Scientists say buildings on Mars could be made from a substance found in fish scales and fungi called chitin. Chitin is one of the most ubiquitous organic polymers on Earth, and when mixed with Martian soil, it could make a sturdy enough material to build tools and shelters. The organic polymer could be sourced on Mars from the bio-conversion of organic waste by insects or fungi – which could be grown on farms. In preliminary tests of the material, the experts have constructed a wrench and a mini model of a Martian habitat with the resilience of plastics. Chitin could help NASA and private companies such as Elon Musk's SpaceX, which plan to establish human colonies on Mars in the next 20 years.

NASA is running out of options in its mission to get its InSight lander's probe back on track. According to the agency, it will attempt to use a robotic arm attached to its InSight Lander to push down on a probe meant to drill into Martian soil which has struggled to achieve its mission throughout the past year. NASA says the goal is to stop the probe from popping out of its partially dug hole which it has done twice in recent months in addition to almost burying itself. While the act of pushing down on the probe with the arm should be relatively easy, NASA acknowledges that choosing to do so could create problems for the instrument if too much force is applied. The worry is that pushing down with the arm may damage a ribbon-like stretch of wires that attaches to InSight.

Nasa is building robots that can dig up Martian soil and convert it into rocket fuel. The machines will strip water from the soil and convert it into methane - a compound that has been tipped to power the rockets of the future. They could solve a major problem facing Nasa's deep space plans: How to keep rockets light enough to fly while still carrying enough fuel to get to and from Mars. Nasa plans to send manned missions to Mars in the early 2030s. But before humanity takes its first step on the red planet, the space agency will send a fleet of unmanned vehicles to test the habitability of its arid, dusty surface.

After 18 months living and working on the surface of Mars, a crew of six explorers boards a deep-space transport rocket and leaves for Earth. No humans are staying behind, but work goes on without them: Autonomous robots will keep running a mining and chemical-synthesis plant they'd started years before this first crewed mission ever set foot on the planet. The plant produces water, oxygen, and rocket fuel using local resources, and it will methodically build up all the necessary supplies for the next Mars mission, set to arrive in another two years. This robot factory isn't science fiction: It's being developed jointly by multiple teams across NASA. One of them is the Swamp Works Lab at NASA's John F. Kennedy Space Center, in Florida, where I am a team lead. Officially, it's known as an in situ resource utilization (ISRU) system, but we like to call it a dust-to-thrust factory, because it turns simple dust into rocket fuel.

May 2, 2018 Cape Canaveral, Fla.--Six years after last landing on Mars, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is sending a robotic geologist to dig deeper than ever before to take the planet's temperature. The Mars InSight spacecraft, set to launch this weekend, will also take the planet's pulse by making the first measurements of "marsquakes." And to check its reflexes, scientists will track the wobbly rotation of Mars on its axis to better understand the size and makeup of its core. The lander's instruments will allow scientists "to stare down deep into the planet," said the mission's chief scientist, Bruce Banerdt of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "Beauty's not just skin deep here," he said.

It looks like the Curiosity rover won't be the only craft exploring Mars. NASA recently released a video of its latest Regolith Advanced Surface Systems Operations Robot prototype going through its paces in a test facility. "RASSOR uses counterrotating bucket drums on opposing arms to provide near-zero horizontal and minimal vertical net reaction force so that excavation is not reliant on the traction or weight of the mobility system to provide a reaction force to counteract the excavation force in low-gravity environments," NASA writes. Simply put, this should make excavation on alien planets easier because the device can work without needing high amounts of traction to stay in place while performing its task. It looks like flipping over and becoming inoperable shouldn't be an issue either, based on the proven design. Popular Mechanics suggests that a whole slew of these will be sent ahead of any Martian colonists as a way of prepping the landing pad, so to speak.