Space Exploration News

Jun 2, 2023 by News Staff

On June 2, 2023, to celebrate the 20th birthday of ESA’s Mars Express, you’ll have the chance to get as close as it’s currently possible get to a live view from the Red Planet. Tune in to be amongst the first to see new pictures roughly every 50 seconds as they’re beamed down directly from the Visual Monitoring Camera on board Mars Express. One-hour livestream starts on the ESA YouTube channel 12:00 p.m. ET (18:00 CEST, 17:00 BST). “Most...

May 26, 2023 by Enrico de Lazaro

Precursors of the molecules needed for the origin of life may have been generated by chemical reactions promoted by meteoritic and volcanic particles approximately...

May 23, 2023 by News Staff

Recently, former and current government officials, legislators, and faculty in the United States have called for research on what their government terms...

May 16, 2023 by News Staff

Saturn’s ring system may well have formed when dinosaurs were still walking on the Earth, and will last only another few hundred million years at most,...

May 15, 2023 by Natali Anderson

Ascraeus Mons is the northernmost and tallest of three prominent volcanoes found in the Tharsis region of Mars, a volcanic plateau in the planet’s western...

May 5, 2023 by News Staff

The five large moons of Uranus — Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, and Oberon — are important targets for future spacecraft missions. Studying...

May 1, 2023 by News Staff

NASA’s ShadowCam instrument is flying with five other instruments aboard KARI’s Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO), also known as Danuri, which...

Apr 27, 2023 by Enrico de Lazaro

One of the biggest challenges to growing food on Mars is the presence of perchlorate salts, which have been detected in the Martian regolith (soil) and...

Apr 25, 2023 by News Staff

Mars has a liquid iron alloy core at its center. Using seismic data gathered by NASA’s InSight lander, planetary scientists have made the first observations...

Apr 19, 2023 by News Staff

ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) has taken its first monitoring camera images showing part of the spacecraft with our home planet as a stunning...

Apr 17, 2023 by News Staff

Intense tectonism is evident on many outer solar system satellites — such as Ganymede, Europa, and Enceladus — with some surface regions showing...

Apr 17, 2023 by News Staff

ESA’s latest interplanetary mission, the JUpiter ICy Moons Explorer (JUICE), lifted off on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French...

Mar 30, 2023 by News Staff

The most feasible explanation is that icy ring particles raining down onto Saturn’s atmosphere cause this heating, according to a team of astronomers...

Mar 30, 2023 by News Staff

There are many thousands of volcanoes on the surface of Venus. These volcanoes provide clues into the interior properties of the planet, properties that...

Mar 29, 2023 by News Staff

Scientists from China and the United States have analyzed the impact glass beads from a lunar soil sample returned by China’s Chang’e-5 mission. Asteroid...

Mar 23, 2023 by News Staff

The radar properties of icy satellites of Jupiter and Saturn commonly differ by more than an order of magnitude from those of rocky planets because of...

Mar 22, 2023 by News Staff

An international team of researchers has detected nicotinic acid (also known as vitamin B3 or niacin) and uracil, one of the four nucleobases in ribonucleic...

Mar 20, 2023 by News Staff

A so-called light-toned deposit (LTD) in Eastern Noctis Labyrinthus, about 160 km (99.4 miles) north-west of Oudemans crater near Mars’ equator, presents...

Mar 17, 2023 by Enrico de Lazaro

The StarCrete is twice as strong as regular concrete and is made from extraterrestrial dust, potato starch, and a pinch of salt. Aled Roberts and Nigel...

Mar 16, 2023 by News Staff

In new research, planetary scientists from the University of Maryland and elsewhere analyzed melted meteorites that had been floating around in space since...