralogy and chemistry.

“This is really our first piece of Martian crust from a part of Mars we’ve never had a sample of before,” said the new paper’s second author, Lee Saper, who conducted the research while at JPL as a postdoctoral scholar. Lee now is a scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley. “It records interactions of water and rock and maybe even an imprint of the Martian atmosphere as it was losing water.”

Although the Mars meteorites found on Earth differ from one another, they share a common history, having been blasted off the Red Planet’s surface by an impact, followed by a trajectory that eventually placed them on Earth and into the hands of scientists. Meteorites are often found by collectors in deserts or snowy plains, where they stand out from the rest of the barren landscape. Scientists can verify a meteorite as Martian by matching its mineral and chemical components to data collected by NASA’s Mars missions, including the Viking landers as well as the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers.

Signs of water

When Liu was first asked to look at Teghaza 001, she almost passed on the opportunity.

Researchers at the University of New Mexico had already identified it as Martian based on its oxygen isotopes, which serve as geochemical fingerprints for different planetary bodies. In this case, the researchers matched the meteorite’s oxygen isotopes to those seen in other Martian meteorites. Teghaza 001 appeared to be a shergottite which is the most common class of meteorite from the Red Planet. As an expert in planetary samples, Liu has seen plenty of those, but she decided to take a peek, anyway.

At the very least, there were odd textures and unusual minerals she hadn’t seen before. Liu and her colleagues discovered zircon crystals in Teghaza 001, which record clues to a rock’s formation and can be used by geologists to precisely age-date a sample. Further analysis revealed when Teghaza 001 formed and when certain changes, like water alteration, occurred.

Caltech coauthor Francois Tissot helped the researchers utilize a novel age-dating method pioneered by his team. Compared with bulk-analysis techniques, where a sample is entirely dissolved and analyzed, Tissot’s in-situ rubidium-strontium age-dating used a piece of Teghaza 001 that was smaller than a fingernail, analyzing single mineral grains on its surface. Besides its extreme precision and speed, the technique preserves rare samples like Martian meteorites for future studies.

“Right now, we are one of very few labs in the world able to perform this kind of age-dating, and the first to date such an ancient Martian meteorite,” Tissot said. “Our hope is to pave the way for dating even more Martian meteorites, or samples returned from other planets, their moons, and asteroids.”

When the age-dating results came back, Liu was shocked: This rock had been altered by Martian water sometime around 4.1 billion years ago, suggesting it originally formed even earlier. Clues within the oxygen isotopes, texture, and chemistry of Teghaza 001 minerals point to a much more dynamic water cycle on early Mars.

This year’s papers are just the start. Liu and her co-authors are eager to see what the rest of the scientific community can learn from Teghaza 001.

“We’ve only scratched the surface,” Liu said.

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Andrew Good
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-2433
andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov

Karen Fox / Alana Johnson
NASA Headquarters, Washington
240-285-5155 / 202-672-4780
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / alana.r.johnson@nasa.gov

2026-079    

Over 1,645 Martian days, NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover measured the fine and ultrafine Martian dust particles found clinging to samples of spacesuit materials that are carried aboard the rover, including some that are small enough to penetrate the lungs and enter the bloodstream. The findings will be published Tuesday, Oct. 27, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and could inform spacesuit and habitat design, dust-removal procedures, and crew health standards for future NASA missions to Mars.

“NASA has a long history of turning challenges into workable solutions and of finding creative ways to use the data that we have to answer questions beyond what it was originally collected for,” said Lindsay Hays, acting director, Planetary Science Division, NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Dust has been a surface-exploration challenge since the Apollo program. Perseverance is giving our engineers and flight surgeons measurements they can use to improve our existing designs well before the first American astronauts arrive on Mars.”

Lunar dust scratched visors, degraded outer spacesuit layers, and damaged their seals during NASA’s Apollo missions, and some crew members reported symptoms similar to hay fever.

Rounded by wind-driven collisions with other particles, dust grains on Mars are less abrasive than those on the Moon. They also are enriched in sulfur, chlorine, and iron and contain more silica than lunar dust. Regional and global dust storms on Mars can keep the grains recirculating throughout the atmosphere as well.  

The rover carries a set of five samples of spacesuit material. The swatches, each three-quarters of an inch (20 millimeters) square, are part of a calibration target used to test the settings of SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals), an instrument on Perseverance’s robotic arm. The calibration target for another instrument that provided the dust measurements, called PIXL (Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry), carries a sample of Teflon and of basaltic glass.

Because Teflon contains no elements that PIXL can directly detect, whatever elemental signals the X-ray spectrometer picks up from that sample comes from dust resting on it.

The team also analyzed swatches of Teflon and Vectran, two materials used in spacesuits, on SHERLOC’s calibration target. NASA sent the swatches to Mars to study how spacesuit materials hold up on the planet’s surface.

“Perseverance’s main job is to search for signs of ancient microbial life, but the mission was also designed to help prepare for human explorers. That effort includes technology demonstrations like MOXIE (Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment) and Ingenuity, as well as the spacesuit samples,” said Katie Stack Morgan, Perseverance’s project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

Fine, ultrafine

While earlier measurements on Mars resolved dust particles down to about 3 micrometers across, PIXL detected two categories of even smaller particles: fine particles measuring less than 2.5 micrometers (a human hair is about 70 micrometers wide) and ultrafine particles around 100 nanometers (about 700 times thinner than a human hair). Particles on PIXL’s Teflon target and SHERLOC’s Vectran swatch averaged about 2 micrometers. On PIXL’s basaltic glass and SHERLOC’s Teflon swatch, dust particle sizes ranged down to about 100 to 300 nanometers.

Static electricity appears to determine which size dust particles stick to which surface. Dust grains become charged as they collide in the air, and different materials on the calibration target attract grains of different sizes. The finest particles stayed attached through years of driving and drilling. Organic polymers like SHERLOC’s Teflon spacesuit sample are common in the outer layers of spacesuits, and the results show they readily collect fine dust.

The study also found that some materials hold less dust than others, which could guide future choices of materials and protective coatings for spacesuits and habitats. Designs such as suitports, which let astronauts enter a suit attached to the outside of a habitat, and dual-chamber airlocks could reduce how much dust gets inside astronauts’ living quarters.

“The existence of Mars dust at these ultrafine sizes has been predicted for a long time, and PIXL gave us the chance to measure it directly on Mars,” said Scott VanBommel, a Perseverance scientist at Washington University in St. Louis and the paper’s lead author. “The larger clumps, the Martian dust bunnies, get shaken off over time. But the smallest particles stay behind, and those are the ones that pose the greatest challenge for human support systems.”

Chemically, the dust matches the iron- and sulfur-rich composition that earlier missions measured. The PIXL instrument also found the dust to be enriched in phosphorus and detected signs of calcium sulfate.

Protecting crews

On Earth, airborne particles, or particulate matter, below 2.5 micrometers (that is, fine particles) are tied to a range of negative health effects because they can penetrate deep into the lungs and enter the bloodstream. Studies have shown that ultrafine particles (those no larger than 100 nanometers) can travel from the nasal cavity to the brain along the olfactory nerve.

Martian dust is composed predominantly of silicate minerals and carries chemically reactive compounds, including perchlorates that can disrupt thyroid function and reactive iron that induces cellular damage. Scientists believe that the health risks of Mars dust depend on the quantity of dust and length of exposure.

The PIXL results are the first on-site measurements of fine and ultrafine particles on Mars, and this research can inform broader efforts to refine indoor dust-exposure limits for astronauts, develop safe habits, and establish ways to remove dust while exploring Mars.

NASA is already working on solutions to extraterrestrial dust hazards, using ground test facilities and lunar missions as proving grounds for future Mars explorers. In March 2025, the agency tested an Electrodynamic Dust Shield, which used electric fields to clear lunar regolith from glass and thermal radiator surfaces on the Moon. Developed at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, it landed on the Moon aboard Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1. At NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, engineers at the Lunar Development and Test Facility use vacuum chambers and lunar regolith simulant to test spacesuit components, mechanisms, and a Handheld Lunar Electrostatic Dust Mitigation tool ahead of Artemis missions to the lunar surface.

More about Perseverance

Managed for NASA by Caltech, JPL built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover on behalf of the agency’s Science Mission Directorate as part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program portfolio. NASA JPL also built PIXL and SHERLOC.

To learn more about Perseverance visit:

https://science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-2020-perseverance

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Media Contacts
DC Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-9011
david.c.agle@jpl.nasa.gov

Karen Fox / Alana Johnson
NASA Headquarters, Washington
240-285-5155 / 202-672-4780
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / alana.r.johnson@nasa.gov

2026-076

NASA is playing an important role in JAXA’s (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) MMX (Martian Moons eXploration) mission, to advance our understanding of Mars’ moons and build on the agency’s long history of exploring the Red Planet.

The mission aims to characterize and determine the origin of Mars’ moons Phobos and Deimos and deliver a sample of Phobos to Earth. The MMX spacecraft is targeting launch from JAXA’s Tanegashima Space Center in Japan at 3:41 p.m. EDT on Monday, Oct. 19 (4:41 a.m. JST on Tuesday, Oct. 20).

“The samples from MMX will bring forth paradigm-shifting science on the Mars system for generations to come, especially as NASA prepares to send the first humans to Mars,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters in Washington. “The NASA-JAXA sample curation partnership is extremely valuable, and I am proud that NASA Science is supporting MMX sample curation and will be sharing portions of these samples for study as we continue to expand humanity’s understanding of the universe for the benefit of all.”

NASA’s contributions to the mission include the Mars-moon Exploration with Gamma rays and Neutrons (MEGANE) spectrograph instrument, the Pneumatic Sampler (P-Sampler) technology demonstration, and communications and navigation support from the agency’s Deep Space Network, as well as funding United States scientists participating on the MMX science team.

Scientists have long debated the origin of Mars’ two moons. The data and samples collected by the MMX mission will help answer essential questions about the origins of these moons and the history of the solar system.

“Phobos and Deimos may be the remains of a massive impact on Mars that sent material into orbit around the planet, or they could be ancient asteroids that were captured by Mars’ gravity billions of years ago,” said Tom Statler, MMX program executive and program scientist at NASA Headquarters. “Having the answer will help illuminate that early era when Earth and the other inner planets may have been acquiring much of their water and organic compounds.”

The MEGANE (pronounced meh-GAH-nay, the Japanese word for eyeglasses) spectrograph will help scientists “see” what Phobos is made of by measuring neutrons and gamma rays emitted from the moon’s surface and determining its chemical elemental composition, which will provide important clues about its origin.

Mounted on one of the spacecraft’s landing legs, the P-Sampler is designed to collect a ground sample from Phobos. The system gathers surface material using bursts of high-pressure nitrogen gas, complementing JAXA’s C-Sampler, which will extract cores from a few inches deeper. NASA will obtain and curate about 15% of the total returned sample at the agency’s Johnson Space Center Astromaterials Lab in Houston, making it available for research for decades.

Another key part of NASA’s contribution to MMX is its scientific partnership with JAXA. NASA-supported researchers are working alongside international colleagues to help reveal the story of Phobos and will use mission data and returned samples to uncover new clues about the moon’s origin and the evolution of the Mars system.

The MMX spacecraft will arrive at Mars in August 2027 to begin its survey of the Red Planet’s two moons. After surveying Phobos in detail, the spacecraft will collect a sample of the moon’s surface no earlier than December 2028 and deliver it to Earth in 2031.

The MEGANE instrument was developed by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. Honeybee Robotics, a Blue Origin company, developed the spacecraft’s pneumatic sampler mechanism. NASA’s contributions to the MMX mission were developed under the agency’s Discovery Program. The Discovery Program is managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

For more information about the MMX mission, visit:

https://science.nasa.gov/mission/mmx

Karen Fox / Alana Johnson
Headquarters, Washington
240-285-5155 / 202-672-4780
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / alana.r.johnson@nasa.gov

Media are invited to join NASA for a media teleconference at 4 p.m. EDT, Thursday, Oct. 15, to preview the agency’s contributions to JAXA’s (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission. The mission is scheduled to launch from JAXA’s Tanegashima Space Center in Japan on Monday, Oct. 19 EDT (Tuesday, Oct. 20 JST).

Audio of the media teleconference will stream on the agency’s website at:

https://www.nasa.gov/live

Participants in the briefing, who will provide an overview of the mission and NASA’s contributions, include:

• Lindsay Hays, acting director, Planetary Science Division, NASA Headquarters in Washington
• Tom Statler, MMX program executive and scientist, Planetary Science Division, NASA Headquarters
• David Lawrence, MEGANE (Mars-moon Exploration with Gamma-rays and Neutrons) principal investigator, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory
• Kris Zacny, vice president, Blue Origin’s Honeybee Robotics

Media interested in participating by phone must RSVP no later than two hours prior to the start of the teleconference to Molly Wasser at molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov. A copy of NASA’s media accreditation policy is online. 

The MMX spacecraft will arrive at Mars in August 2027 to begin its survey of the Red Planet’s two moons, Phobos and Deimos. After surveying Phobos in detail, the spacecraft will collect a sample of the moon’s surface no earlier than December 2028 and deliver it to Earth in 2031. NASA’s contributions to the mission include the MEGANE gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer, the spacecraft’s surface sampler mechanism, and communications and navigation support from the agency’s Deep Space Network, as well as funding United States scientists participating on the MMX science team.

The MEGANE instrument was developed by Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. Honeybee Robotics, a Blue Origin company, developed the spacecraft’s pneumatic sampler mechanism. NASA’s contributions to the MMX mission were funded by the agency’s Discovery Program, which provides frequent flight opportunities for high-value, focused planetary science investigations. The Discovery Program is managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

For more information about the MMX mission, visit:

https://science.nasa.gov/mission/mmx/

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Karen Fox / Alana Johnson
Headquarters, Washington
240-285-5155 / 202-672-4780
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / alana.r.johnson@nasa.gov

A newly released panorama captured by NASA’s Curiosity rover offers the most detailed view yet of distant, wind-carved Martian cliffs, highlighting features the mission’s scientists have long been waiting to see up close. The scene was snapped at 8:30 a.m. local Mars time, showing striking blue hues in the foreground as bright morning light illuminates crags known as yardangs on the horizon.  

The panorama was captured by Curiosity’s Mastcam on Aug. 11, the 4,982nd Martian day, or sol, of the mission, and comprises six individual images that were stitched together after being sent to Earth. Unlike most of Curiosity’s Mastcam images, this one was processed without white balancing, preserving the early morning appearance.  

The yardang layer extends roughly 10 miles (16 kilometers) across the northwestern reaches of Mount Sharp, a 3-mile-tall (5-kilometer-tall) mountain that Curiosity has been ascending since 2014. In fact, the rover recently passed another milestone in its ascent, reaching 0.6 miles (1 kilometer) of elevation — the most ever climbed on Mars. As it draws ever-closer to the yardangs, mission scientists expect to get even more amazing imagery — and, they hope, answers to how these cliffs were created. 

Mount Sharp is made up of layers, each recording a distinct period of Mars’ history. By studying them, scientists have been able to learn more about lakes and streams that covered this part of the Red Planet billions of years ago. Eventually, the water dried up and left salty minerals behind. After new material stopped settling on the mountain, some of it may have been stripped away by wind, giving rise to the yardangs. 

“The yardang layer looks out of place. It’s the wrong color, the layers tilt at an odd angle, and it almost appears plastered on,” said Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity project scientist of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “But that’s what makes it exciting to reach. No one is sure exactly what created this layer, but one idea is it may be ash deposited by ancient volcanic eruptions.” 

Curiosity is in the second year of its fifth extended mission, which started with an exploration of the spiderweb-like boxwork ridges. The rover will spend most of the next year or so driving through layers enriched with sulfates and carbonates, both signs of ancient drying on the surface. Sometime in 2027, scientists hope to reach the base of the yardangs, where Curiosity will be able to use its robotic arm to collect one-of-a-kind data on these mysterious features. 

More about Curiosity 

Curiosity was built by NASA JPL, which is managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California. NASA JPL leads the mission on behalf of the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington as part of its Mars Exploration Program portfolio. Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego built and operates Mastcam. 

To learn more about Curiosity, visit:

https://science.nasa.gov/mission/msl-curiosity

News Media Contacts

Andrew Good
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-2433
andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov

 

Karen Fox / Alana Johnson
NASA Headquarters, Washington
240-285-5155 / 202-672-4780
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / alana.r.johnson@nasa.gov

2026-067