Space Exploration News

Asteroid Bennu’s Surface Regolith is Primarily Loose Rubble, Scientists Say

Surface changes around the circumference of TAGSAM: (A) close-up view of the sample collection site just before contact; TAGSAM (round) can be seen at the end of its mechanical arm, and the arrow indicates the 20-cm rock that was first contacted; (B) post-contact image with arrow indicating the lofted debris; (C, D) same image as in (B), with a yellow boundary around the 0.51-m2 area that envelopes surface disturbance (C) and a zoom-in with contrast adjusted to show the lofted debris (solid arrows) and shadows over the lip of the sampler head (dashed arrows) (D). Image credit: Walsh et al., doi: 10.1126/sciadv.abm6229.
Jul 8, 2022 by News Staff

According to a new analysis of data from NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft, particles that make up the exterior of the near-Earth asteroid Bennu are so loosely packed and lightly bound to each other that if a person were to step onto Bennu they would feel very little resistance, as if stepping into a pit of plastic balls that are popular play areas for kids. Surface...

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This illustration shows the NASA cryobot concept called Probe using Radioisotopes for Icy Moons Exploration (PRIME) deploying tiny SWIM robots into the ocean miles below a lander on the frozen surface of an ocean world. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Swarm of Cellphone-Size Robots Could Look for Alien Life on Europa or Enceladus

Jul 7, 2022 by News Staff

Someday, dozens of tiny swimming robots could whisk through the water beneath the icy shell of Jupiter’s moon Europa or Saturn’s moon Enceladus, looking...

2020 CD3 is estimated to be only between one and six meters across. Image credit: Jonny Lindner.

Huge All-Season Ozone Hole Discovered over Tropics

Jul 5, 2022 by News Staff

University of Waterloo’s Professor Qing-Bin Lu has discovered a large, all-season ozone hole in the lower stratosphere over the tropics (30 deg N –...

Gabel et al. examined bone strength, density, and microarchitecture in seventeen astronauts using high-resolution peripheral quantitative computed tomography. Image credit: NASA.

Microgravity Induces Irreversible Damage to Bone Strength and Density, Says New Study

Jul 4, 2022 by News Staff

Scientists from the University of Calgary and elsewhere have followed 17 International Space Station astronauts before and after spaceflight over the last...

An artist’s impression of ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft. Image credit: ESA / ATG Medialab / DLR / FU Berlin / CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.

Mars Express Orbiter’s Instrument Gets Major Software Upgrade

Jun 29, 2022 by News Staff

The Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionospheric Sounding (MARSIS) instrument onboard ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft is receiving a major software...

SEM image of the carbon crystals in the Chelyabinsk meteoritic dust. Image credit: Taskaev et al., doi: 10.1140/epjp/s13360-022-02768-7.

Scientists Find Exotic Carbon Microcrystals in Chelyabinsk Meteoritic Dust

Jun 28, 2022 by Natali Anderson

When a space body enters Earth’s atmosphere, its surface is exposed to high pressure and temperatures. The airflow tears off small droplets from the...

BepiColombo captured this view of Mercury on June 23, 2023 as the spacecraft flew past the planet for its second of six gravity assist maneuvers at Mercury. This image was taken at 09:51:07 UTC by the Mercury Transfer Module’s Monitoring Camera 3, when the spacecraft was 1,406 km from the surface of Mercury. Closest approach of 200 km took place shortly before, at 09:44 UTC. In this view, north is up. While clearly a heavily cratered region, this image also highlights some of Mercury’s volcanic history. Mercury’s smooth plains were formed by volcanic eruptions of runny lavas that spread across the planet 3.7 billion years ago -- such as the plains visible between BepiColombo’s high-gain antenna and towards Mercury’s limb. The eruptions that formed these plains did not commonly build volcanoes that we are familiar with on Earth. The floor of the 125-km-wide Heaney crater (next to BepiColombo’s high-gain antenna in the centre of this image) is covered in smooth volcanic plains, and a small mound is illuminated. This is a rare example of a candidate volcano on Mercury, which will be an important target for BepiColombo’s high resolution imaging suite once in orbit. North of Heaney, past the high-gain antenna, is the 105-km-wide Amaral crater with a clearly defined rim and a central peak cluster. The region surrounding Amaral is pockmarked with so-called secondary craters caused by material ejected from Amaral during its formation re-impacting onto the surface nearby. This texture is common around fresh craters on Mercury. Image credit: ESA / BepiColombo / MTM.

BepiColombo Makes Its Second Gravity Assist Flyby of Mercury

Jun 24, 2022 by News Staff

BepiColombo, a joint endeavor between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), captured beautiful views of the...

On May 27, 2022, DART’s high-resolution camera DRACO captured this image of Vega, a young massive star located 25 light-years away in the constellation of Lyra. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.

NASA’s DART Spacecraft Focuses on Vega

Jun 23, 2022 by News Staff

Since its launch on November 24, 2021, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft has journeyed toward its September 26, 2022 encounter...

This impressive view of Charon was captured on July 14, 2015. Charon’s color palette is not as diverse as Pluto’s; most striking is the reddish north (top) polar region, informally named Mordor Macula. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.

New Research Sheds Light on Origin of Charon’s Red Polar Cap

Jun 21, 2022 by News Staff

The thin methane atmosphere of Pluto’s biggest moon, Charon, undergoes ‘explosive’ pulsations owing to the Pluto-Charon’s system’s near sideways...

Venus in real colors, processed from Mariner 10 images. Image credit: Mattias Malmer / NASA.

Sulfur-Metabolizing Aerial Life Cannot Explain Composition of Venus’ Atmosphere, Scientists Say

Jun 21, 2022 by News Staff

In new research, a team of scientists at the University of Cambridge has tested the ‘life in the Venusian clouds’ hypothesis. Jordan et al. demonstrate...

This image shows part of the scarred and colorful landscape in Aonia Terra, Mars. The image comprises data gathered by Mars Express’ High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on April 25, 2022. It was created using data from the nadir channel, the field of view aligned perpendicular to the surface of Mars, and the color channels of the HRSC. Image credit: ESA / DLR / FU Berlin.

Mars Express Sees ‘Colorful’ Landscape in Aonia Terra

Jun 15, 2022 by News Staff

A new image from ESA’s Mars Express orbiter shows part of Aonia Terra, an upland region in the southern highlands of Mars. This image shows part of the...

An UAP from a declassified video captured by a U.S. Navy aircraft. Image credit: U.S. Navy.

NASA Creates Independent Team to Study UAPs

Jun 9, 2022 by News Staff

NASA’s independent study team will examine unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs) from a scientific perspective. It will focus on identifying available...

This visible-light image of Jupiter was created from data captured on January 11, 2017 using Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3. Near the top, a long brown feature called a ‘brown barge’ extends 72,000 km (nearly 45,000 miles) in the east-west direction. The Great Red Spot stands out prominently in the lower left, while the smaller feature nicknamed Red Spot Jr. (known to Jovian scientists as Oval BA) appears to its lower right. Image credit: NASA / ESA / NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / Wong et al. / de Pater et al. / M. Zamani.

Jupiter’s Atmosphere is Inhomogeneous, New Study Suggests

Jun 8, 2022 by News Staff

While the massive atmosphere of Jupiter consists mainly of hydrogen and helium, the key to understanding the gas giant’s formation and evolution lies...

NASA’s Perseverance rover acquired this image on April 22, 2021, using its left Mastcam-Z camera. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS.

Ingenuity Performs Its Longest and Fastest Flight to Date on Mars: Video

Jun 3, 2022 by News Staff

On April 18, 2022, NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter made a record-breaking 25th flight. The rotorcraft covered 704 m (2,310 feet) at a max speed of 5.5...

This diagram shows three layers of aerosols in the atmospheres of Uranus and Neptune. The height scale on the diagram represents the pressure above 10 bar. The deepest layer (Aerosol-1 layer) is thick and composed of a mixture of hydrogen sulfide ice and particles produced by the interaction of the planets’ atmospheres with sunlight. The key layer that affects the colors is the middle layer, which is a layer of haze particles (Aerosol-2 layer) that is thicker on Uranus than on Neptune. Irwin et al. suspect that, on both planets, methane ice condenses onto the particles in this layer, pulling the particles deeper into the atmosphere in a shower of methane snow. Because Neptune has a more active, turbulent atmosphere than Uranus does, the team believes Neptune’s atmosphere is more efficient at churning up methane particles into the haze layer and producing this snow. This removes more of the haze and keeps Neptune’s haze layer thinner than it is on Uranus, meaning the blue color of Neptune looks stronger. Above both of these layers is an extended layer of haze (Aerosol-3 layer) similar to the layer below it but more tenuous. On Neptune, large methane ice particles also form above this layer. Image credit: Gemini Observatory / NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / J. da Silva / NASA / JPL-Caltech / B. Jónsson.

Haze Layers are Responsible for Different Blue Hues of Neptune and Uranus, Scientists Say

Jun 1, 2022 by News Staff

An international team of planetary researchers led by University of Oxford scientists has performed an analysis of visible/near-infrared observations of...

This image was taken by Mastcam onboard NASA’s Curiosity rover on Sol 3466 (May 7, 2022 at 07:58:16 UTC). Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS.

Did Curiosity Rover Find ‘Doorway’ on Mars?

May 30, 2022 by The Conversation

On May 7, 2022, the Mast camera (Mastcam) onboard NASA’s Curiosity rover took a photo which appeared to show a doorway carved into the Martian rock. This...

Billions of years ago, a river flowed across the Mawrth Vallis valley on Mars. Image credit: NASA / JPL Caltech / University of Arizona.

New Research Sheds Light on Cause of Mars’ Transition from Wet to Dry

May 27, 2022 by News Staff

Early Mars had rivers, but the cause of the transition from a wet planet to dry remains unknown. Past Martian climate can be probed using the distribution...

This illustration shows NASA’s Lucy spacecraft passing one of the Trojan asteroids near Jupiter. Image credit: Southwest Research Institute.

Lucy Observes Total Lunar Eclipse from 100 Million Kilometers Away

May 24, 2022 by News Staff

NASA’s Lucy spacecraft successfully observed the May 15-16, 2022 total lunar eclipse from a unique vantage point, 100 million km (64 million miles) from...

An artist’s impression of the early Solar System as the Solar Nebula begins to disappear, causing asteroids to accelerate and collide. Image credit: Tobias Stierli / Flaeck.

Early Inner Solar System was Very Chaotic, Research Suggests

May 24, 2022 by News Staff

Planetary scientists from the ETH Zürich and elsewhere have determined palladium-silver (Pd-Ag) and platinum (Pt) isotope compositions of 13 iron meteorites...

Solar Orbiter Sends Back Spectacular Images of the Sun

May 20, 2022 by News Staff

On March 26, 2022, the ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter spacecraft made the first of its close perihelion passages. The spacecraft flew closer to the Sun than the...

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