Toggle navigationHomeFeatures The Planet MarsPhobos & DeimosLife on Mars?TerraformingMissions Humans to MarsSample ReturnExoMarsInSightMAVENMars Orbiter MissionCuriosity RoverMars Exploration RoversMars ExpressMars Reconnaissance Orbiter2001 Mars OdysseyPhoenix LanderNozomiMars Polar LanderMars Global SurveyorMars PathfinderMars ObserverPhobos 2VikingMarinerForumsContact UsSearch forSearchMay 20th, 2015  Elon Musk and Craig Venter Want to Print Life on Mars  MotherboardElon Musk knows that Mars will not be terraformed in his lifetime. Still, the SpaceX and Tesla renaissance man does have a vague plan on how to seed life there: He wants to team with legendary geneticist Craig Venter to print life on the Red Planet.Printing life is not something that’s going to be done tomorrow, but, as we’ve covered before, it’s not a line of thinking that’s totally unprecedented or outside the realm of possibility. Some of NASA’s very best scientists believe that in order to colonize other planets, we’ll need to encode the human genome into bacteria, send those bacteria into space, and reassemble the genomic data they carry once they finally land on another planet.This is a school of thought that Musk also subscribes to, which is notable, because Musk is, at the moment, the single human most likely to enable our colonization of other planets.[ Full Story ]TweetPosted by tourdemars to: TerraformingMay 19th, 2015  Here’s how to download the code NASA uses in its rockets  Business InsiderNerds and future billionaires rejoice: codes used on NASA’s rockets are now free and legal to download.For the second year in a row, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has released its public software catalogue, a list of over 1,000 selected programs and codes available for download via the agency’s website.With only a few restrictions, the release allows US coders and programmers to peak under the hood of NASA programs that the agency doesn’t deem too sensitive to share.[ Full Story ]TweetPosted by tourdemars to: General News, Mars Science Laboratory, TechnologyMay 18th, 2015  NASA Challenges Public to 3D Print Actual Space Habitats for $2.25 Million in Prizes  3DPrint.comD printing has become a technology that many people believe will help us live better, more efficient lives here on Earth. However, NASA as of late, has been focusing on using this same technology to help astronauts and space explorers live betters lives and travel further outside of Earth’s atmosphere. We saw this in their partnership with Made In Space last year which led to the first ever 3D printer, not only traveling into space, but also 3D printing real objects form the International Space Station. We’ve also seen it in the numerous competitions that NASA has held to entice the general public, and in many cases school-aged children, to develop products that can be 3D printed and used in space.This weekend at Maker Faire, NASA and