Planetary Science News

Europa’s Icy Surface Glows in the Dark, New Study Suggests

This illustration of Jupiter’s moon Europa shows how its icy surface may glow on its nightside. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.
Nov 10, 2020 by News Staff

Jupiter’s icy moon Europa is bombarded by a constant and intense blast of radiation from the gas giant. Different salty compounds on the moon’s surface react differently to the radiation and emit their own unique glimmer. To the naked eye, this glow would look sometimes slightly green, sometimes slightly blue or white and with varying degrees of brightness, depending on what material it is. This illustration of Jupiter’s moon Europa shows how...

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This colorized radar image, taken by NASA’s Cassini orbiter on February 15, 2005, shows a 60-km (37-mile) wide crater on Titan. The appearance of the crater and the extremely bright (hence rough) blanket of material surrounding it is indicative of an origin by impact, in which a hypervelocity comet or asteroid, in this case, roughly 5-10 km (3-6 miles) in size, slammed into the surface of the moon. The bright surrounding blanket is debris, or ejecta, thrown out of the crater. The asymmetric appearance of this ejecta blanket could be an effect of atmospheric winds associated with the impact itself. Although clearly formed by impact, the feature lacks a central peak, suggesting that it has been eroded or otherwise modified after formation. Rainfall, wind erosion, and softening of the solid material in which the crater formed are all possible processes that might have altered this impact feature. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / ASI.

Cassini Finds Organics and Water Ice in Titan’s Impact Craters

Nov 6, 2020 by News Staff

Using the spectral data collected by the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) onboard NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, a team of researchers has...

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.

Mars Express Spots Triple Crater on Red Planet

Nov 3, 2020 by News Staff

ESA’s Mars Express orbiter has spotted three overlapping craters in Noachis Terra, an extensive landmass in the southern hemisphere of Mars. This image...

This illustration shows what a sprite could look like in Jupiter’s atmosphere. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI.

Juno Observes Sprites and Elves in Upper Atmosphere of Jupiter

Oct 30, 2020 by News Staff

NASA’s Juno spacecraft has been in orbit around Jupiter since 2016. One of its instruments is the ultraviolet spectrograph (UVS), which is primarily...

A false-color view of Titan, a moon of Saturn surrounded by a thick orange haze. Image credit: NASA / JPL / University of Arizona / University of Idaho.

Cyclopropenylidene Detected in Atmosphere of Titan

Oct 28, 2020 by News Staff

Using high sensitivity spectroscopic observations from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers have detected a small cyclic...

A fragment of the Hamburg meteorite found on Strawberry Lake near Hamburg, Michigan, the United States. Image credit: Heck et al., doi: 10.1111/maps.13584.

Scientists Find Organic Compounds in Hamburg Meteorite

Oct 28, 2020 by News Staff

An international team of researchers has found extraterrestrial hydrocarbons, sulfurized and nitrogen-containing compounds in the Hamburg meteorite, which...

When the Moon had a magnetic field, it would have been shielded from incoming solar wind, as shown in this illustration. Image credit: NASA.

Moon’s Ancient Magnetosphere May Have Helped Early Earth Retain Its Atmosphere

Oct 15, 2020 by News Staff

Solar storms strip a planet’s atmosphere over time, and only a strong magnetosphere would be able to provide maximum protection. Lunar samples gathered...

Pluto’s Mountains are Capped with Methane Frost: Study

Oct 14, 2020 by News Staff

The bright frosts observed in 2015 in the equatorial region of Cthulhu on Pluto are mostly made of methane-rich ice, according to new research. This image,...

This oblique color view from the HiRISE instrument onboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows a lithified field of sand dunes within Melas Chasma, Valles Marineris. The large degree of preserved morphology for many of these paleodunes reveals important information regarding the acting wind regime and climate prior to their cementation. Image credit: NASA / JPL / University of Arizona.

One-Billion-Year-Old Sand Dunes Spotted on Mars

Oct 12, 2020 by News Staff

Planetary researchers have mapped and characterized ancient sand dune fields in the canyons of Valles Marineris on Mars. Their discovery offers new insights...

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft at asteroid Bennu. Image credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

New Studies Detail Complex History of Near-Earth Asteroid Bennu

Oct 9, 2020 by News Staff

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer) mission to the near-Earth asteroid Bennu is...

Early Moon. Image credit: NASA.

New Study Challenges Hypothesis that Moon’s Crust was Magnetized by Meteoroid Impacts

Oct 8, 2020 by News Staff

The crusts of the Moon, Mercury and many small bodies in the Solar System are magnetized. Although the magnetizing field is commonly attributed to that...

Meteoroids bombarded the Earth-Moon system 800 million years ago. Image credit: Murayama, Osaka University.

Moon May Have Fragments of Ancient Venus on Its Surface

Oct 7, 2020 by News Staff

If the atmosphere of Venus was at any point thin and similar to Earth’s, then ancient asteroid impacts transferred potentially detectable amounts of...

This composite image, taken by JAXA’s Akatsuki spacecraft, shows Venus. Image credit: JAXA / ISAS / DARTS / Damia Bouic.

Migrating Jupiter May Have Made Venus Uninhabitable Long Ago

Sep 30, 2020 by News Staff

Early in the formation of Jupiter as a planet, it moved closer to and then away from the Sun due to interactions with the planetary disk of the young Solar...

An artist’s impression of ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft. Image credit: ESA / ATG Medialab / DLR / FU Berlin / CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.

Mars Express Finds Three New Water Bodies below Martian South Pole

Sep 28, 2020 by Natali Anderson

Using new radar data from ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft, researchers have detected three reservoirs of liquid water trapped below the south polar cap...

View of the Chang’E 4 lander with the location of the LND sensor head indicated by the red arrow. LND is mounted in the Chang’E 4 payload compartment; the lid at the tip of the red arrow is closed at night to protect LND from the cold lunar night. Image credit: Chinese National Space Agency / National Astronomical Observatories of China.

Scientists Measure Radiation Dose Rates on Lunar Surface

Sep 28, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

Using the Lunar Lander Neutrons and Dosimetry (LND) experiment aboard China’s Chang’E 4 lander, a team of researchers from Germany and China has measured...

A simulated view from above Tellus Tessera, one of the regions on Venus where Byrne et al identified the presence of layering. Image credit: NASA.

Venusian Tesserae Feature Layered, Folded and Eroded Rocks

Sep 24, 2020 by News Staff

A significant portion of some of the oldest terrain on Venus, known as tesserae, has striations consistent with layering, according to new research led...

The bright boulders (circled in the images) on the surface of near-Earth asteroid Bennu are pyroxene-rich material from Vesta; some bright material appear to be individual rocks (left) while others appear to be clasts within larger boulders (right). Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / University of Arizona.

OSIRIS-REx Finds Fragments of Minor Planet Vesta on Near-Earth Asteroid Bennu

Sep 22, 2020 by News Staff

In 2019, scientists from the OSIRIS-REx team discovered several unusually bright boulders on the surface of near-Earth asteroid Bennu in images acquired...

In these detailed infrared images of Enceladus, reddish areas indicate fresh ice that has been deposited on the surface. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / University of Arizona / LPG / CNRS / University of Nantes / Space Science Instituto.

Cassini Finds Fresh Ice in Northern Hemisphere of Enceladus

Sep 21, 2020 by News Staff

Spectral data gathered by the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) onboard NASA’s Cassini spacecraft provide strong evidence that the northern...

Carbide Planets May Be Made Of Silica and Diamonds

Sep 11, 2020 by News Staff

Extrasolar planets hosted by stars with sufficiently high carbon-to-oxygen ratios could be made of diamonds and silica, according to new research by Arizona...

Hay et al for the first time investigate moon-moon tides in Jupiter’s Galilean moons and show that they can cause significant heating through the excitation of high-frequency resonant tidal waves in their subsurface oceans. Image credit: Galileo Project / Voyager Project / NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Galilean Moons of Jupiter Could Be Warming Each Other

Sep 11, 2020 by News Staff

In a process called tidal heating, gravitational push and pull from Jupiter’s Galilean moons — Europa, Ganymede, Io and Callisto — and the...

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