Planetary Science News

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Captures Stunning Images of Venus’ Night Side

When flying past Venus on July 11, 2020, the WISPR instrument onboard Parker Solar Probe detected a bright rim around the edge of the planet that may be nightglow. The prominent dark feature in the center of the image is Aphrodite Terra, the largest highland region on the Venusian surface. Bright streaks in WISPR, such as the ones seen here, are typically caused by a combination of cosmic rays, sunlight reflected by grains of space dust, and particles of material expelled from the spacecraft’s structures after impact with those dust grains. The number of streaks varies along the orbit or when the spacecraft is traveling at different speeds, and scientists are still in discussion about the specific origins of the streaks here. The dark spot appearing on the lower portion of Venus is an artifact from the WISPR instrument. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory / Naval Research Laboratory / Guillermo Stenborg / Brendan Gallagher.
Feb 10, 2022 by News Staff

During two gravity-assist flybys on July 11, 2020 and February 20, 2021, the Wide-Field Imager for Parker Solar Probe (WISPR) imager on board NASA’s Parker Solar Probe observed the night side of Venus and unexpectedly penetrated its thick atmosphere, detecting thermal emission from the planet’s surface, making this the first detection of the Venusian surface by an optical telescope. The thermal emission is detectable due to the high temperature...

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This infrared image, taken by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, shows an aurora at the southern pole of Saturn. Image credit: NASA / Cassini / VIMS Team / University of Arizona / University of Leicester / JPL / ASI.

Weather Drives Saturn’s Powerful Aurorae, Planetary Scientists Say

Feb 9, 2022 by News Staff

Saturn is unique among planets observed to date in that some of its aurorae are generated by swirling winds within its atmosphere, and not just from the...

This image from ESA’s Trace Gas Orbiter shows a giant impact crater in Acidalia Planitia on Mars. Image credit: ESA / CaSSIS / CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.

Trace Gas Orbiter Spots ‘Tree Stump’ Crater on Mars

Feb 2, 2022 by News Staff

ESA’s Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) has spotted an ice-rich impact crater in Acidalia Planitia, a Martian plain between the Tharsis volcanic province and Arabia...

This image from the Context Camera onboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows Bosporos Planum on Mars; the white specks are salt deposits found within a dry channel; the largest impact crater in the scene is nearly 1.5 km (one mile) across. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS.

Water Flowed on Martian Surface as Recently as Two Billion Years Ago, Study Suggests

Jan 27, 2022 by News Staff

It’s commonly believed that Martian liquid water evaporated about 3 billion years ago, but a duo of planetary scientists from Caltech and Johns Hopkins...

Mattei et al. studied the antifreeze properties of exotic salts that exist on Mars. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / USGS / SwRI.

Brine-Ice Mixtures Exist beneath Martian South Polar Cap: Study

Jan 26, 2022 by News Staff

In 2018, the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding (MARSIS) instrument onboard ESA’s Mars Express orbiter found evidence of liquid...

This image shows a triple crater in Noachis Terra, Mars. The largest crater measures 45 km across, and the smallest 28 km. There are also signs of other sizeable craters, such as the round patches of sunken surface seen to the top right and bottom left. This image comprises data gathered by ESA’s Mars Express using its High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on August 6, 2020. This image was created using data from the nadir and color channels of the HRSC. The nadir channel is aligned perpendicular to the surface of Mars, as if looking straight down at the surface. North is to the right. Image credit: ESA / DLR / FU Berlin / CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.

Study: Frequency of Asteroid Impacts in Inner Solar System Constant over Past 600 Million Years

Jan 21, 2022 by News Staff

Using a novel crater detection algorithm, which automatically counts the visible impact craters from a high-resolution image, a team of planetary researchers...

Mimas’ surface, like the surfaces of most of the other major Saturnian moons without atmospheres, is not pure ice but contains some dark impurities; the relatively dark markings appear along the lower portion of the walls of the 130-km-wide Herschel Crater (the peak in the middle of the crater is about as tall as Mount Everest; the impact that made it likely almost destroyed the moon) and some of the smaller craters; scientists interpret this darkening as evidence for the gradual concentration of impurities from evaporating icy materials in areas where the dark impurities slide slowly down the crater wall. Image credit: NASA / JPL / Space Science Institute.

Saturn’s Moon Mimas Hosts Global Ocean, New Study Suggests

Jan 20, 2022 by News Staff

Mimas, the smallest and innermost of Saturn’s eight main moons, may be warm enough to harbor a global, liquid water ocean beneath a 24-31-km (15-19-mile)...

A selfie taken by NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity on Sol 2291 (January 15, 2019) at the ‘Rock Hall’ drill site, located on Vera Rubin Ridge. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS.

Curiosity’s Samples from Martian Crater Strongly Depleted in Carbon-13, Researchers Say

Jan 18, 2022 by News Staff

An analysis of carbon isotopes in sediment samples taken by NASA’s Curiosity rover from Gale crater, Mars, leave planetary researchers with three plausible...

An artist’s impression of the super-Neptune exoplanet TOI-1728b. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Computer Simulations Shed New Light on Gas Giant Formation

Jan 17, 2022 by News Staff

Solar system’s gas giants, such as Jupiter, Saturn, and massive exoplanets, were formed via the gas accretion onto the solid cores, each with a mass...

An artist’s conception of the cross section of a super-Earth with the National Ignition Facility target chamber superimposed over the mantle, looking into the core. Image credit: John Jett / Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Rocky Exoplanets with Four to Six Times Earth’s Mass Have Longest Dynamos, Study Suggests

Jan 13, 2022 by News Staff

The pressure and temperature conditions at which iron melts are important for rocky planets because they determine the size of the liquid metal core, an...

Possible scenarios of terrestrial planet formation: in the classic Wetherill-type model of oligarchic growth, the terrestrial planets formed by mutual collisions among Moon- to Mars-sized planetary embryos after the gas disk dissipated and accreted only a small fraction of CC planetesimals, which were scattered inward during Jupiter’s growth and/or putative migration; alternatively, the terrestrial planets may have formed within the lifetime of the gas disk by efficiently accreting ‘pebbles’ from the outer Solar System, which drift sunward through the disk due to gas drag; the two models differ in the amount of outer solar system material accreted by the terrestrial planets, which may be quantified using nucleosynthetic isotope anomalies. Image credit: Burkhardt et al., doi: 10.1126/sciadv.abj7601.

Earth and Other Terrestrial Planets Formed from Inner Solar System Material, Study Suggests

Dec 28, 2021 by News Staff

Two fundamentally different processes of rocky planet formation exist, but it is unclear which one built the Earth and other terrestrial solar system planets....

Trace Gas Orbiter Finds Water Ice in Martian Polar Crater

Dec 27, 2021 by News Staff

ESA’s Trace Gas Orbiter has returned a stunning image of a 4-km- (2.5-mile) wide crater located in Vastitas Borealis, the largest lowland region of Mars. The...

An artist’s conception of the aerial biosphere in the cloud layers of Venus. In this picture, hypothetical microbial life in the clouds of Venus resides inside protective cloud particles and is carried by winds around the planet. Image credit: J. Petkowska.

Clouds of Venus May Be More Habitable than Previously Thought

Dec 21, 2021 by News Staff

Possible lifeforms in the Venusian clouds could be setting off a cascade of chemical reactions that is making the environment much more habitable, according...

This image of Ganymede was obtained by the JunoCam imager aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft during its June 7, 2021, flyby of the icy moon. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS.

Juno Records ‘Sounds’ of Jupiter’s Moon Ganymede

Dec 20, 2021 by News Staff

The magnetosphere of Ganymede, the Jupiter’s largest moon, is a source of electric and magnetic radio emissions, which have been monitored by the Waves...

Mars; the center of the scene shows the entire Valles Marineris canyon system. Image credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

ESA’s Trace Gas Orbiter Finds Water in Martian Canyon System

Dec 17, 2021 by News Staff

Planetary researchers using the Fine Resolution Epithermal Neutron Detector (FREND) instrument onboard ESA’s Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) have found evidence...

Sputnik Planum basin: this scene, which is about 250 miles (400 km) across, uses data from New Horizons’ Ralph/MVIC instrument. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.

Planetary Scientists Solve Mystery behind Mysterious Polygonal Structures on Pluto

Dec 15, 2021 by News Staff

University of Exeter’s Dr. Adrien Morison and colleagues have shown how vast ice forms have been shaped in Sputnik Planitia, a nitrogen-ice-filled basin...

Daly et al. used atom probe tomography to directly observe an average ~1 mol% enrichment in water and hydroxyls in the solar-wind-irradiated rim of an olivine grain from the S-type asteroid Itokawa. Image credit: Curtin University.

Part of Earth’s Water Came from the Sun, New Study Suggests

Nov 29, 2021 by News Staff

The solar wind, comprised of solar particles largely made of hydrogen ions, created water on the surface of dust grains carried on asteroids that smashed...

Curiosity used its navigation cameras to capture panoramas of this scene at two times of day. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Curiosity Team Releases Stunning Panorama of Martian Landscape

Nov 26, 2021 by News Staff

Members of NASA’s Curiosity rover mission team have combined two versions of the black-and-white images of Martian mountains from different times of...

This artist’s impression shows NASA’s InSight lander in Homestead Hollow, a small impact crater; the r SEIS seismometer is the light-colored hemisphere on the ground in front of the lander; the ground beneath it consists of a sandy regolith layer on top of alternate layers of sediments (yellow-orange colors) and basaltic rocks, i.e. former lava flows (brown colors). Image credit: Géraldine Zenhäusern / ETH Zürich.

Mars Has Multi-Layered Subsurface, New Study Says

Nov 24, 2021 by News Staff

Using seismic data collected by the SEIS (Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure) instrument aboard NASA’s InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic...

This artist’s illustration shows NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft in the outer Solar System. In the background lies the Sun and a glowing band representing Zodiacal Light, caused by sunlight reflecting off of dust. Image credit: Joe Olmsted / STScI.

New Horizons Detects Galactic Lyman-alpha Emissions

Nov 23, 2021 by News Staff

Hydrogen is the most abundant element. When a neutral hydrogen atom gets blasted with energy, its electron can be boosted to a larger orbit with a higher...

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