Mars is a dry, desert world devoid of any life (that we know of). But once upon a time, that wasn’t the case. Data collected by the robotic emissaries we’ve sent to explore the planet on our behalf indicate that the red planet was once a lush and wet world.
However, scientists are still trying to piece together Martian history to understand what happened to the planet’s water. While we know much of it was lost when the planet’s atmosphere was stripped away, what we don’t know is where the water originated from. Researchers uncovered a crucial clue in Martian meteorites found here on Earth.
“A lot of people have been trying to figure out Mars’ water history,” Jessica Barnes, an assistant professor of planetary sciences in the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, said in a statement. “Like, where did water come from? How long was it in the crust (surface) of Mars? Where did Mars’ interior water come from? What can water tell us about how Mars formed and evolved?”
Like the Earth, Mars is made of different layers: a crust, mantle, and a core. Meteorites, like the ones that fell to Earth, are made of the Martian crust, which can tell us a lot about the planet’s composition when the pieces are analyzed. According to a study published this week in Nature Geoscience, there could be at least two distinct reservoirs of ancient water lurking below the Martian surface. Each with its own (different) chemical signature.
This means that Mars probably never had a global ocean of magma beneath its surface like we do on Earth.
For this study, Barnes and her team looked for clues as to the Mars’ water history by analyzing the ratio of two types (isotopes) of hydrogen. They’re not the first to do so, but previous results have been very inconsistent.
To better understand how the planet formed and where its water came from, the researchers examined two different meteorites: a coin-sized sample known as Black Beauty (or NWA 7034), which formed when a huge impact cemented together various pieces of the Martian crust, and Allan Hills 84001 (ALH84001), a sample once thought to contain Martian microbes. The data shows that water comes from two different sources.
The team was searching for different isotopes of hydrogen — light hydrogen and heavy hydrogen — which can help trace the origin of water in rocks. (Isotopes are variations of chemical elements, with different numbers of neutrons.)
“Light hydrogen” contains one proton (and no neutrons) in its nucleus, whereas “heavy hydrogen,” also known as deuterium, contains one proton and one neutron in its core. The ratio of these two isotopes act like a fossil record of water, telling a planetary scientist its origin.
Here on Earth, protium (or light hydrogen) is the most abundant isotope. It’s found in the atmosphere, in rocks, and the ocean. On Mars, however, deuterium (heavy hydrogen) is the most abundant in the atmosphere, while Martian rocks contain a range of ratios from Earth-like to Mars-like.
To better understand the vast variation, Barnes and her team decided to focus on samples they knew came from the Martian crust — Black Beauty and Alan Hills. The team found that both samples interacted with water at different point in Mars’ history, but had similar isotope ratios, that was very similar to younger rocks analyzed by the Curiosity rover.
This data suggested a surprising result: that the chemical composition of that water hasn’t changed for nearly 4 billion years.
“Martian meteorites basically plot all over the place, and so trying to figure out what these samples are telling us about water in the mantle of Mars has historically been a challenge,” Barnes said.”The fact that our data for the crust was so different prompted us to go back through the scientific literature and scrutinize the data.”
So the team compared their results to previous isotope studies, where the meteorites originated in the Martian mantle. They discovered that the isotope ratios were consistent with two types of volcanic rock, known as shergottite, that’s found in the Martian mantle.
This means that the water within the meteorite samples came from two different sources. It also indicates that Mars lacked a global magma ocean, which would have made the mantle more consistent in its composition.
“These two different sources of water in Mars’ interior might be telling us something about the kinds of objects that were available to coalesce into the inner, rocky planets,” Barnes said.
Meaning two distinct planetary precursors with vastly different water contents could have collided, but never thoroughly mixed. And understanding how Mars formed is essential for understanding its past habitability and potential for life.
Elon Musk
Ford CEO Farley says Tesla is not who to look at for EV expertise
Interestingly, Farley has been one of the most hellbent CEOs in terms of a legacy automaker standpoint to push the EV effort. It did not go according to plan, as Ford took a $19.5 billion charge and retreated from its EV push in late 2025.
Ford CEO Jim Farley said in a recent podcast interview that Tesla is not who Americans should look at to beat Chinese carmakers.
The comments have sparked quite a bit of outrage from Tesla fans on X, the social media platform owned by Elon Musk.
Farley said that Chinese automakers are better examples of how to beat competitors. He said (via the Rapid Response Podcast):
“If you’re an American and you want us to beat the Chinese in the car business, you’re all going to want to pay attention, not necessarily to Tesla. Nothing against Tesla—they’ve been doing great—but they really don’t have an updated vehicle. The best in the business for us, cost-wise and competition-wise, supply chain, manufacturing expertise, and the I.P. in the vehicle, was really BYD. In this next cycle of EV customers in the U.S., they want pickups and utilities and all these different body styles. But they want them at $30,000, not $50,000. Like the first inning, they want them affordably.”
Despite Farley’s synopsis, it is worth mentioning that Tesla had the best-selling passenger vehicle in the world last year, and in China in March, as the Model Y continued its global dominance over other vehicles.
Musk responded to Farley’s comments by stating:
“This is before Supervised FSD is approved in China. Limiting factor is production output in Shanghai.”
This is before supervised FSD is approved in China. Limiting factor is production output in Shanghai.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 19, 2026
Interestingly, Farley has been one of the most hellbent CEOs in terms of a legacy automaker standpoint to push the EV effort. It did not go according to plan, as Ford took a $19.5 billion charge and retreated from its EV push in late 2025.
Ford cancels all-electric F-150 Lightning, announces $19.5 billion in charges
Instead, Ford is “doubling down on its affordable” EVs and said it would pivot from its previous plans.
Reaction from Tesla fans was pretty much how you would expect. Many said they have lost a lot of respect for Farley after his comments; others believe he is the last CEO anyone should be taking advice on EVs from.
Nevertheless, Farley’s plans are bold and brash; many consider Tesla the most ideal company to replicate EV efforts from. It will be interesting to see if Ford can rebound from this big adjustment, and hopefully, Farley’s plans to replicate efforts from BYD work out the way he hopes.
Elon Musk
SpaceX wins its first MARS contract but it comes with a catch
NASA awarded SpaceX a $175 million Mars rover contract while the White House proposes cutting the mission.
NASA just signed a $175.7 million contract with SpaceX to launch a Mars rover that the White House is simultaneously trying to defund. The contract, awarded on April 16, 2026, tasks SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy with launching the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Rosalind Franklin rover from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, no earlier than late 2028. It would mark the first time SpaceX has ever sent a payload to Mars.
Under NASA’s Rosalind Franklin Support and Augmentation project, known as ROSA, the agency is providing braking engines for the rover’s descent stage, radioisotope heater units that use decaying plutonium to keep the rover warm on the Martian surface, additional electronics, and a mass spectrometer instrument, as noted by SpaceNews.
Those nuclear heating units are the reason an American rocket was required at all. U.S. export controls on radioisotope technology mean any payload carrying them must launch on a domestic vehicle, which narrowed the field to SpaceX and United Launch Alliance. Falcon Heavy’s pricing made it the practical choice.
SpaceX is quietly becoming the U.S. Military’s only reliable rocket
Falcon Heavy debuted in February 2018 and has 11 launches to its record. The rocket has not flown since October 2024, when it sent NASA’s Europa Clipper toward Jupiter. The three-core design, built from modified Falcon 9 first stages, gives it the lift capacity needed for deep space planetary missions that a single Falcon 9 cannot reach.
The Rosalind Franklin rover has been sitting in storage in Europe for years. It was originally due to launch in 2022 as a joint mission with Russia, but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine ended that partnership, leaving the rover built but stranded without a launch vehicle or landing hardware. NASA stepped back in through a 2024 agreement with ESA to rescue the mission. The rover is designed to drill up to two meters below the Martian surface in search of evidence of past life, a science objective no previous mission has attempted at that depth.
The contradiction at the center of this story is hard to ignore. The White House’s fiscal year 2027 budget proposal included no funding for ROSA and did not mention the mission at all in the detailed congressional justification document released April 3.
Musk has long argued that reaching Mars is not optional. “We don’t want to be one of those single planet species, we want to be a multi-planet species.” Whether this particular mission survives Washington’s budget fight, the Falcon Heavy contract means SpaceX is now formally on record as the rocket that could get humanity’s next Mars science mission off the ground.
The timing of this contract carries extra weight given that SpaceX filed confidentially with the SEC in early April and is targeting an IPO roadshow in the week of June 8. It would be the largest public offering in history.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) is set to hold its Earnings Call for the first quarter of 2026 on Wednesday, and there are a lot of interesting things that are swirling around in terms of speculation from investors.
With the company’s executives, including CEO Elon Musk, answering a handful of questions that investors submit through the Say platform, fans want to know a lot of things about a lot of things.
These five questions come from Retail Investors, who are normal, everyday shareholders:
- When will we have the Optimus v3 reveal? When will Optimus production start, since we ended the Model S and Model X production earlier than mid-year? What’s the expected Optimus production rate exiting this year? What are the initial targeted skills?
- What milestones are you targeting for unsupervised FSD and Robotaxi expansion beyond Austin this year, and how will that drive recurring revenue?
- How will Hardware 3 cars reach Unsupervised Full Self-Driving?
- When do you expect Unsupervised Full Self-Driving to reach customer cars?
- When will Robotaxi expand past its current limited rollout?
Additionally, these are currently the three questions that are slated to be answered by Institutional Firms, which also answer a handful of questions during the call:
- Now that FSD has been approved in the Netherlands and is expected to launch across Europe this summer, can you discuss your Robotaxi strategy for the region?
- What enabled you to finish the AI5 tapeout early and were there any changes to the original vision? Last week, Elon said AI5 will go into Optimus and the Supercomputer, but one month ago said it would go into the Robotaxi. Has AI5 been dropped from the vehicle roadmap?
- Given the recent NHTSA incident filings, can you update us on the Robotaxi safety data? If safety validation remains the primary bottleneck, why not deploy thousands of vehicles to accelerate the removal of the safety driver?
The questions range through every current Tesla project, including FSD expansion and Optimus. However, many of the answers we will get will likely be repetitive answers we’ve heard in the past.
This is especially pertinent when the questions about when Unsupervised FSD will reach customer cars: we know Musk will say that it will happen this year. Is Tesla capable of that? Maybe. But a more transparent answer that is more revealing of a true timeline would be appreciated.
Hardware 3 owners are anxiously awaiting the arrival of FSD v14 Lite, which was promised to them last year for a release sometime this year.
The Earnings Call is set to take place on Wednesday at market close.
Ford CEO Farley says Tesla is not who to look at for EV expertise
SpaceX wins its first MARS contract but it comes with a catch
