Mars: The Best Science Videos on the Red Planet, Its Water, and the Search for Life
See our guides to Space Exploration and Geology for the science of how we read another planet's surface and history.
Could Anyone Ever Live There?
Before the dream of a Mars colony comes the hard engineering and biology of actually surviving there. These two take the question seriously from both sides.
Mars Has a Fatal Flaw, and No One Has the Solution (ft. Veritasium)
A feature-length collaboration between Astrum and Veritasium on the single hardest problem with living on Mars, the one no amount of engineering enthusiasm makes disappear. If you only watch one Mars video, make it this one.
Read next: Space Exploration Explained.
Moon Dust to Mars Dreams: The Next Step Beyond Earth
Brian Greene hosts an astronaut and leading planetary scientists on the missions meant to take humans back to the Moon and onward to Mars. It is the grounded, expert counterweight to the usual colonization hype, with the people who actually plan these trips.
Read next: Space Exploration Explained.
The Search for Life and Water
Water is the thread that ties the whole Mars story together, because where there was water there may once have been life. These three follow that trail.
Have We Really Found Life on Mars?
Every so often a wave of "life on Mars" headlines sweeps the internet. This cuts straight through them to explain what was actually detected, why it caught scientists' attention, and what it genuinely does and does not mean. A clinic in reading science news carefully.
Read next: Astronomy Explained.
NASA Found Evidence of Water All Over Mars, and It's a Big Deal
A supercut of the evidence that Mars was once shaped by rivers, lakes, and possibly seas. Piece by piece it builds the picture of an ancient, wetter world, which is the foundation everything in the search for Martian life rests on.
Read next: Geology Explained.
Oceans on Mars: Zhurong's Unbelievable Discovery
China's Zhurong rover turned up signs of an ancient ocean shoreline, and this explains how a machine on the ground reads the buried history of a vanished sea. A nice reminder that Mars exploration is now a genuinely international effort.
Read next: Geology Explained.
On the Surface, with the Rovers
The rovers are our eyes and hands on Mars, and they keep finding things no one expected. Two stories from the surface, one brand new and one a farewell.
Perseverance Just Detected an Unexpected Signal on Mars
The Perseverance rover recorded what looks like the first detection of lightning on Mars, a genuinely new piece of Martian weather. Short, specific, and a good example of science happening in real time.
Read next: Weather Science Explained.
NASA Spirit's Final Images on Mars Broke Me
The story of the Spirit rover's last days, told through its own final images. It is more moving than you would expect for a robot, and a reminder of how much these machines accomplish far past their planned lifetimes.
Read next: Space Exploration Explained.