Space Exploration News

The Nili Fossae system, part of which is shown in this image, is an area of great geological interest near the giant Isidis impact basin, northeast of the Syrtis Major volcanic province. The system contains numerous troughs, one of which can be seen crossing the lower left of this image. On the plateau above, several depressions can be seen, some of them extending into the trough. A large, 55 km-diameter impact crater with a central pit can be seen on the right. This image was acquired by the High Resolution Stereo Camera on the Mars Express on 16 October 2014. North is to the right, east is up. Image credit: ESA / DLR / FU Berlin / CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.

ESA’s Mars Express Returns New Images of Nili Fossae

Jan 22, 2015 by News Staff

New images from ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft show Nili Fossae – one of the most exciting regions on Mars. The Nili Fossae system, part of which...

Imilac, a pallasite meteorite found in the Atacama Desert, Chile, in 1822. Image credit: Juan Manuel Fluxa / CC BY 2.0.

Meteorites Contain Magnetic Messages from Early Solar System, Say Scientists

Jan 22, 2015 by News Staff

Researchers using the BESSY II synchrotron in Berlin, Germany have captured information stored in ancient meteorites, formed in the early Solar System...

This processed image shows the dwarf planet Ceres as seen from the Dawn; the image hints at craters on the surface of Ceres; the spacecraft is scheduled to arrive at the dwarf planet on March 6. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA.

NASA’s Dawn Spacecraft Captures New Image of Dwarf Planet Ceres

Jan 20, 2015 by News Staff

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has returned a new image of Ceres – the largest object in the main asteroid belt, taken from a distance of about 383,000...

Scientists Celebrate Ten Years since Cassini-Huygens Landing on Titan

Jan 16, 2015 by News Staff

Ten years ago, ESA’s Huygens probe entered the history books by descending to the surface of Titan, the largest moon of Saturn. Humanity’s...

This is an artist's concept of NASA's New Horizons during its planned encounter with Pluto and its moon, Charon: the craft's miniature cameras, radio science experiment, ultraviolet and infrared spectrometers and space plasma experiments would characterize the global geology and geomorphology of Pluto and Charon, map their surface compositions and temperatures, and examine Pluto's atmosphere in detail; the spacecraft's most prominent design feature is a nearly 2.1-m dish antenna, through which it would communicate with Earth from as far as 7.5 billion km away. Image credit: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute / JHUAPL / SwRI.

New Horizons Spacecraft Prepares for Pluto Flyby

Jan 16, 2015 by News Staff

NASA’s New Horizons is entering the first of several approach phases that culminate July 14 with the first close-up flyby of Pluto. This is an artist’s...

This image shows a bright feature interpreted as Beagle 2 with solar arrays at least partially deployed on the surface of Mars. The location is approximately 11.5 degrees north latitude, 90.4 degrees east latitude. The image is an excerpt from HiRISE observation ESP_039308_1915, taken December 15, 2014. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / University of Arizona / University of Leicester.

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Finds Long-Lost Beagle-2

Jan 16, 2015 by News Staff

The unsuccessful Beagle 2 Mars lander, thought lost on Mars since 2003, has been found partially deployed on the surface of the planet in images taken...

Chondrules in meteorites are the remnants of early protoplanetary collisions, scientists say. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Meteorites are Byproducts, not Building Blocks

Jan 15, 2015 by News Staff

According to a team of scientists co-led by Prof Maria Zuber of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Prof Jay Melosh of Purdue University, meteorites...

This image was obtained on 10 September 2007 by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, at a distance of approximately 3.3 million km from Saturn. Rhea - Saturn's second largest moon - is visible against the bluish backdrop of the planet's northern hemisphere. Mimas - Saturn's seventh largest moon - appears as a speck against the ring shadows on planet's western limb. Image credit: NASA / JPL / Space Science Institute.

Scientists Precisely Pinpoint Position of Saturn, its Moons

Jan 9, 2015 by News Staff

A team of researchers using NASA’s Cassini spacecraft and a ground-based radio-telescope system has accurately determined the center of mass, or...

A rock bed at the Gillespie Lake outcrop on Mars. Scale bar - 15 cm. Image credit: NASA.

Curiosity Finds Possible Signs of Ancient Microbial Life on Mars

Jan 8, 2015 by News Staff

Dr Nora Noffke of Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA, says she has found potential evidence of former life in photos taken by NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity. A...

The Philae lander at work on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Image credit: ESA / AOES Medialab.

Top Ten Scientific Breakthroughs of 2014

Dec 30, 2014 by News Staff

Landing of the European Space Agency’s Philae probe on a comet known as 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko has been named Breakthrough of the Year for 2014....

Venus in real colors, processed from Mariner 10 images. Image credit: Mattias Malmer / NASA.

Mystery of ‘Metallic Frost’ in Venusian Mountains Deepens

Dec 29, 2014 by News Staff

According to a new analysis of twenty-year-old data from NASA’s Magellan spacecraft, mountainous regions in the Venus’ highlands are covered in an...

This full-disc image of Jupiter was taken on 21 April 2014 with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3. Image credit: NASA / ESA / A. Simon, Goddard Space Flight Center.

Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is Sunburn, NASA Scientists Say

Dec 27, 2014 by News Staff

According to a new study led by Dr Kevin Baines of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, the reddish color of the Great Red Spot on Jupiter...

This image of an area on the surface of Mars, about 1.5 x 3 km in size, was taken by the HiRISE camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on November 30, 2014. It shows frosted gullies on a south-facing slope within a crater in Sisyphi Planum. In the Martian southern spring, only south-facing slopes retain the frost, while the north-facing slopes have melted. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / University of Arizona.

NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Watches Frosty Mars

Dec 26, 2014 by News Staff

NASA’s spacecraft orbiting Mars has snapped wintry-looking pictures of the planet’s surface, showing the slopes of an impact crater dusted with...

Theta aurora over Antarctica. This image obtained in 1983 shows the auroral oval and a transpolar arc; the arc extends into the polar cap from local midnight, across the polar cap and joins with the auroral oval at local noon; motion of the transpolar arc in the dawn-dusk direction appears to be controlled by the direction of the interplanetary magnetic field along the dawn-dusk direction. Image credit: Dynamics Explorer-1 / University of Iowa.

Scientists Unravel Mystery of High-Latitude Theta Aurora

Dec 19, 2014 by News Staff

Thanks to data collected by ESA’s Cluster spacecraft and a NASA mission called the Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration (IMAGE),...

Curiosity Finds Methane, Organic Molecules on Mars

Dec 17, 2014 by News Staff

NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover has detected methane in the Martian atmosphere around it and several organic molecules in a rock sample from its landing...

A color image of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko composed of three images taken by Rosetta's scientific imaging system OSIRIS in the red, green and blue filters; the images were taken on August 6, 2014 from a distance of 120 km from the comet. Image credit: ESA / Rosetta / MPS / OSIRIS Team / UPD /LAM / IAA / SSO / INTA / UPM / DASP / IDA.

New Image Shows True Colors of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko

Dec 13, 2014 by News Staff

The European Space Agency has released a color image of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko – the prime target of the Rosetta space mission – as it...

This graph displays the different values of the deuterium/ hydrogen ratio in water observed in various objects in the Solar System: the data points are grouped by color as planets and moons (blue), chondritic meteorites from the asteroid belt (grey), comets originating from the Oort cloud (purple) and Jupiter family comets (pink). Rosetta’s Jupiter-family comet is highlighted in yellow. Diamonds represent data obtained in situ; circles represent data obtained by astronomical methods. Image credit: ESA / ATG medialab / Rosetta / NavCam / Altwegg et al.

Rosetta Data Suggest Earth’s Oceans Likely Came from Asteroids

Dec 11, 2014 by News Staff

The Rosetta Orbiter Sensor for Ion and Neutral Analysis (ROSINA) instrument aboard ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft has found that the composition of the...

$This two-dimensional X-ray diffraction pattern for the John Klein mudstone sample reveals the presence of more than a dozen minerals. Image credit: Bish, D. et al.$

X-Ray Diffraction Helps Identify Dozen Martian Minerals

Dec 9, 2014 by News Staff

An international team of scientists led by Dr David Bish of Indiana University has analyzed recent data from the CheMin, a miniaturized X-ray diffraction...

The moons of our Solar System are brimming with unusual landscapes. However, sometimes they look a little more familiar, as in this new radar image from the Cassini orbiter. The image shows dark streaks carved into dunes reminiscent of those we might find on a beach on Earth, or raked with flowing lines in a Japanese Zen garden — but this scene is actually taking place on Saturn’s moon Titan. While our sand is composed of silicates, the ‘sand’ of these alien dunes is formed from grains of organic materials about the same size as particles of our beach sand. The small size and smoothness of these grains means that the flowing lines carved into the dunes show up as dark to the human eye. While previous images have spotted these eerily familiar patterns on Titan's dunes, this new image (colorized) shows them in greater detail. The image was obtained by Cassini's radar mapper on July 10, 2013. The vertical seam near the center is an artifact of radar image data processing. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Sci-News.com.

New Study Sheds More Light on Mystery of Titan Sand Dunes

Dec 9, 2014 by News Staff

Titan is one of the few bodies in the Solar System known to have fields of wind-blown dunes on its surface. A new study published in the journal Nature...