Planetary Science News

Researchers have detected an unexpectedly high abundance of presolar grains — dust from stellar explosions predating our Solar System — in...

Jupiter’s icy moon Europa is an ocean world that is a prime candidate in the search for potential extraterrestrial habitability and life beyond Earth....

This gum-like material — never seen before in space — was likely formed in the early days of the Solar System, as Bennu’s parent asteroid...

In 1986, NASA’s Voyager 2 provided the only direct measurement of the radiation environment at Uranus. These findings established the well-accepted characterization...

A team of researchers from the United States and Japan has analyzed an extract from a sample of the near-Earth asteroid (101955) Bennu collected by NASA’s...

NASA’s Perseverance rover has discovered several thousand small, light-toned rock fragments, or float rocks, with some exhibiting spectral signatures...

Using data captured by the SuperCam microphone aboard NASA’s Perseverance rover over two Martian years, planetrary scientists have detected 55 triboelectric...

The Moon formed from a giant impact of the proto-Earth with the ancient protoplanet Theia. In a new study, a team of scientists from the United States,...

Titan offers great motivation for the detailed study of organic chemistry in unconventional conditions. Nonpolar hydrocarbons such as ethane and methane...

On some of the dune fields on Mars, parallel channels, called linear dune gullies, are found. Contrary to their name these gullies are often highly sinuous....

Exploring the possibility of the survival of life under extraterrestrial conditions is an important goal of astrobiology. In a new study, scientists used...

Roughly 4.3 billion years ago, when our Solar System was still in its infancy, a giant asteroid slammed into the far side of the Moon, blasting an enormous...

The leading hypotheses for the origin of the Moon call for a giant impact event between proto-Earth and a separate impactor called Theia. The efficiency...

Saturn’s moon Enceladus continuously ejects a plume of ice grains and gases originating from its subsurface ocean via fractures near its south pole....

The stark contrast between the Moon’s near side and far side in topography, volcanic activity and crustal structure provides critical insights into lunar...

The newly-discovered mineral, named ferric hydroxysulfate, provides clues about the environment and history of the Red Planet, including the possibility...

Minerals are the building blocks of rocks, and the types of minerals and their chemistry provide critical information about rock formation and history....

This water flow occurred on an ancient asteroid more than one billion years after its formation and was probably triggered by an impact that generated...

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA James Webb Space Telescope have detected a series of dark, bead-like and asymmetric star-shaped features in the ionosphere...