Perseverance Rover

Artist's depiction of the Mars Rover on the surface of Mars

There could be alien life on Mars, but will our rovers be able to find it?

23 Feb 2023

New research published today in Nature Communications suggests the rovers’ current equipment might not actually be up to the task of finding evidence of life.

Mars settlement likely by 2050 says UNSW expert – but not at levels predicted by Elon Musk

10 Mar 2021

Robotic mining that can provide water and fuel is the key to developing a colony on the red planet within the next 30 years.

Perseverance rover’s search for life on Mars: from the outback to the red planet

19 Feb 2021

As NASA’s Perseverance rover lands on Mars, UNSW is playing a key role in the search for life on the red planet. In July 2019, Professor Martin Van Kranendonk took a team of NASA and European Space Agency scientists to the Pilbara, in the Western Australian outback.

Luke Steller teaching students how to find fossils

Ancient signs of life: inspiring the next generation of scientists in the outback

30 Jul 2020

As Perseverance prepares to launch for Mars, two UNSW PhD students look back on a field trip that gave Indigenous high school students a behind-the-scenes look at the rover’s upcoming mission.

Astrobiologists put Mars Rover life-detecting equipment to the test

04 May 2020

Scientists have used the same methods that will soon be used to search for evidence of life on Mars to look for evidence of the earliest forms of life on Earth at a location in South Australia.