By Joey Roulette, Ross Kerber and Echo Wang WASHINGTON, Dec 12 (Reuters) - Investors eyeing SpaceX's potential blockbuster IPO may need to brace themselves as CEO Elon Musk balances his risky quest to reach Mars with growing the revenue-rich Starlink satellite broadband business that would offer more reliable shareholder returns.

Even worse, the orbit of Mars is elliptical (think of a slight oval rather than a perfect circle), which means that sometimes the planet is closer to the sun than average (so it orbits more quickly, and the clocks slow) and that sometimes it’s farther out (so it orbits more slowly, and the clocks run faster).

As humanity prepares to take its first steps on Mars, a comprehensive report released by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and steered by scientists at Penn State lays out a detailed science strategy to guide the initial human missions to the red planet.

There are two small moons in orbit around Mars today, but both may be remnants of a much larger moon that had enough of a gravitational pull to drive tides in the Red Planet's lost lakes and seas

NASA's Perseverance rover has for the first time helped scientists confirm that electrical sparks often ignite within swirling mini-twisters on Mars.

For the first time, scientists have mapped vast, continent-scale river drainage systems on Mars — ancient networks that may also be among the most promising places to search for signs of past life.

For decades, scientists have wondered whether life ever existed beyond Earth. Now, a discovery on Mars might finally bring us closer to an answer.The red planet has always fascinated us, but this finding feels different.

Clocks on Mars tick faster by about 477 microseconds each Earth day, a new study suggests. This difference is significantly more than that for our moon, posing potential challenges for future crewed missions.