Space Exploration News

This artist’s concept depicts NASA’s Mars rover Perseverance on the surface of the Red Planet. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

NASA’s Next Mars Rover Gets Official Name: Perseverance

Mar 6, 2020 by News Staff

Perseverance is the latest in a long line of Red Planet rovers to be named by school-age children, from Sojourner in 1997 to the Spirit and Opportunity...

As NASA’s Dawn spacecraft takes off for its next destination, this mosaic synthesizes some of the best views the spacecraft had of the giant asteroid Vesta. Dawn studied Vesta from July 2011 to September 2012. The towering mountain at the south pole -- more than twice the height of Mount Everest -- is visible at the bottom of the image. The set of three craters known as the ‘snowman’ can be seen at the top left. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA.

Asteroid Vesta Has Turbulent Past

Mar 5, 2020 by News Staff

A new study by Curtin University researchers has shed light on the early days of Vesta, the second largest asteroid of the main belt and the fourth such...

Curiosity captured this panorama of the Martian surface between November 24 and December 1, 2019. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS.

Curiosity Captures 1.8-Billion-Pixel Panorama of Martian Surface

Mar 5, 2020 by News Staff

NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity has captured its highest-resolution panorama (high-resolution file, 2.43 GB) yet of the Martian surface. The new panorama...

An artist’s impression of a terraformed Mars. Image credit: Daein Ballard / CC BY-SA 3.0.

Martian Thiophenes May Be Biological in Origin, Astrobiologists Say

Mar 5, 2020 by News Staff

NASA’s Curiosity rover recently discovered various classes of organic matter in the Martian sediments. One intriguing group of detected organic compounds...

The Yutu-2 rover moves across the far side of the Moon. Image credit: CNSA.

China’s Yutu-2 Rover Reveals What Lies Beneath Moon’s Farside Surface

Feb 28, 2020 by News Staff

On January 3, 2019, China National Space Administration’s Chang’e-4 probe successfully landed on the eastern floor of Von Karman, a 180-km- (112 mile)...

NASA’s InSight Mission to Mars Releases Preliminary Results

Feb 25, 2020 by News Staff

More than a year after NASA’s Mars InSight lander touched down in ‘Homestead hollow,’ a sand-filled impact crater on the western side of a flat,...

The ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter mission will face the Sun from within the orbit of Mercury at its closest approach. Image credit: ESA / ATG Medialab.

Solar Orbiter Sends Back First Science Data

Feb 20, 2020 by News Staff

Solar Orbiter, a new collaborative mission between ESA and NASA to study our Sun, successfully launched on an Atlas V 411 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air...

Thick white clouds are present in this JunoCam image of Jupiter’s equatorial zone. These clouds complicate the interpretation of infrared measurements of water. At microwave frequencies, the same clouds are transparent, allowing Juno’s Microwave Radiometer to measure water deep into Jupiter’s atmosphere. The image was acquired during Juno’s flyby of the gas giant on December 16, 2017. Imager credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Kevin M. Gill.

Juno Mission Releases First Science Results on Jupiter’s Atmospheric Water

Feb 19, 2020 by News Staff

Water makes up about 0.25% (almost three times that of the Sun) of the molecules in Jupiter’s atmospheric molecules at the gas giant’s equator, according...

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.

Three New Studies Provide More Complete Picture of Physical Nature of Kuiper Belt Object Arrokoth

Feb 18, 2020 by News Staff

On January 1, 2019, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft flew past the Kuiper Belt object (KBO) Arrokoth — provisional designation 2014 MU69, previously...

This updated version of the iconic ‘Pale Blue Dot’ image taken by NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft uses modern image-processing software and techniques to revisit the well-known Voyager view while attempting to respect the original data and intent of those who planned the images. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

NASA Releases Remastered ‘Pale Blue Dot’ Image

Feb 14, 2020 by News Staff

On February 14, 1990, cameras of NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft pointed back toward the Sun and snapped a series of pictures of the Sun, Earth and other...

Solar Orbiter: ESA, NASA Successfully Launch New Mission to Study Sun

Feb 10, 2020 by News Staff

Solar Orbiter, a new collaborative mission between the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA to study our Sun, launched at 05:03 CET on February 10, 2020...

A tiny grain of lunar soil brought back by Apollo 17, magnified under a scanning electron microscope. Image credit: Jennika Greer, Field Museum.

Researchers Find New Way to Analyze Chemistry of Lunar Soil

Feb 7, 2020 by News Staff

An international team of planetary scientists and geochemists from the United States and Switzerland has demonstrated that a technique called atom probe...

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.

Pluto’s ‘Nitrogen Heart’ Controls Its Atmospheric Circulation: Study

Feb 5, 2020 by News Staff

Pluto’s famous heart-shaped structure, named Tombaugh Regio, controls winds in the atmosphere of the dwarf planet and may give rise to features on its...

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe approaching the Sun. Image credit: NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio.

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Observes ‘Solar Energetic Particle’ Events

Feb 4, 2020 by News Staff

New observations from NASA’s Parker Solar Probe show how Sun’s plasma that is released after a solar flare can accelerate and pile up solar energetic...

Graphic illustrating NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft encountering plasma layers at Mars. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / CI lab.

MAVEN Detects Sporadic ‘Layers’ and ‘Rifts’ in Martian Ionosphere

Feb 3, 2020 by News Staff

NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft has detected sporadic ‘layers’ and ‘rifts’ in the ionosphere — the electrically...

Curious Marie is a sample of the Allende meteorite, which fell in northern Mexico in February 1969. The white, fuzzy-looking features in this fragment are calcium-aluminum-rich inclusions -- some of the first solids to condense in the Solar System. Image credit: The Planetary Society.

Researchers Find Presolar Grains in Unusual Inclusion from Allende Meteorite

Jan 29, 2020 by News Staff

Scientists from Washington University, St. Louis, Caltech and the University of Chicago have found presolar grains — tiny bits of solid interstellar...

These 2.7 billion-year-old meteorites, about half a millimeter across, fell into the ocean and were collected from the deep sea. Image credit: Donald Brownlee / University of Washington.

Archean Earth’s Atmosphere was Rich in Carbon Dioxide, Researchers Say

Jan 27, 2020 by News Staff

A team of researchers from the University of Washington and NASA’s Ames Research Center has analyzed iron-rich micrometeorites collected from 2.7 billion-year-old...

$Cassini captured this image of Enceladus as it neared the moon for its closest-ever dive past the moon’s active south polar region. The image was taken in visible light with the spacecraft’s narrow-angle camera on October 28, 2015. The image shows heavily cratered northern latitudes at top, transitioning to fractured, wrinkled terrain in the middle and southern latitudes. The wavy boundary of the moon's active south polar region is visible at bottom, where it disappears into wintry darkness. This view looks towards the Saturn-facing side of Enceladus. The image was taken at a distance of approximately 60,000 miles (96,000 km) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 45 degrees. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute.$

Geochemical Model Reveals Inner Complexity of Enceladus

Jan 23, 2020 by News Staff

Enceladus, an ocean-harboring moon of Saturn, erupts a plume that contains gases and frozen sea spray into space. By understanding the composition of the...

Composite aeromagnetic anomaly map of the Yarrabubba impact structure within the Yilgarn Craton, Western Australia, showing the locations of key outcrops and samples used in this study. The image combines the total magnetic intensity (TMI, cool to warm colors) with the second vertical derivative of the total magnetic intensity (2VD, grayscale) data. The demagnetized anomaly centered on the outcrops of the Barlangi granophyre is considered to be the eroded remnant of the central uplift domain, which forms the basis of the crater diameter of 70 km. Prominent, narrow linear anomalies that cross-cut the demagnetized zone with broadly east-west orientations are mafic dykes that post-date the impact structure. Image credit: Erickson et al, doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-13985-7.

Earth’s Oldest Known Meteorite Impact Structure Identified

Jan 22, 2020 by News Staff

The 70 km- (43.5-mile) diameter Yarrabubba impact structure in Western Australia is approximately 2.23 billion years old, according to new research led...

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