Space Exploration News

Pluto’s Subsurface Ocean is 8% Denser than Seawater on Earth, Study Suggests

This high-resolution image of Pluto was taken by New Horizons on July 14. Pluto’s surface sports a remarkable range of subtle colors, enhanced in this view to a rainbow of pale blues, yellows, oranges, and deep reds. Many landforms have their own distinct colors, telling a complex geological and climatological story that scientists have only just begun to decode. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.
May 21, 2024 by News Staff

Planetary researchers from Washington University in St. Louis and the Lunar and Planetary Institute have used mathematical models and unprecedented high-resolution images from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft to take a closer look at the subsurface ocean that likely lies beneath Pluto’s thick shell of nitrogen, methane and water ice. This high-resolution image of Pluto was taken by New Horizons on July 14. Pluto’s surface sports a remarkable range...

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These views of Jupiter, captured by Juno during its 59th close flyby of the giant planet on March 7, 2024, provide a good look at Jupiter’s colorful belts and swirling storms, including the Great Red Spot. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Gerald Eichstädt.

Amalthea: Juno Captures Solar System’s Reddest Object

May 15, 2024 by News Staff

NASA’s Juno orbiter captured these views of the tiny, red moon Amalthea and its parent planet and during a close flyby on March 7, 2024. These views...

Permanently shadowed regions in the north polar region of Ceres; the color indicates the maximum obliquity at which a location is in shadow through an entire orbit. Image credit: Schorghofer et al., doi: 10.3847/PSJ/ad3639.

Planetary Scientists Create Map of Ceres’ Cold Traps

May 13, 2024 by News Staff

The dwarf planet Ceres hosts permanently shadowed areas in its polar regions, and these regions are an interesting analog to Mercury and the Moon. Ceres’...

Representation of Cassini’s orbits used to calculate Titan’s gravity; the colored part of the orbits shows the distance from Cassini to Titan with the smallest distance in red; the cross-section of Titan shows the moon’s different layers with the ocean in blue; Saturn with rings and ring shadows can be seen in the background. Image credit: Britt Griswold, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Cassini Observations Suggest Underground Ocean on Titan

May 10, 2024 by News Staff

Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, harbors an internal low-density ocean of water or ammonia, according to an analysis of archival data from NASA’s Cassini...

Venus today is dry thanks to water loss to space as atomic hydrogen. Image credit: Aurore Simonnet / Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics / University of Colorado at Boulder.

New Study Explains Why Venus is Extremely Dry

May 7, 2024 by News Staff

Despite its Earth-like size and source material, Venus is extremely dry, indicating near-total water loss to space. Using computer simulations, planetary...

Mastcam mosaic from the Sol 1686 rover location looking behind the rover (downslope) at the transition point between the Sutton Island and Blunts Point Murray members. Images from Sols 1685-1689 display sedimentary textures of dark-toned manganese-rich sandstones and nearby rocks. Dashed line boxes in the large mosaic are shown as insets along the bottom of figure. Small red outlines show the approximate locations and extent of ChemCam observations. Throughout this transition area, dark-toned sandstones (presumably manganese-rich based on ChemCam observations at three locations) overlie light-toned materials. Insets from left to right: (a) Denning Brook, a manganese-rich fine-grained dark-toned sandstone ChemCam observation; (b) and (c) two light-toned blocks with cross-stratified textures, highlighted with yellow lines, 6 m away from Denning Brook and to the upper left in the large mosaic; (d) dark-toned materials (center of mosaic); and (E1) Newport Ledge, (E2) AEGIS post 1685a, (E3) Sugarloaf Mountain, three thin planar laminated dark-toned sandstones. Image credit: NASA / Caltech-JPL / MSSS.

Manganese-Rich Sandstones Point to Earth-Like Environment on Ancient Mars

May 2, 2024 by News Staff

In May 2017, NASA’s Curiosity rover observed higher than usual amounts of manganese in the lakebed rocks within Gale crater, Mars. These sedimentary...

This image of the Martian Inca City was captured by the High Resolution Stereo Camera onboard ESA’s Mars Express orbiter on February 27, 2024. Image credit: ESA / DLR / FU Berlin.

Mars Express Spots ‘Spiders’ at Outskirts of Martian ‘Inca City’

Apr 24, 2024 by News Staff

ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft have spotted the telltale traces of ‘spiders’ scattered across the southern polar region of Mars. This image of the...

This global view of Io was obtained in January 1999 by NASA’s Galileo spacecraft. Image credit: NASA / JPL / University of Arizona.

Study: Jupiter’s Moon Io Has Been Volcanically Active for All of Its History

Apr 24, 2024 by News Staff

Sulfur and chlorine isotopes in Io’s atmosphere indicate that it has been volcanically active for the entire 4.57 billion-year history of the Solar System. This...

Illustrative workflow showcasing the process of comparative genomics analysis of Enterobacter bugandensis, evaluating its prevalence and metabolic interactions within the microbial community, and its successful adaptation within the ISS habitat. Image credit: Sengupta et al., doi: 10.1186/s40168-024-01777-1.

Biologists Find Mutated and Genetically Distinct Strains of Multi-Drug Resistant Bacterium on ISS

Apr 23, 2024 by Sergio Prostak

Enterobacter bugandensis is primarily found in clinical specimens including the human gastrointestinal tract. Illustrative workflow showcasing the process...

Kane & Byrne describe Venus as an anchor point from which planetary scientists can better understand the conditions that preclude life on exoplanets. Image credit: Kane & Byrne, doi: 10.1038/s41550-024-02228-5.

Uninhabitable Venus Offers Lessons about Potential for Extraterrestrial Life

Apr 23, 2024 by News Staff

Fully understanding how a rocky planet becomes habitable and remains so is a fundamental challenge for planetary scientists and astrobiologists, given...

The JunoCam instrument aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft imaged Io, the most geologically active body in our Solar System, on February 3, 2024, from a distance of about 7,904 km (4,911 miles). Image credit: NASA / SwRI / MSSS.

NASA’s Juno Mission Provides Close-Ups of Intriguing Features on Io

Apr 19, 2024 by News Staff

In December 2023 and February 2024, NASA’s Juno spacecraft made extremely close flybys of Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io, getting within about 1,500 km...

This Pluto mosaic was made from New Horizons LORRI images taken on July 14, 2015, from a distance of 49,700 miles (80,000 km). This view is projected from a point 1,118 miles (1,800 km) above Pluto’s equator, looking northeast over the dark, cratered Cthulhu Regio toward the bright, smooth expanse of icy plains called Sputnik Planum. Pluto’s North Pole is off the image to the left. This mosaic was produced with panchromatic images from the New Horizons LORRI camera, with color overlaid from the Ralph color mapper onboard New Horizons. Image credit: S.A. Stern et al.

Planetary Researchers Solve Mystery of How Pluto Got Its Pear-Shaped Feature

Apr 16, 2024 by Enrico de Lazaro

Pluto’s surface is dominated by the huge, pear-shaped basin Sputnik Planitia. It appears to be of impact origin, but modeling has not yet explained its...

Schematic view of planetary material escaping through Venus magnetosheath flank; the red line and arrow show the region and direction of observations by BepiColombo when the escaping ions (C+, O+, H+) were observed. Image credit: Thibaut Roger / Europlanet 2024 RI / Hadid et al.

BepiColombo Detects Oxygen and Carbon Ions in Magnetosphere of Venus

Apr 15, 2024 by Natali Anderson

In August 2021, the ESA/JAXA Mercury-bound BepiColombo spacecraft performed its second flyby of Venus and provided a short-lived observation of its induced...

This composite image of Ultima Thule was compiled from data obtained by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft as it flew by the object on January 1, 2019. The image combines enhanced color data (close to what the human eye would see) with detailed high-resolution panchromatic pictures. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute / Roman Tkachenko.

Arrokoth and Other Kuiper Belt Objects Contain Pristine Ices, Study Suggests

Apr 2, 2024 by News Staff

A duo of planetary scientists from Brown University and the SETI Institute has found that the Kuiper Belt object (486958) Arrokoth, which was the target...

SOHO-5000, the 5,000th comet discovered with SOHO spacecraft, is noted by a small white box in the upper left portion of this image. A zoomed-in inset shows the comet as a faint dot between the white vertical lines. The image was taken on March 25, 2024, by SOHO’s Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO). Image credit: NASA / ESA / SOHO.

SOHO Observatory Discovers Its 5,000th Comet

Mar 29, 2024 by News Staff

On March 25, 2024, Hanjie Tan, an astronomy Ph.D. student in Prague, Czech Republic, spotted a comet in an image from the ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric...

Jörges et al. tackled the question of whether body posture influences human perception of self-motion and distance; they found some evidence that the same amount of optic flow can elicit the sensation of having traveled further when supine versus when sitting upright, that is, optic flow is more effective at eliciting a sense of self-motion when supine; this constitutes evidence that visual and non-visual cues are at least partially integrated even when self-motion is presented only visually; however, they did not find any significant differences between performance on Earth and in the microgravity of the ISS, suggesting that vestibular cues play a minor role, if any, in the estimation of visually presented self-motion.

Astronauts Have Surprising Ability to Orient Themselves and Gauge Distance Traveled in Space: Study

Mar 28, 2024 by News Staff

New research has implications for crew safety in space and could potentially give clues to how aging affects people’s balance systems here on Earth. Jörges...

Fawdon et al. created the most detailed geologic map of Oxia Planum, the landing site for ESA’s Rosalind Franklin rover on Mars. Image credit: Fawdon et al., doi: 10.1080/17445647.2024.2302361.

Scientists Create High-Resolution Geological Map of Oxia Planum

Mar 27, 2024 by News Staff

Using data from ESA’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter and NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, planetary scientists have created the 1:30000 scale geological...

This composite image, taken by JAXA’s Akatsuki spacecraft, shows Venus. Image credit: JAXA / ISAS / DARTS / Damia Bouic.

Clouds of Venus Could Be Hospitable for Some Forms of Life, New Research Suggests

Mar 20, 2024 by News Staff

Planetary scientists have long speculated about the potential habitability of Venus, not at its hot surface, but in the cloud layers located at 48-60 km...

This view of Titan is among the last images NASA’s Cassini spacecraft sent to Earth before it plunged into the giant planet’s atmosphere. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute.

Tricarbon Molecule Detected in Atmosphere of Titan

Mar 18, 2024 by Natali Anderson

The tricarbon molecule (C3) is likely produced in the upper atmosphere of Titan by the reaction of abundant acetylene with atomic carbon. This view of...

Noctis Mons. Image credit: NASA / USGS / Lee et al.

Planetary Scientists Discover Giant Shield Volcano on Mars

Mar 13, 2024 by News Staff

Provisionally designated Noctis Mons, the newly-discovered volcano is located just south of Mars’ equator, in Eastern Noctis Labyrinthus, west of Valles...

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