Planetary Science News

Boulder-size blocks of water ice can be seen around the rim of an impact crater in the Amazonis Planitia regionon Mars, as viewed by the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / University of Arizona.

Meteoroid Impact on Mars Excavated Large Chunks of Water Ice, Planetary Scientists Say

Oct 28, 2022 by News Staff

On December 24, 2021, NASA’s InSight lander recorded a magnitude 4 marsquake with a distinct signature rippling across the surface of Mars. In a pair...

Benjamin Cardenas & Michael Lamb show definitive evidence of a roughly 3.5-billion-year-old shoreline with substantial sedimentary accumulation, at least 900 m thick, that covered hundreds of thousands of square kilometers. Image credit: Benjamin Cardenas / Penn State.

New Evidence for Northern Ocean on Early Mars

Oct 28, 2022 by News Staff

A major question in Mars history is whether the planet had an ocean in its northern hemisphere. New research provides evidence for a northern ocean or...

This artist’s impression shows how Mars may have looked about 4 billion years ago. Image credit: M. Kornmesser / ESO.

Chances of Finding Ancient Bacteria on Mars are Better than Previously Expected: Study

Oct 27, 2022 by Natali Anderson

Radiation resistance of microbes is a key parameter in considering survivability of microbes over geologic times on the frigid, arid surface of Mars that...

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft in orbit around Saturn. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Cassini Sheds New Light on Saturn’s Rings

Oct 19, 2022 by News Staff

The Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph instrument onboard NASA’s Cassini spacecraft observed 41 solar occultations by Saturn’s rings. Now, planetary...

Review of the mechanisms proposed in the literature to explain the emplacement of liquid reservoirs invoked to correspond to a variety of geological features at Europa’s surface. Image credit: Lesage et al., doi: 10.3847/PSJ/ac75bf.

Shallow Lakes in Europa’s Crust Could Erupt, Planetary Scientists Say

Oct 13, 2022 by News Staff

In the search for life beyond Earth, subsurface bodies of water in the outer Solar System are some of the most important targets. That’s why NASA 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.

Mars was Habitable for Methanogenic Microorganisms 3.7 Billion Years Ago, Study Suggests

Oct 10, 2022 by News Staff

The subsurface of Mars during the Noachian period was likely to have been habitable for microorganisms that feed on hydrogen and produce methane, according...

These images shows Jupiter’s icy moons Ganymede and Europa with Jupiter in the background. Image credit: ESO / King & Fletcher / NASA / ESA / A. Simon, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / M.H. Wong, University of California, Berkeley / OPAL Team.

SPHERE Helps Determine Surface Compositions of Europa and Ganymede

Oct 10, 2022 by Natali Anderson

Astronomers using the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch (SPHERE) instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope have imaged Jupiter’s...

This look at the complex, ice-covered surface of Europa came from Juno during a close pass on September 29, 2022. The spacecraft had only a two-hour window to collect it, racing past the moon with a relative velocity of about 23.6 km per second (14.7 miles per second). Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SWRI / MSSS.

Juno Flyby Reveals Stunning New Image of Europa

Sep 30, 2022 by News Staff

This new image of Jupiter’s moon Europa, captured during NASA’s Juno spacecraft’s closest approach on September 29, 2022, shows a region near the...

A panning-view of Jupiter’s upper atmospheric temperatures, 1,000 km (621 miles) above the cloud tops; the auroral region (near the northern pole, in yellow/white) appears to have shed a massive, planetary-scale wave of heating towards the equator. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / A. Simon / NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / J. Schmidt / O’Donoghue et al., doi: 10.5194/epsc2022-373.

Huge Heat Wave Spotted in Upper Atmosphere of Jupiter

Sep 23, 2022 by News Staff

The high-temperature planetary-scale-sized structure is at least 130,000 km (80,778 miles) long, according to a new study led by JAXA scientists. A panning-view...

This image of the asteroid Ryugu was captured by the Optical Navigation Camera - Telescopic (ONC-T) on JAXA’s Hayabusa-2 spacecraft on June 26, 2018, from a distance of 13.7 miles (22 km). Image credit: JAXA / University of Tokyo / Kochi University / Rikkyo University / Nagoya University / Chiba Institute of Technology / Meiji University / Aizu University / AIST.

Asteroid Ryugu’s Parent Body Formed in Outer Solar System, New Analysis Suggests

Sep 23, 2022 by News Staff

Samples of the near-Earth asteroid (162173) Ryugu were brought to Earth by JAXA’s Hayabusa-2 spacecraft. This image of the asteroid Ryugu was captured...

This image shows ‘frosted cupcake’ clouds in the atmosphere of Jupiter. The image was taken at a nominal altitude of 13,536.3 km above Jupiter’s cloud tops. image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Gerald Eichstädt.

Juno Spots ‘Frosted Cupcake’ Clouds on Jupiter

Sep 22, 2022 by News Staff

Intensity data of visible light seen by a camera can be plotted as a 3D elevation landscape. The new computer animation, created by citizen scientist and...

Phosphorus in the form of orthophosphate (e.g., HPO4-2) is likely abundant in the subsurface ocean of Saturn’s moon Enceladus; a soda or alkaline ocean (containing NaHCO3 and/or Na2CO3) inside of Enceladus interacts geochemically with a rocky core; modeling indicates that this interaction promotes the dissolution of phosphate minerals, making orthophosphate readily available to possible life in the ocean; because phosphorus is an essential ingredient for life, this finding bolsters mounting evidence for habitability within this small Saturnian moon. Image credit: Southwest Research Institute.

Subsurface Ocean of Enceladus is Rich in Phosphorus, Suggests Study

Sep 20, 2022 by News Staff

Enceladus is one of the prime targets in the search for life in our Solar System. Observations made by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft show that this small...

These craters were formed by a meteoroid impact on Mars on September 5, 2021, the first to be detected by NASA’s InSight lander; taken by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, this enhanced-color image highlights the dust and soil disturbed by the impact in blue in order to make details more visible to the human eye. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / University of Arizona.

NASA’s InSight Lander Detects Seismic and Acoustic Waves from Meteoroid Impacts on Mars

Sep 20, 2022 by News Staff

The Seismic Experiment for Internal Structure (SEIS) seismometer on NASA’s InSight lander picked up vibrations and sounds from four space rocks that...

This image shows a rocky outcrop called Wildcat Ridge, where NASA’s Perseverance rover extracted two rock cores and abraded a circular patch to investigate the rock’s composition. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / ASU / MSSS.

Perseverance Detects Organics in New Samples from Martian Jezero Crater

Sep 19, 2022 by News Staff

In 2014, NASA’s Curiosity rover found evidence of organic matter in rock-powder samples from Gale crater, and NASA’s Perseverance rover has detected...

Composite of a true color image of Saturn, observed by Cassini in 2016, overlaid with a false color representation of the ultraviolet aurora in the northern hemisphere as observed on August 20, 2017. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute / A. Bader, Lancaster University.

Destroyed Moon Could Explain Saturn’s Young Rings and Present-Day Tilt

Sep 16, 2022 by News Staff

Saturn’s rings — thought to have formed a mere 100 million years ago — are one of the most distinctive planetary features in our Solar System....

Images of graphite, lonsdaleite, and diamond in ureilite meteorites: (A) reflected light image showing folded crystalline graphite, with fold morphology defined by graphite cleavage; different shading in the graphite is produced by axial planar kink bands; (B) reflected light image (stacked foci) showing an example of the inherited fold morphology preserved in lonsdaleite; (C) cathodoluminescence map of the same area as (B) indicating different phases of carbon, where the green regions are lonsdaleite and the red areas on the periphery (including the purple dashed circle) are cubic diamond (blue is the cathodoluminescence response from olivine); (D) scanning TEM image of a region cut out of the area indicated by yellow circle in (C), highlighting dark lonsdaleite crystals. Image credit: Tomkins et al., doi: 10.1073/pnas.2208814119.

Strange Meteoritic Diamonds Came from Mantle of Destroyed Dwarf Planet, Study Says

Sep 13, 2022 by News Staff

Lonsdaleite, a rare hexagonal form of diamond found in ureilite meteorites, formed shortly after an inner solar system dwarf planet collided with a large...

This image from ESA’s Mars Express shows a portion of the Uzboi-Ladon-Morava outflow system. Image credit: ESA / DLR / FU Berlin / CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.

ESA’s Mars Express Orbiter Focuses on Holden Basin

Sep 5, 2022 by News Staff

The new images, taken with the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) aboard ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft on April 24, 2022, show the Holden Basin in...

Patchy proton aurora on Mars. Image credit: EMM / EMUS / UAE Space Agency.

MAVEN and EMM Orbiters Observe ‘Patchy’ Proton Aurora on Mars

Aug 31, 2022 by News Staff

Even though Mars does not have a global magnetic field like the Earth, it still possesses multiple kinds of aurora. One of these is proton aurora, which...

This artist’s concept depicts NASA’s Perseverance rover. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Perseverance Provides Insights into History and Composition of Rocks in Martian Jezero Crater

Aug 26, 2022 by News Staff

According to a series of four papers by the Perseverance science team, the floor of Jezero crater had eroded more than planetary researchers expected....