Planetary Science News

This feather-shaped iridescent cloud was captured just after sunset on January 27, 2023, the 3,724th Martian day, or Sol, of Curiosity’s mission. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS.

Curiosity Rover Images Sun Rays and Feather-Shaped Clouds on Mars

Mar 6, 2023 by News Staff

‘Sun rays’ are also known as crepuscular rays, from the Latin word for twilight. It was the first time sun rays have been so clearly viewed on Mars. This...

An artist’s concept of active volcanoes on Venus, depicting a subduction zone where the foreground crust plunges into the planet’s interior at the topographic trench. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Peter Rubin.

Venus’ Outer Shell is Shaping Planet’s Surface, Study Suggests

Feb 24, 2023 by News Staff

Earth has a hot core that heats the surrounding mantle, which carries that heat up to the planet’s lithosphere. The heat is then lost to space, cooling...

The 200-m-wide crater at the Domaine du Météore-vineyard in France. Image credit: Frank Brenker, Goethe University Frankfurt.

Ancient Impact Crater Discovered in France

Feb 22, 2023 by Enrico de Lazaro

The ancient crater, formally known as ‘le Clot,’ is about 220 m in diameter and 30 m in depth, and is located in the ground of the Domaine du Meteore-vineyard...

The surface of Europa looms large in this newly-reprocessed color view; image scale is 1.6 km per pixel; north on Europa is at right. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SETI Institute.

Planetary Scientists Create Two New Forms of Extraterrestrial Ice

Feb 21, 2023 by News Staff

University of Washington researcher Baptiste Journaux and colleagues believe the newly-created substances could form at the surface and bottom of deep...

This artist’s concept illustrates a Martian dust storm, which might also crackle with electricity. Image credit: NASA.

Electricity in Martian Dust Storms Could Be Major Driving Force of Planet’s Chlorine Cycle

Feb 20, 2023 by News Staff

Frictional electrification is a common process in the Solar System, with Martian dust activities known to be a powerful source of electrical charge buildup....

This Hubble image heralds the start of Saturn’s ‘spoke season’ with the appearance of two smudgy spokes in the B ring, on the left in the image. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Amy Simon, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / Alyssa Pagan, STScI.

Hubble Detects Start of New Saturn Ring Spoke Season

Feb 9, 2023 by News Staff

Saturn is known for its iconic, pristine rings. However, the main B ring can have splotches and streaks of darker or lighter material, known as spokes,...

$Rhoden et al. revisited New Horizons data to explore the source of cryovolcanic flows and an obvious belt of fractures on Charon. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.$

Charon’s Freezing Ocean Produced Huge Canyons on Its Surface, Modeling Study Suggests

Feb 8, 2023 by News Staff

When ocean-bearing moons begin to cool down, their oceans can freeze. As new ice accretes to the bottom of the existing ice shell, the added volume of...

This mosaic image taken by the Cassini spacecraft is one of the highest resolution views ever obtained of Mimas. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute.

Mimas Has an Expanding, Young Ocean, New Research Suggests

Jan 31, 2023 by News Staff

Mimas, a small moon of Saturn, is heavily cratered and lacks the typical characteristics of an ocean-bearing moon, such as the active surface of Enceladus....

The 7.6-kg meteorite found in Antarctica. Image credit: Maria Valdes.

Researchers Find Five New Meteorites in Antarctica

Jan 18, 2023 by News Staff

A team of meteorite hunters from Belgium and the United States has found five new Antarctic meteorites, including one that weighs 7.6 kg. The 7.6-kg meteorite...

The Tissint meteorite. Image credit: Ludovic Ferriere, Natural History Museum Vienna.

Scientists Find Various Organic Compounds in Martian Meteorite

Jan 12, 2023 by News Staff

An international team of researchers has detected abundant polyaromatic compounds, organic magnesium compounds, aliphatic branched carboxylic acids, aldehydes,...

An artist’s impression of NASA’s Cassini spacecraft flying through plumes erupting from the south pole of Enceladus; these plumes are much like geysers and expel a combination of water vapor, ice grains, salts, methane and other organic molecules. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Detecting Extraterrestrial Life on Enceladus Could Be Achieved without Landing: Study

Jan 2, 2023 by News Staff

Enceladus, the sixth-biggest moon of Saturn, is a top candidate in the search for extraterrestrial life in the Solar System. An artist’s impression of...

The volcano-laced surface of Jupiter’s moon Io was captured in infrared by the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) imager aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft as it flew by at a distance of was about 80,000 km (50,000 miles) on July 5, 2022. Brighter spots indicate higher temperatures in this image. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / ASI / INAF / JIRAM.

Trace Gas Detection Sheds New Light on Atmospheres of Jupiter and Its Volcanic Moon Io

Dec 28, 2022 by Natali Anderson

Using data from NSF’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and NASA’s Juno spacecraft, two...

This beautifully scene was captured by the High Resolution Stereo Camera on ESA’s Mars Express on May 19, 2022 during orbit 23219. Image credit: ESA / DLR / FU Berlin / CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.

Mars Express Spots Two Large Craters at Martian South Pole

Dec 23, 2022 by News Staff

A new image from the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA’s Mars Express orbiter shows an exciting landscape of layered deposits, frost,...

Perseverance’s Navigation Camera (Navcam) observations of the direct dust devil encounter: the Navcam scene (the average background image, top panel) and each dust devil image processed to dust amount (five lower panels), masking out only the truly indeterminate areas (gray); the color scale ranges from optical depth, τ = 0 at the bottom (blue) to τ = 0.12 at the top (yellow), and is linear in between; the areas with low signal-to-noise ratio are masked out, and the images also show non-random noise (banding from instrument electronics during readout); the grid on the scene image (top panel) is 5 degrees in local level azimuth and elevation; the darker gray contours are elevation=0 degrees and azimuth=165 degrees. Image credit: Murdoch et al., doi: 10.1038/s41467-022-35100-z.

NASA’s Perseverance Rover Records Sound of Martian Dust Devil

Dec 13, 2022 by News Staff

Dust devils — convective vortices loaded with dust — are common at the surface of Mars, particularly at Jezero crater, the landing site of...

An artist’s impression of an active mantle plume -- a large blob of warm and buoyant rock -- rising from deep inside Mars and pushing up Elysium Planitia, a plain within the planet’s northern lowlands. Image credit: Adrien Broquet & Audrey Lasbordes.

Planetary Scientists Find Evidence for Active Mantle Plume on Mars

Dec 6, 2022 by News Staff

Elysium Planitia, a flat-smooth plain just north of the Martian equator, is underlain by an 4,000-km-diameter active mantle plume, according to new research...

An illustration of an asteroid on its way to ancient Mars. Image credit: M. Kornmesser / ESO / Nathan Owen-Price / Sci.News.

Chicxulub-Like Asteroid Caused Megatsunami on Early Mars

Dec 1, 2022 by News Staff

The Chicxulub-like asteroid crash landed in shallow ocean waters in the Martian region of Chryse Planitia 3.4 billion years ago (Hesperian period) and...

The young Mars would have had enough water to cover its entire surface in a liquid layer about 140 m deep, but it is more likely that the liquid would have pooled to form an ocean occupying almost half of Mars’s northern hemisphere, and in some regions reaching depths greater than 1.6 km. Image credit: M. Kornmesser / ESO / N. Risinger, skysurvey.org.

Early Martian Ocean Was Over 300 Meters Deep, New Research Suggests

Nov 18, 2022 by News Staff

An analysis of chromium isotopes in Martian meteorites suggests that approximately 4.5 billion years ago, there was enough water for the entire planet...

A spiral-shaped dust storm is visible in this image taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) imager on ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft. This image, taken on May 26, 2019, depicts the formation of a spiral shape whose main arm is approximately 2,000 km in length. A granular pattern of dust cells is visible in the storm, formed by a process called closed-cell convection. This type of convection is also responsible for some cloud patterns on Earth. Image credit: ESA / DLR / FU Berlin.

Martian Springtime Dust Storms Churn Up Surprisingly Earth-Like Cloud Patterns: Study

Nov 16, 2022 by News Staff

Using images obtained by two orbiting spacecraft, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and ESA’s Mars Express, planetary researchers analyzed textured...

Bonsor et al. present distinct observational evidence from white dwarf planetary systems for planetesimal formation occurring during the first few hundred thousand years after cloud collapse in exoplanetary systems. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Stars and Building Blocks of Their Planets ‘Grow Up’ Together, New Study Suggests

Nov 15, 2022 by News Staff

The timing and locations of formation of planetesimals — the building blocks of planets — are crucial to the understanding of planet formation....

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