For those of you dreaming of visiting Mars, readings taken during the Curiosity rover's voyage to the Red Planet offer a new measurement to ponder as you weigh the risks.

Mars-bound pioneers will be exposed to radiation levels that could effectively retire astronauts under NASA's current standards, scientists reported Thursday. The radiation astronauts would face on a round trip would be comparable to getting an abdominal CT scan "about once every five days," said Cary Zeitlin, principal scientist for the NASA-led Martian Radiation Environment Experiment.

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By Elizabeth Landau, CNN

Last week we learned that, yes, Mars could have hosted life, based on the analysis of powder procured by rover Curiosity drilling into the Red Planet.

Now, data from other instruments on board Curiosity show more evidence of water in the area. The rover's Mast Camera (Mastcam) spotted evidence of water-bearing minerals in the "Yellowknife Bay" area where Curiosity drilled. Mastcam has infrared-imaging capability that allows scientists to detect certain minerals.

Scientists released the news at a briefing at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas.

"With Mastcam, we see elevated hydration signals in the narrow veins that cut many of the rocks in this area,"  Melissa Rice of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena said in a statement. "These bright veins contain hydrated minerals that are different from the clay minerals in the surrounding rock matrix."

Another instrument on board Curiosity adds to these findings. The Russian-made Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons tool detected hydrogen under the rover that appears to be part of water molecules that are bound into minerals. There is more of this evidence of water at Yellowknife Bay than at other sites Curiosity has visited so far, researchers said.

The clay that Curiosity discovered during its drilling must have been created by wet environmental processes, NASA said. The overall mix of chemical elements didn't change much when the clays were produced, scientists said. Information from the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer, a Canadian-made technology, delivered this insight.

The rock outcrop into which Curiosity drilled appears to have an elemental composition that matches basalt, the most commonly seen rock on Mars.

Curiosity landed on Mars on August 6. The rover weighs 2 tons and is about the size of a small SUV. The mission costs $2.5 billion.

Read about last week's results

By Elizabeth Landau, CNN

Curiosity, humanity's most powerful rover  to land on Mars, has made a startling discovery: Conditions that could have supported life once existed there.

"We have found a habitable environment that is so benign, and supportive of life, that probably if this water was around and you had been on the planet, you would have been able to drink it," John Grotzinger, Curiosity project scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, said in a Tuesday news conference.

This discovery is based on the chemical analysis of powder that the rover recovered by drilling a hole in a rock. This was the first time a robot sent from Earth had drilled on another planet.

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By Elizabeth Landau, CNN

One man. One woman. Five hundred and one days in an RV-size space capsule. Will they still be speaking when they return?

The Inspiration Mars Foundation is seeking to send two people - potentially a middle-aged married couple - to space in a capsule that would pass within 100 miles of Mars.

Although no formal application process has begun, the Mars mission masterminds are already receiving résumés and technology ideas from interested people, said Jane Poynter, president of Paragon Space Development Corp., which is developing technologies for the mission that's hoping to launch in 2018.

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