A lot of the time, when someone mentions the University of Nevada Las Vegas, they’re speaking of its renowned School of Hospitality, its fast-growing medical school or its Jerry Tarkanian-era men’s basketball teams. But UNLV is also one of the nation’s top research universities, awarded an R1 classification (“very high research activity”) from the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. Join the Weekly as we peek into the laboratories where world-changing scientific research is ongoing.

Exploring Mars might be a dream for students interested in careers in space. For Libby Hausrath, it’s an exciting point on a career path she chose years ago.

In the summer of 2020, NASA launched Percy (full name, Perseverance), a car-sized rover, as part of the Mars 2020 mission. For seven long months, Percy traveled through the vacuum of space, drifting among the stars toward the Red Planet with a small robotic helicopter fondly dubbed Ginny (Ingenuity) in tow.

To find evidence of prehistoric microbial life and to better understand the processes that formed the surface of Mars, scientists wish to analyze Martian samples with high-tech lab equipment on Earth. The majority of the samples will be made up of rock. Still, scientists are also interested in studying regolith, or broken rock and dust, not only for what it can reveal about Mars’ geological processes and environment but also help astronauts prepare for some of the difficulties they will encounter. Regolith is fascinating to scientists and engineers because it can impact everything from solar panels to spacesuits.

More than a year and a half after its first flight on Mars, the Ingenuity helicopter has set a new record.

NASA’s Perseverance rover snagged two new samples from the Martian surface on Dec. 2 and 6. But unlike the 15 rock cores collected to date, these newest samples came from a pile of wind-blown sand and dust similar to but smaller than a dune. Now contained in special metal collection tubes, one of these two samples will be considered for deposit on the Martian surface sometime this month as part of the Mars Sample Return campaign.

There are many factors to consider regarding possible future human exploration on Mars. Unlike robotic equipment, such as a rover , a drone or a probe, a human being needs, just to say the basics, oxygen to breathe and food to eat. Not to mention the effects that such a long and unusual journey into deep space can have on an astronaut's body.

Leena Cycil, geochemist and team member on the Mars 2020 mission, believes that algae may be part of the "secret" to human survival on Mars. Together with Libby Hausrath, she studies extremophile algae and tries to grow them under pressure and luminosity conditions similar to those found on Mars . To date, three promising species have been identified.