Axios

The clouds on Mars look oddly Earthlike in recently released photos taken by NASA's Curiosity rover.

Why it matters: By studying these Martian clouds from the ground, scientists hope to learn more about how Mars' thin atmosphere works and how it differs from Earth's.

President Biden's budget request for NASA would give the space agency's science and climate change portfolios a big boost.

Why it matters: The budget still needs to be approved by Congress, but it shows where the new administration's priorities lie.

Proof of alien life is likely to come from decades of incremental scientific discoveries, not a blurry video of a UFO speeding through the atmosphere.

The big picture: Instead of a fringe science, the search for life today has become integral to NASA's mission.

Maryland and Montana have passed new laws restricting forensic genealogy, the DNA technique used to trace the Golden State Killer, in order to protect the privacy of suspects and their families, the New York Times reported Monday.

Why it matters: Law enforcement across the U.S. have access to DNA in databases outside of the criminal justice system. Through genealogy websites with millions of users, police have used DNA to identify suspects.

Peru officials revised the country's COVID-19 death toll Monday from 69,342 to 180,764 after a review.

Why it matters: The almost tripling of the number listed Sunday means the country has the worst pandemic death rate per capita, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

The World Health Organization announced Monday a new naming system for COVID-19 variants that uses letters from the Greek alphabet.

Why it matters: Health officials have been concerned that the strains' scientific names, comprising numbers and letters, are leading people to refer to them by the place they were detected, such as the "U.K. variant" for B.1.1.7, which the WHO notes in a Twitter post "is stigmatizing & discriminatory."