A study of meteorites suggests that Mars, the Earth and the Moon share a common composition from ‘growing up’ in a unique planetary nursery in the inner solar system.

NASA will launch Phoenix spacecraft in August to uncover Mars’s mystery. Astronauts will dig planet’s surface hoping to find underground ice.

Research comparing silicon samples from Earth, meteorites and planetary materials, published in Nature (28th June 2007), provides new evidence that the Earth’s core formed under very different conditions from those that existed on Mars. It also shows that the Earth and the Moon have the same silicon isotopic composition supporting the theory that atoms from the two mixed in the early stages of their development.