Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld

It’s been a good while since I offered any updates on the work of NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mars, which is a bit of a shame given it was my reporting on Curiosity’s arrival and mission on Mars which eventually morphed into Space Sunday.

Curiosity is now 13 years and eight months into its mission on Mars (over 14 years since its launch from Earth), and it is still going strong. Such is the amount of data still being returned by the rover’s exploration of Gale Crater and, specifically, the great mound of Aeolis Mons at its centre (which NASA unofficially calls “Mount Sharp”), Earth-based review and analysis of its findings is running somewhat behind.

Take two papers on Curiosity’s findings published in April 2026, for example. They relate to data gathered by Curiosity in 2020 and 2022. However, their individual findings both confirm elements of our understanding of Gale Crater’s history and open the door to some intriguing possibilities when it comes to past microbial life on Mars.

The first paper, Diverse organic molecules on Mars revealed by the first SAM TMAH experiment, examines the data gathered by the rover in 2020 whilst examining a rock sample on the slopes of “Mount Sharp” scientists had dubbed “Mary Anning”. This examination revealed the clay-bearing sandstone rock contained no fewer than 21 organic compounds, seven of which had been detected for the first time. Together, they stand as the single largest and most diverse collection of organic compounds to be found in one location on Mars.

To be clear, “organic compounds” should not be taken to mean “evidence of life” – organics can be formed through inorganic processes as well as organic ones. Further, exactly what caused the formation of these compounds in so close proximity to one another is unknown; whilst they could be the result of mineral and chemical interactions with rock, they equally might have been deposited on “Mount Sharp” as a result of a meteorite impact; we just don’t know.

However, what is interesting about these compounds is the fact that they were detected within a surface rock that has been around perhaps for 3.5 billion years, despite the rock being bombarded by solar radiation and subject to wind erosion, etc.. This alone suggests that whilst overwhelmingly hostile to biological processes we’re familiar with, Mars could preserve the biosignatures of any Martian microbes which might have once been present on the planet.

In this regard, the samples gathered and analysed by Curiosity have been shown to contain methyl benzoate. A complex compound often associated with organics (but again can be formed by both organic or inorganic processes); the fact that such a complex ester group compound is present within the rock does strengthen the argument that Mars might yet preserve evidence of past life on Mars.

What’s more – and again with the inorganic / organic caveat – the team behind the paper confirmed the samples taken from “Mary Anning” contains nitrogen heterocycles. These are rings of nitrogen-bearing carbon atoms which here on Earth are considered precursors of RNA and DNA. All of which adds up to a remarking set of findings.

The second paper, Amapari Marker Band Metal-Enrichments: Potential Mechanisms and Implications for Surface and Subsurface Water and Weathering in Gale Crater; examines the case for water in Gale Crater using the “bathtub ring” of the Amapari Marker.

The latter is a boundary layer extending for tens of kilometres around the upper reaches of “Mount Sharp” to the point of being visible from orbit using the right equipment. It is believed to form the boundary between the upper limits reached by waters which had formed multiple lakes within the crater during the planet’s warmer, wet periods of its early history, and the upper portion of “Mount Sharp” which was never immersed in water.

Within the Amapari Marker, Curiosity found deposits of compounds and – particularly – metals which were deposited en masse, so to speak, as the waters retreated back down into Gale Crater after reaching this highest point of their extent. Hence the term “bathtub ring”: the Amapari Marker might be thought of as resembling the ring of grime left around the sides of a bathtub once the water has been drained following a particularly mucky bath.

Such banding or layer markers are common on Earth as well, and are referred to as redox (REDuction OXidation) reactions. These have been shown to create metals such as iron, zinc, manganese and similar precipitate out of water – which are exactly the irons found in the Amapari Marker in Gale Crater. Thus, not only does this further demonstrate the likeliness that Gale Crater was one home to lakes of considerable depth (“Mount Sharp” is some 5 kilometres high, with the walls of the crater reaching similar heights, allowing for lakes of at least a kilometre or two in depth), it also suggests the potential for the lake to potentially having been inhabitable by Martian microbes.

This is because microbes can mediate redox reactions, and in some cases create thicker deposits than abiotic reactions; deposits that could be even more useful as a source of energy for subsequent colonies of microbes. However, this is, again, only a supposition; there are many questions about the overall conditions within Gale Crater still to be answered. These include matters of Water-to-rock ratios, lake depth, and atmospheric concentrations of O2 during transient events; all make it extremely difficult to draw any single conclusion relating to the lakes in the crater, the deposits found within the Amapari Layer what various combinations of the answers to these questions (if they could be answered) it might mean for the ancient habitability of Mars.

Even so, the findings of these papers again demonstrate how intriguing Mars is.

In Brief

New Glenn Update

In my previous Space Sunday article, I covered the semi-successful Blue Origin NG-3 launch – the third flight of the impressive New Glenn heavy-lift launch vehicle, together with the recovery of the first stage Never Tell Me the Odds as it made its second flight (albeit with new engines). The mission was semi-successful as the upper stage of the booster suffered an anomaly which stranded the BlueBird 7 communications satellite payload in the wrong orbit.

Due to the failure of the upper stage, and as expected, on April 22nd, 2026, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which oversees commercial launch operations in the US, announced that New Glenn is grounded until a Blue Origin-led investigation can determine the root cause of the issue.

In this, Blue Origin is already a little ahead of the curve: during the NG-3 mission, telemetry indicated that during an initial burn of the upper stage’s engines, one of the two BE-3U motors failed to produce sufficient thrust for the burn to be properly completed, and as a precaution against total vehicle and payload loss, the burn was curtailed and the second required engine burn cancelled, thus leaving BlueBird 7 stranded in the wrong orbit.

The question now is whether the issue with the BE-3U motor is something restricted to that particular motor or something endemic to the entire production of BE-3Us. Determining this, and what – if anything – needs to be done to fix issue, will determine how long New Glenn remains grounded.

Getting the matter sorted is a priority for Blue Origin. They have four more New Glenn launches planned for 2026. Two of these are commercial (which could slip somewhat easily) and two government-related. One of the latter is a “rideshare” mission of several payloads (NG-7), including a technology demonstrator for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). This had been due to launch almost a year ago on a Firefly Alpha rocket, but the NRO opted to move it to another launch vehicle when in April 2025, Firefly suffered its fourth full or partial failure in just seven launches. As such, the NRO might again get nervous if New Glenn is subject to an extended grounding.

More importantly for Blue Origin is the NG-5 launch. This is slated to carry the company’s Blue Moon Pathfinder lander mission to the Moon. Pathfinder, as I’ve noted in past Space Sunday pieces, is a critical demonstration of significant technologies to be used within both Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 1 and Mark 2 cargo / crew lunar landers. As such, any significant delay in its flight could have repercussions for the Blue Moon lander programme as a whole at a time when both Blue Origin and SpaceX are under pressure from NASA to demonstrate they can have human landing systems available to meet the planned Artemis 4 mission of 2028.

NASA: Artemis 3, OIG Concerns and Budget Fight-Back

NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, home to the Space Launch System (SLS) production line, rolled out the core stage of the booster that will launch the Artemis 3 mission to Earth orbit in 2027.

Containing the liquid hydrogen tank, liquid oxygen tank, intertank, and forward skirt, the core stage is the bright orange element of the SLS, which at its upper end will be fitted with the stage adaptor for the ICPS upper stage, and at its lower end, the four RS-25 motors that will power the course stage and their housing. Its roll-out at Michoud marks the start of its journey by barge to Kennedy Space Centre, Florida, where it will be integrated with the rest of the 3elements required for the mission, including the Orion Multiple-Purpose Crew Vehicle which will contain the crew for the mission.

Artemis 3 was originally going to be the first lunar landing mission for Project Artemis, however, earlier in 2026, the mission was re-targeted as an Earth-orbital test of one or both of the proposed crewed landing craft being developed by Blue Origin and SpaceX, and assess whether either / both are fit for purpose ahead of any lunar-focused missions; as such it is a crucial stepping stone for Artemis.

In this, the roll-out of the new SLS core stage is seen by NASA as a sign that it is on course to meet its current Artemis schedule: orbital HLS testing in 2027 and first crewed landing in 2028. However, the agency’s own Office of Inspector General (OIG) sees things differently.

On April 20th, the OIG – responsible for overseeing all of NASA’s activities in terms of fiscal responsibility, preventing mismanagement, identifying project shortfalls, and generally auditing NASA programmes in terms of their overall progress / readiness – issued a further report indicating that the Artemis programme is once again at risk of delay due to continued issues with the development of the new spacesuits Artemis crews are to use on the surface of the Moon.

Work on the new suits – those currently in use aboard the International Space Station, whilst derived from the Apollo space suits, are unsuitable for lunar use – commenced in the 20-teens and has largely been a source of embarrassment to NASA. Just after the first prototype suit was revealed to the public to much fanfare in 2019, it was found to be unfit for purpose and abandoned.

In 2022, NASA contracted veteran space suit manufacturer Collins LLC (responsible for both the Apollo and ISS space suits) and newcomer Axiom to develop new space suits – but with a twist: the new suits would have to be capable of sustained operations on the lunar surface and also – through the integration of different components / elements during the manufacture of specific suits – for use on the ISS.

Although this sounded reasonable, it actually caused Collins LLC to drop out of the contract in 2024 due to complexities involved in developing such a suit system in a relatively short time frame. Axiom has continued its own suit development, and has offered a number of positive-sounding updates on progress. However, according to the OIG report, the reality with the Axiom suit is somewhat different: it is already running two years behind schedule, in part due to the requirement for the same basic suit having to be adaptable for two very different uses, and now looks likely to slip a further year, meaning it will not be ready for use until 2031.

Both NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman and Axiom offered statements countering the OIG report when it appeared, restating commitments to the 2028 crewed landing. However, the OIG has a track record of being far more accurate in its assessments of the readiness of projects than NASA in meeting target dates for those same projects. As such this report could come back to bite NASA if it proves accurate.

In the meantime, the battle over NASA’s future budget has once more ignited. As I’ve previously reported, in 2025, the Trump Administration sought to reduce NASA’s modest budget by 23% in 2026, including cutting the agency’s science budget by 47%. Ultimately, the House and the Senate rejected such a drastic cut – so the Trump Administration has now simply added the same cuts to its planned 2027 fiscal year budget. In response, the House and Senate – and on both sides of their respective aisles are once again pushing back.

Both the president and Congress have provided explicit direction for NASA to undertake a range of activities, from exploration and science to aeronautics research. We must ensure that NASA is funded at a level that allows it to pursue those missions. I simply do not believe that this budget proposal is capable of supporting what President Trump himself has directed the agency to accomplish over the course of his two terms, nor what Congress has directed by law.

– Rep. Brian Babin (R-Texas), chair man, U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, April 22nd, 2026.

Babin, with the support of Democrats and Republicans on his committee goes on to point out that while American’s spiralling national debt of some US $38.889 trillion or US $116,065 per US citizen (and in a good part fuelled by the fiscal / foreign policies of the current Administration) is of major concern, cutting NASA’s budget amounts to mere “penny-pinching” than it does speak to an attempt to reign-in spending, and is a move that will further damage US leadership in science and technology.