NASA's Curiosity rover landed on Mars in August 2012, and its investigations revealed that Mars was once a potentially habitable planet. One of Curiosity's most exciting observations has been periodic, unusually high abundances of methane in Mars's atmosphere. Over the past seven years, Curiosity has established a background signal of methane of about 0.41 part per billion by volume (ppbv), and these periodic spikes can increase atmospheric methane to as much as 21 ppbv.

Luo et al. note that these methane spikes could "have profound implications for geology and astrobiology." On Earth, almost all methane emissions have biological origins, from cow flatulence to the decay of plant material.

A Virgin Orbit rocket released from a jet flying off the California coast carried seven small satellites into space on Thursday as the company kicked off a year in which it plans to ramp up the pace of launches, including two originating from Britain.

Virgin Orbit's modified Boeing 747 took off from Mojave Air & Space Port in the Southern California desert, flew out over the Pacific Ocean and dropped the LauncherOne rocket from its left wing.

The 70-foot-long (21.3-meter) booster ignited at an altitude of about 35,000 feet (10,668 meters) and hurtled skyward. The company later confirmed that all of the satellites were successfully deployed into the proper orbit.

"Another fantastic day for the Virgin Orbit team, and a big step forward for our customers," the company tweeted.

The payload included satellites for the U.S. Defense Department, the Polish company SatRevolution and the international company Spire Global.

It was Virgin Orbit's third launch carrying satellites for customers. Two previous launches carried multiple satellites into orbit in January and June 2021. The company's first launch, a demonstration flight, failed in May 2020.

Virgin Orbit, founded in 2017 by British billionaire Richard Branson, went public last month. The company is targeting the market for launching small satellites.