Space Exploration News

This image of Pluto’s surface was taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft shortly before closest approach to the dwarf planet on July 14, 2015. The scene is about 130 miles (210 km) across. The Sun illuminates the scene from the left, and north is to the upper left. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.

New Horizons Delivers New Close-Ups of Pluto and Charon

Oct 19, 2015 by News Staff

NASA’s New Horizons team has released new close-up images of Pluto and its largest moon, Charon. The images were taken by New Horizons’ Long Range...

This image from Cassini shows battered terrain around the north pole of Enceladus. Craters crowd and overlap each other, each one recording an impact in the moon’s distant past. The moon’s north pole lies approximately at the top of this image. North on Enceladus is up. The view was acquired at a distance of 4,000 miles (6,000 km) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 8 degrees. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute.

New Close-Up Photos of Saturn’s Moon Enceladus Released by NASA

Oct 18, 2015 by News Staff

NASA scientists have released the best views yet of the northern extremes of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. The images were collected as the agency’s Cassini...

This Pluto mosaic was made from New Horizons LORRI images taken on July 14, 2015, from a distance of 49,700 miles (80,000 km). This view is projected from a point 1,118 miles (1,800 km) above Pluto’s equator, looking northeast over the dark, cratered Cthulhu Regio toward the bright, smooth expanse of icy plains called Sputnik Planum. Pluto’s North Pole is off the image to the left. This mosaic was produced with panchromatic images from the New Horizons LORRI camera, with color overlaid from the Ralph color mapper onboard New Horizons. Image credit: S.A. Stern et al, doi: 10.1126/science.aad1815.

New Horizons Team Releases First Scientific Results from Flyby of Pluto System

Oct 16, 2015 by News Staff

The dwarf planet Pluto displays a wide variety of geological landforms, including those resulting from glaciological and surface-atmosphere interactions...

A monochrome mosaic of the Moon from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, centered in the middle of the South Pole-Aitken Basin. Image credit: NASA / Goddard / Arizona State University.

Strange Structure near Moon’s South Pole Has Volcanic Origin, Scientists Say

Oct 15, 2015 by News Staff

Mafic Mound, a distinctive and enigmatic feature near the Moon’s south pole, is a volcanic structure unlike any other found on the surface of the Earth’s...

Although Mimas and Pandora, shown here, both orbit Saturn, they are very different moons. The shapes of moons can teach planetary scientists much about their history. This image was captured on July 26, 2015, when Cassini was nearly 904,000 miles (1.4 million km) from Mimas and 485,000 miles (781,000 km) from Pandora. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute.

Cassini Captures Amazing View of Saturn’s Moons Mimas and Pandora

Oct 15, 2015 by Sergio Prostak

This newly released image from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft shows two of Saturn’s moons, Mimas and Pandora, and the planet’s rings. Although Mimas and...

This global digital map of Titan was created using images taken by Cassini’s imaging science subsystem (ISS). The mean radius of Titan used for projection of this map is 1,600 miles (2,575 km). Titan is assumed to be spherical until a control network is created at some point in the future. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute.

NASA Releases Updated Maps of Saturn’s Moon Titan

Oct 13, 2015 by News Staff

NASA has released a global digital map of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, and two polar stereographic maps its northern and southern hemispheres. This...

This composite image of Styx was taken by New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) instrument on July 13, about 12.5 hours before the probe’s closest approach to Pluto, and was received on October 5. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.

New Horizons Spots Pluto’s Small Moon Styx

Oct 12, 2015 by News Staff

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft captured this low-resolution view of Styx, Pluto’s smallest moon, on July 13, 2015, from a distance of 391,000 miles...

New Horizons finds water ice on Pluto: the scene is approximately 280 miles (450 km) across. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.

New Horizons Finds Red-Colored Water Ice on Pluto

Oct 12, 2015 by News Staff

Using data from the Ralph spectral composition mapper that flew aboard NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, planetary researchers have detected water ice...

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...