Space Exploration News

Gale crater is 155 km in diameter and now holds a layered mountain rising about 5 km above the crater floor. This illustration depicts a lake of water partially filling the crater. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / ASU / UA / Sci-News.com.

Curiosity Finds Geological Evidence of Ancient Lakes, Streams on Mars

Oct 9, 2015 by News Staff

A paper published today in the journal Science, and based on data from NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity, describes an ancient system of lakes and streams...

According to NASA scientists, complex chemical compounds called tholins give Pluto a distinctive blue haze. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.

Latest New Horizons Image Shows Pluto’s ‘Blue Skies’

Oct 9, 2015 by News Staff

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has beamed back the first color image of Pluto’s atmosphere. New Horizons looks toward the night side of Pluto and sees...

At the very center of this image from ESA’s SMART-1 orbiter is the north pole of the Moon. The image shows the characteristic craters of the Moon, present in all shapes and sizes. The largest in view is Rozhdestvenskiy, sandwiched between Hermite to the northeast and Plaskett to the southwest. Image credit: ESA / Space Exploration Institute / J. Manuel Fonseca, M. Costa & A. Mora, UNINOVA / B. Grieger & M. Almeida, ESA.

European Space Agency Releases Stunning Image of Moon’s North Pole

Oct 8, 2015 by News Staff

This mosaic image obtained by ESA’s SMART-1 spacecraft shows the peaks and craters at the north pole of the Earth’s only natural satellite. At the...

New Horizons Sends Back New Images of Pluto’s Moons Nix and Hydra

Oct 7, 2015 by News Staff

Nix and Hydra, two of Pluto’s small moons, appear in glorious sharpness in close-up pictures released this week by a New Horizons team member. Nix is...

NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity took this composite image of Mount Sharp on September 9, 2015. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS.

NASA’s Curiosity Rover Sends ‘Mineral-Rich’ Postcard from Mars

Oct 6, 2015 by News Staff

This dramatic view looking toward the higher regions of Mount Sharp, a 3-mile (5 km) peak at the center of Red Planet’s Gale Crater, was taken on September...

ESA’s AIM spacecraft watches DART impact Didymoon. Image credit: ESA / Science Office.

AIDA: NASA and ESA Announce Double Mission to Asteroid Didymos

Oct 5, 2015 by News Staff

The Asteroid Impact & Deflection Assessment (AIDA) mission, a joint ESA-NASA cooperative project, will be the first space experiment to investigate...

Artist’s concept of NASA’s VERITAS spacecraft. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

NASA Scientists Propose Missions to Venus, Asteroid Psyche, Near-Earth Objects

Oct 2, 2015 by News Staff

NASA scientists want to send small, low-cost space probes to study Venus, near-Earth objects, 16 Psyche and other asteroids. Artist’s concept of NASA’s...

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.

NASA’s New Horizons Team Releases High Resolution View of Charon

Oct 1, 2015 by News Staff

This high-resolution ‘extended color’ view of the Pluto-facing hemisphere of Charon – taken by New Horizons’ Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging...

Oblique view of the Phlegra Montes region showing remnant glacier and eskers. Image credit: NASA.

Scientists Find Evidence of Meltwater Flows beneath Ancient Glacier on Mars

Oct 1, 2015 by News Staff

A team of European planetary scientists has found direct evidence of melting and significant flows of liquid water beneath a degraded glacier in the southern...

Rosetta NavCam image taken on 14 March 2015 at 85.7 km from the center of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko; it has been cleaned to remove the more obvious bad pixels and cosmic ray artefacts, and intensities have been scaled. Image credit: ESA / Rosetta / NAVCAM / CC BY-SA IGO 3.0.

67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko Was Once Two Separate Comets

Sep 30, 2015 by News Staff

According to a new paper in the journal Nature, two comets collided in the early Solar System to give rise to the extraordinary shape of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. This...

This is a color-coded topographic map of Occator crater. Blue is the lowest elevation, and brown is the highest. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS.

NASA Scientists Release Improved Maps of Dwarf Planet Ceres

Sep 30, 2015 by News Staff

Scientists with NASA’s Dawn mission have released new color-coded maps of Ceres showing the highs and lows of topography on the dwarf planet’s surface...

Mosaic of four images taken by Rosetta’s navigation camera on September 19, 2014, at 28.6 km from the center of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The images used for this mosaic were taken in sequence as a 2x2 raster over a 20 minute period, meaning that there is some motion of the spacecraft and rotation of the comet between the images. Image credit: ESA / Rosetta / NAVCAM / CC BY-SA IGO 3.0.

Rosetta’s Spectrometer Detects Noble Gas Argon at 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko

Sep 29, 2015 by News Staff

The Rosetta Orbiter Spectrometer for Ion and Neutral Analysis (ROSINA) mass spectrometer aboard ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft has detected the noble gas argon,...

This image of an impact crater in the Sirenum Fossae region of Mars was taken by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on March 30, 2015. The crater is approximately 3,300 feet (1-km) wide and appears relatively recent as it has a sharp rim and well-preserved ejecta. The steep inner slopes are carved by gullies and include possible recurring slope lineae on the equator-facing slopes. Image credit: NASA / JPL / University of Arizona / Alfred McEwen.

NASA Scientists Find Evidence for Seasonal Water Flows on Mars

Sep 28, 2015 by News Staff

Using an imaging spectrometer on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, agency’s planetary scientists have detected signatures of hydrated minerals on...

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.

NASA Releases New High Resolution Images of Pluto

Sep 25, 2015 by News Staff

NASA’s New Horizons has beamed back its best color picture of the dwarf planet Pluto, as well as other stunning, close-up images of the planet’s surface...

Active pits on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Image credit: Jean-Baptiste Vincent et al.

Rosetta Provides Evidence for Daily Water-Ice Cycle on 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko

Sep 24, 2015 by News Staff

Researchers using the Visible, InfraRed and Thermal Imaging Spectrometer aboard ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft have identified a region on the surface of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko...

This view of Pluto, based on the latest images to be downlinked from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, shows what you would see if you were approximately 1,100 miles (1,800 km) above Pluto’s equatorial area, looking northeast over the dark, cratered, named Cthulhu Regio toward the bright, smooth, expanse of icy plains called Sputnik Planum. The entire expanse of terrain seen in this image is 1,100 miles (1,800 km) across. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.

NASA Scientist Creates New Virtual Tour of Pluto

Sep 22, 2015 by News Staff

Dr Stuart Robbins, a New Horizons team member from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, has produced a new animation/flyover of Pluto...

This panoramic image of Pluto highlights dwarf planet’s varied terrains and extended atmosphere. The scene measures 780 miles (1,250 km) across. The smooth expanse of Sputnik Planum (right) is flanked to the west (left) by rugged mountains up to 11,000 feet (3.5 km) high, including Norgay Montes in the foreground and Hillary Montes on the skyline. To the right, east of Sputnik, rougher terrain is cut by apparent glaciers. The backlighting highlights over a dozen layers of haze in the atmosphere of Pluto. The image was taken from a distance of 11,000 miles (18,000 km) to Pluto. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.

Latest Panoramic Image of Pluto Reveals ‘Arctic-Like’ World

Sep 18, 2015 by News Staff

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft snapped this remarkable panoramic view of Pluto’s crescent on July 14, 2015. This picture, taken with the spacecraft’s...

This Cassini image shows the night sides of Saturn and Tethys. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute.

Cassini Captures Dark Sides of Saturn and Tethys

Sep 17, 2015 by News Staff

This beautiful image from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft shows the night sides of Saturn and its fifth largest moon, Tethys. This Cassini image shows the...

This illustration is a speculative representation of the interior of Enceladus with a global ocean between its rocky core and icy crust. The thickness of layers shown here is not to scale. Scientists determined that the slight wobble of the moon as it orbits Saturn is much too large for the moon to be frozen from surface to core. The wobble, technically referred to as a libration, reveals that the crust of Enceladus is disconnected from its rocky interior. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Enceladus Harbors Global Subsurface Ocean

Sep 16, 2015 by News Staff

Planetary researchers with NASA’s Cassini mission have found a large body of water beneath the surface of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. This color view...