Space Exploration News

Saturn’s Moon Mimas Hosts Global Ocean, New Study Suggests

Mimas’ surface, like the surfaces of most of the other major Saturnian moons without atmospheres, is not pure ice but contains some dark impurities; the relatively dark markings appear along the lower portion of the walls of the 130-km-wide Herschel Crater (the peak in the middle of the crater is about as tall as Mount Everest; the impact that made it likely almost destroyed the moon) and some of the smaller craters; scientists interpret this darkening as evidence for the gradual concentration of impurities from evaporating icy materials in areas where the dark impurities slide slowly down the crater wall. Image credit: NASA / JPL / Space Science Institute.
Jan 20, 2022 by News Staff

Mimas, the smallest and innermost of Saturn’s eight main moons, may be warm enough to harbor a global, liquid water ocean beneath a 24-31-km (15-19-mile) thick ice shell, according to a new analysis of data from NASA’s Cassini mission. Mimas’ surface, like the surfaces of most of the other major Saturnian moons without atmospheres, is not pure ice but contains some dark impurities; the relatively dark markings appear along the lower portion...

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A selfie taken by NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity on Sol 2291 (January 15, 2019) at the ‘Rock Hall’ drill site, located on Vera Rubin Ridge. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS.

Curiosity’s Samples from Martian Crater Strongly Depleted in Carbon-13, Researchers Say

Jan 18, 2022 by News Staff

An analysis of carbon isotopes in sediment samples taken by NASA’s Curiosity rover from Gale crater, Mars, leave planetary researchers with three plausible...

An artist’s impression of the super-Neptune exoplanet TOI-1728b. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Computer Simulations Shed New Light on Gas Giant Formation

Jan 17, 2022 by News Staff

Solar system’s gas giants, such as Jupiter, Saturn, and massive exoplanets, were formed via the gas accretion onto the solid cores, each with a mass...

Trudel et al. suggest that the destruction of red blood cells, termed hemolysis, is a primary effect of microgravity in space flight and support the hypothesis that the anemia associated with space flight is a hemolytic condition that should be considered in the screening and monitoring of both astronauts and space tourists. Image credit: NASA.

Study: Destruction of Red Blood Cells Contributes to Anemia during Long-Duration Space Flights

Jan 14, 2022 by News Staff

On Earth, our bodies create and destroy 2 million red blood cells every second. In a new study published today in the journal Nature Medicine, a team of...

An artist’s conception of the cross section of a super-Earth with the National Ignition Facility target chamber superimposed over the mantle, looking into the core. Image credit: John Jett / Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Rocky Exoplanets with Four to Six Times Earth’s Mass Have Longest Dynamos, Study Suggests

Jan 13, 2022 by News Staff

The pressure and temperature conditions at which iron melts are important for rocky planets because they determine the size of the liquid metal core, an...

Our ability to explore the cosmos by direct contact has been limited to a small number of lunar and interplanetary missions. However, NASA’s Starlight program points a path forward to send small, relativistic spacecraft far outside our Solar System via standoff directed-energy propulsion. These miniaturized spacecraft are capable of robotic exploration but can also transport seeds and organisms, marking a profound change in our ability to both characterize and expand the reach of known life. Lantin et al. explore the biological and technological challenges of interstellar space biology, focusing on radiation-tolerant microorganisms capable of cryptobiosis. Image credit: University of California, Santa Barbara.

We Must Consider Benefits of Sending Life Outside of Solar System, Researchers Say

Jan 8, 2022 by News Staff

University of California, Santa Barbara’s professors Philip Lubin and Joel Rothman and their colleagues contemplate launching small cryptobiotic lifeforms...

Possible scenarios of terrestrial planet formation: in the classic Wetherill-type model of oligarchic growth, the terrestrial planets formed by mutual collisions among Moon- to Mars-sized planetary embryos after the gas disk dissipated and accreted only a small fraction of CC planetesimals, which were scattered inward during Jupiter’s growth and/or putative migration; alternatively, the terrestrial planets may have formed within the lifetime of the gas disk by efficiently accreting ‘pebbles’ from the outer Solar System, which drift sunward through the disk due to gas drag; the two models differ in the amount of outer solar system material accreted by the terrestrial planets, which may be quantified using nucleosynthetic isotope anomalies. Image credit: Burkhardt et al., doi: 10.1126/sciadv.abj7601.

Earth and Other Terrestrial Planets Formed from Inner Solar System Material, Study Suggests

Dec 28, 2021 by News Staff

Two fundamentally different processes of rocky planet formation exist, but it is unclear which one built the Earth and other terrestrial solar system planets....

Trace Gas Orbiter Finds Water Ice in Martian Polar Crater

Dec 27, 2021 by News Staff

ESA’s Trace Gas Orbiter has returned a stunning image of a 4-km- (2.5-mile) wide crater located in Vastitas Borealis, the largest lowland region of Mars. The...

On December 10, 2021, DART’s DRACO camera captured and returned this image of Messier 38. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.

NASA’s DART Spacecraft Captures Its First Images

Dec 23, 2021 by News Staff

Just two weeks after launch, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft has returned its first images from space. On December 10, 2021,...

An artist’s conception of the aerial biosphere in the cloud layers of Venus. In this picture, hypothetical microbial life in the clouds of Venus resides inside protective cloud particles and is carried by winds around the planet. Image credit: J. Petkowska.

Clouds of Venus May Be More Habitable than Previously Thought

Dec 21, 2021 by News Staff

Possible lifeforms in the Venusian clouds could be setting off a cascade of chemical reactions that is making the environment much more habitable, according...

A carbonate-rich grain in the sample of material from the near-Earth asteroid Ryugu. Image credit: Pilorget et al., doi: 10.1038/s41550-021-01549-z.

Hayabusa-2 Sample Reveals New Information about Asteroid Ryugu

Dec 21, 2021 by News Staff

An analysis of the Hayabusa-2 sample of material returned to Earth from the carbon-rich, diamond-shaped, near-Earth asteroid Ryugu shows that the material...

This image of Ganymede was obtained by the JunoCam imager aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft during its June 7, 2021, flyby of the icy moon. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS.

Juno Records ‘Sounds’ of Jupiter’s Moon Ganymede

Dec 20, 2021 by News Staff

The magnetosphere of Ganymede, the Jupiter’s largest moon, is a source of electric and magnetic radio emissions, which have been monitored by the Waves...

Mars; the center of the scene shows the entire Valles Marineris canyon system. Image credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

ESA’s Trace Gas Orbiter Finds Water in Martian Canyon System

Dec 17, 2021 by News Staff

Planetary researchers using the Fine Resolution Epithermal Neutron Detector (FREND) instrument onboard ESA’s Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) have found evidence...

The Mastcam-Z instrument on NASA’s Perseverance rover took this image of Ingenuity on December 1, 2021, when the rotorcraft was about 295 m (970 feet) away. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / ASU / MSSS.

Ingenuity Helicopter Completes Its Seventeenth Flight on Mars

Dec 16, 2021 by News Staff

On December 5, 2021, NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter successfully flew to a new destination located very close to its original airfield, Wright Brothers...

Sputnik Planum basin: this scene, which is about 250 miles (400 km) across, uses data from New Horizons’ Ralph/MVIC instrument. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.

Planetary Scientists Solve Mystery behind Mysterious Polygonal Structures on Pluto

Dec 15, 2021 by News Staff

University of Exeter’s Dr. Adrien Morison and colleagues have shown how vast ice forms have been shaped in Sputnik Planitia, a nitrogen-ice-filled basin...

Parker Solar Probe has flown through the solar corona and sampled particles and magnetic fields there. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Parker Solar Probe Enters Magnetized Atmosphere of the Sun

Dec 15, 2021 by News Staff

The high temperatures and strong magnetic fields of the Sun’s upper atmosphere — the corona — form streams of the solar wind that expand...

Daly et al. used atom probe tomography to directly observe an average ~1 mol% enrichment in water and hydroxyls in the solar-wind-irradiated rim of an olivine grain from the S-type asteroid Itokawa. Image credit: Curtin University.

Part of Earth’s Water Came from the Sun, New Study Suggests

Nov 29, 2021 by News Staff

The solar wind, comprised of solar particles largely made of hydrogen ions, created water on the surface of dust grains carried on asteroids that smashed...

Curiosity used its navigation cameras to capture panoramas of this scene at two times of day. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Curiosity Team Releases Stunning Panorama of Martian Landscape

Nov 26, 2021 by News Staff

Members of NASA’s Curiosity rover mission team have combined two versions of the black-and-white images of Martian mountains from different times of...

NASA Successfully Launches DART Mission to Test Asteroid Deflection

Nov 25, 2021 by News Staff

NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission launched November 24, 2021 at 1:21 a.m. EST on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex...

This artist’s impression shows NASA’s InSight lander in Homestead Hollow, a small impact crater; the r SEIS seismometer is the light-colored hemisphere on the ground in front of the lander; the ground beneath it consists of a sandy regolith layer on top of alternate layers of sediments (yellow-orange colors) and basaltic rocks, i.e. former lava flows (brown colors). Image credit: Géraldine Zenhäusern / ETH Zürich.

Mars Has Multi-Layered Subsurface, New Study Says

Nov 24, 2021 by News Staff

Using seismic data collected by the SEIS (Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure) instrument aboard NASA’s InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic...

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