UNLV research could help assess landing locations and excavation sites for NASA’s 2020 rover mission to Mars.

Geoscience professor Elisabeth (Libby) Hausrath honored for early career accomplishments; research focuses on geochemistry, chemical interactions and soil-forming processes on Mars.

Data from NASA’s Mars Exploration Program is helping Elisabeth Hausrath understand how soil and water might have once interacted on the surface of our solar system’s most-Earthlike neighbor.

UNLV researchers report in Nature Geoscience that phosphate, which plays a role in life-creating chemical reactions, may have been more plentiful on early Mars than during the emergence of life on Earth.