Space Exploration News

Schmitz et al argue that the mid-Ordovician ice age was caused by global cooling, triggered by extra dust in the atmosphere of Earth from the breakup of a giant asteroid in the main asteroid belt. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Major Meteoritic Event Occurred over Antarctica 430,000 Years Ago

Apr 1, 2021 by News Staff

Researchers have found meteoritic spherules on top of Walnumfjellet in the Sør Rondane Mountains, Antarctica. The breakup of a giant asteroid in the main...

Visible images with sketch maps showing major geologic features within as-yet unnamed crater mapped by Boatwright & Head: (a) the 54-km-diameter crater in the southern highlands of Mars (20.3°S, 42.6°E); no inlet or outlet breaches are observed; ridge networks (blue) begin near the crater wall base, where they are coincident with upslope-facing scarps (dashed lines) and crater wall alcoves; ridges terminate in two paleolake basins (cyan and green); (b) morphology of the eastern ridge network transitions downslope from dense proximal ridges to more widely spaced medial ridges; several medial ridges then converge into a single trunk ridge; (c) the southern ridge network terminates at three separate points along the margin of basin II. One of the ridges also displays an anabranching morphology. Image credit: Boatwright & Head, doi: 10.3847/PSJ/abe773.

New Type of Paleolake Spotted on Mars

Mar 31, 2021 by News Staff

A 54-km- (33.5-mile) diameter Noachian-aged crater with neither inlet nor outlet channels is distinct from previously documented crater basin lakes on...

Hue et al. discovered faint aurora features likely triggered by charged particles coming from the edge of Jupiter’s massive magnetosphere; this occurrence, shown in the false color series of images recorded 30 seconds apart (red panels), displays the characteristically ring-like emissions, expanding rapidly over time. Image credit: NASA / SWRI / JPL-Caltech / V. Hue / G.R. Gladstone / B. Bonfond.

Juno Spots Faint Auroral Rings on Jupiter

Mar 30, 2021 by News Staff

Planetary scientists using data from the Ultraviolet Spectrograph (UVS) aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft have discovered expanding emission circles of ultraviolet...

Enceladus’ tiger stripes are known to be spewing ice from the moon’s icy interior into space, creating a cloud of fine ice particles over the moon’s south pole and creating Saturn’s mysterious E-ring. Evidence for this has come from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft that orbited Saturn from 2004 to 2017. Pictured here, a high resolution image of Enceladus is shown from a close flyby. Tiger stripes are visible in false-color blue. Image credit: NASA / ESA / JPL / SSI / Cassini Imaging Team.

Subsurface Ocean of Enceladus Has Currents, New Theory Suggests

Mar 26, 2021 by News Staff

A novel theory proposed by planetary scientists from Caltech and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory challenges the current thinking that the saltwater...

Hernández-Bernal et al. reveal the daily and seasonal behavior of the AMEC cloud, using new observations from the Visual Monitoring Camera on ESA’s Mars Express, along with data from other Mars orbiters. Image credit: ESA.

Martian Orbiters Observe Extremely Elongated Cloud over Arsia Mons Volcano

Mar 19, 2021 by News Staff

In September and October 2018, ESA’s Mars Express orbiter observed a spectacular water ice cloud — named the Arsia Mons Elongated Cloud (AMEC)...

This illustration depicts ultraviolet polar aurorae on Jupiter and Earth. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / UVS / STScI / MODIS / WIC / IMAGE / University of Liège.

Jupiter’s Dawn Storms are Remarkably Similar to Earth’s Auroral Substorms

Mar 18, 2021 by News Staff

Dawn storms consist of short-lived but intense brightening and broadening of Jupiter’s main auroral oval near where the atmosphere emerges from darkness...

The map of Tharsis region of Mars from the Pocket Atlas of Mars 36. Image credit: NASA / JPL / GSFC / ESA / DLR / FU / H. Hargitai.

Planetary Scientists Create Pocket Atlas of Mars

Mar 17, 2021 by News Staff

The 84-page atlas of Mars, currently available in English, Hungarian and Czech, was developed as a part of a public outreach project supported by the Europlanet...

This mosaic (upper right) shows a close-up view of the rock target named ‘Yeehgo’ from the SuperCam instrument on NASA’s Perseverance rover on Mars. The component images were taken by SuperCam’s Remote Micro-Imager (RMI) on March 7, 2021. To be compatible with the rover’s software, ‘Yeehgo’ is an alternative spelling of ‘Yéigo,’ the Navajo word for diligent. The target is 3.325 m (10.9 feet) from the rover. Each of the two images in the mosaic shows a field of view 6.2 cm (2.5 inches) in diameter. Perseverance’s Navigation Cameras (Nav Cam) and Mastcam-Z instrument also took images of that area at the same time to provide multiple views of the rock target. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / LANL / CNES / CNRS / ASU / MSSS.

Perseverance Records Sound of Its Rock-Zapping Laser Instrument

Mar 12, 2021 by News Staff

Early data from the SuperCam instrument aboard NASA’s Perseverance rover — including the first audio of laser zaps on another planet — are...

This photo shows the zodiacal light as it appeared on March 1, 2021, in Skull Valley, Utah, the United States; the Pleiades star cluster is visible near the top of the light column; Mars is just below that. Image credit: Bill Dunford / NASA.

Martian Storms May Be Responsible for Interplanetary Dust behind Zodiacal Light

Mar 10, 2021 by News Staff

The zodiacal light is sunlight reflected by interplanetary dust in the inner Solar System. Variations in the zodiacal light with ecliptic latitude reveal...

A fragment of the Winchcombe meteorite. Image credit: Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London.

Rare Type of Meteorite Found in United Kingdom

Mar 9, 2021 by News Staff

Almost 300 g of the so-called Winchcombe meteorite, a space rock that fell from the fireball that lit up the sky over the United Kingdom and Northern Europe...

This image was captured while Perseverance drove on Mars for the first time on March 4, 2021. One of Perseverance’s Hazard Avoidance Cameras (Hazcams) captured this image as the rover completed a short traverse and turn from its landing site in Jezero Crater. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Perseverance Successfully Performs Its First Drive on Mars

Mar 8, 2021 by News Staff

On March 4, 2021, NASA’s Perseverance rover covered 6.5 m (21.3 feet) across the Martian landscape. This image was captured while Perseverance drove...

The S-type asteroid Itokawa. Image credit: JAXA.

Researchers Find Organic Matter and Water in Sample from Asteroid Itokawa

Mar 5, 2021 by News Staff

An international team of scientists has studied both the water and organic contents from a dust particle recovered from the surface of the near-Earth S-type...

Researchers Observe ‘Space Hurricane’ in Earth’s Ionosphere

Mar 2, 2021 by News Staff

Hurricanes in the Earth’s low atmosphere are well known; however, disturbances resembling hurricanes had never before been detected in the upper atmosphere. An...

TGO spotted the Perseverance rover, along with its parachute and back shell, heat shield and descent stage, in the Jezero Crater region of Mars. Image credit: ESA / Roscosmos / CaSSIS / A. Valantinas.

ESA’s Trace Gas Orbiter Spots Perseverance Rover in Jezero Crater

Feb 26, 2021 by News Staff

New images of NASA’s Perseverance rover, along with its parachute, heat shield and descent stage, were captured by the CaSSIS camera aboard ESA’s Trace...

Part of the first 360-degree panorama taken by the Mastcam-Z instrument aboard NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS / ASU.

Perseverance Snaps 360-Degree Panorama of Mars

Feb 25, 2021 by News Staff

The 360-degree panorama (high-resolution .tif image) was created from 142 individual images taken on February 21, 2021 (Sol 3) using Mastcam-Z, a mast-mounted...

When flying past Venus on July 11, 2020, the WISPR instrument onboard Parker Solar Probe detected a bright rim around the edge of the planet that may be nightglow. The prominent dark feature in the center of the image is Aphrodite Terra, the largest highland region on the Venusian surface. Bright streaks in WISPR, such as the ones seen here, are typically caused by a combination of cosmic rays, sunlight reflected by grains of space dust, and particles of material expelled from the spacecraft’s structures after impact with those dust grains. The number of streaks varies along the orbit or when the spacecraft is traveling at different speeds, and scientists are still in discussion about the specific origins of the streaks here. The dark spot appearing on the lower portion of Venus is an artifact from the WISPR instrument. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory / Naval Research Laboratory / Guillermo Stenborg / Brendan Gallagher.

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Returns Spectacular Image of Venus

Feb 25, 2021 by News Staff

The new image was taken by the Wide-field Imager for Parker Solar Probe (WISPR) during the close flyby of the second planet from the Sun on July 11, 2020. When...

An artist’s impression of a water-world exoplanet. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Aquatic Planets are Common in Our Milky Way Galaxy, Study Suggests

Feb 23, 2021 by News Staff

In a study published in the journal Science Advances, a team of European astronomers shows that water can be delivered to a terrestrial planet in the form...

Perseverance’s Navcams captured this view of the rover’s deck on February 20, 2021. This view provides a good look at PIXL (the Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry), one of the instruments on the rover’s stowed arm. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Perseverance Team Releases New Images, Video of Rover’s Landing

Feb 22, 2021 by News Staff

NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance mission captured footage of its rover landing in Jezero Crater on February 18, 2021. The footage was captured by several...

This is the first high-resolution, color image to be sent back by the Hazard Cameras (Hazcams) on the underside of NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover after its landing on February 18, 2021. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Perseverance Sends Back Its First Color Photos, Status Reports from Mars

Feb 22, 2021 by News Staff

Mission controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory have received new images from the Perseverance rover as well as health reports from both the...