Planetary Science News

Graphic illustrating NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft encountering plasma layers at Mars. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / CI lab.

MAVEN Detects Sporadic ‘Layers’ and ‘Rifts’ in Martian Ionosphere

Feb 3, 2020 by News Staff

NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft has detected sporadic ‘layers’ and ‘rifts’ in the ionosphere — the electrically...

Curious Marie is a sample of the Allende meteorite, which fell in northern Mexico in February 1969. The white, fuzzy-looking features in this fragment are calcium-aluminum-rich inclusions -- some of the first solids to condense in the Solar System. Image credit: The Planetary Society.

Researchers Find Presolar Grains in Unusual Inclusion from Allende Meteorite

Jan 29, 2020 by News Staff

Scientists from Washington University, St. Louis, Caltech and the University of Chicago have found presolar grains — tiny bits of solid interstellar...

These 2.7 billion-year-old meteorites, about half a millimeter across, fell into the ocean and were collected from the deep sea. Image credit: Donald Brownlee / University of Washington.

Archean Earth’s Atmosphere was Rich in Carbon Dioxide, Researchers Say

Jan 27, 2020 by News Staff

A team of researchers from the University of Washington and NASA’s Ames Research Center has analyzed iron-rich micrometeorites collected from 2.7 billion-year-old...

$Cassini captured this image of Enceladus as it neared the moon for its closest-ever dive past the moon’s active south polar region. The image was taken in visible light with the spacecraft’s narrow-angle camera on October 28, 2015. The image shows heavily cratered northern latitudes at top, transitioning to fractured, wrinkled terrain in the middle and southern latitudes. The wavy boundary of the moon's active south polar region is visible at bottom, where it disappears into wintry darkness. This view looks towards the Saturn-facing side of Enceladus. The image was taken at a distance of approximately 60,000 miles (96,000 km) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 45 degrees. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute.$

Geochemical Model Reveals Inner Complexity of Enceladus

Jan 23, 2020 by News Staff

Enceladus, an ocean-harboring moon of Saturn, erupts a plume that contains gases and frozen sea spray into space. By understanding the composition of the...

Composite aeromagnetic anomaly map of the Yarrabubba impact structure within the Yilgarn Craton, Western Australia, showing the locations of key outcrops and samples used in this study. The image combines the total magnetic intensity (TMI, cool to warm colors) with the second vertical derivative of the total magnetic intensity (2VD, grayscale) data. The demagnetized anomaly centered on the outcrops of the Barlangi granophyre is considered to be the eroded remnant of the central uplift domain, which forms the basis of the crater diameter of 70 km. Prominent, narrow linear anomalies that cross-cut the demagnetized zone with broadly east-west orientations are mafic dykes that post-date the impact structure. Image credit: Erickson et al, doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-13985-7.

Earth’s Oldest Known Meteorite Impact Structure Identified

Jan 22, 2020 by News Staff

The 70 km- (43.5-mile) diameter Yarrabubba impact structure in Western Australia is approximately 2.23 billion years old, according to new research led...

This HRSC image shows plumes of dust clouds over the ice cap at Mars’ north pole. The landscape here is a rippled mix of color. Dark red and ochre-hued troughs appear to cut through the icy white of the polar cap; these form part of a wider system of depressions that spiral outwards from the very center of the pole. Visible to the left of the frame are a few extended streams of clouds, aligned perpendicularly to a couple of the troughs. These are thought to be caused by small local storms that kick up dust into the Martian atmosphere, eroding scarps and slopes as they do so and slowly changing the appearance of the troughs over time. Image credit: ESA / DLR / FU Berlin / CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.

ESA’s Mars Express Orbiter Sees Dust Clouds over Martian North Pole

Jan 17, 2020 by News Staff

The High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) onboard ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft has captured a new image of the icy cap at the Martian north pole, complete...

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.

Cassini Reveals Saturn’s Ultraviolet Auroras in Unprecedented Detail

Jan 15, 2020 by News Staff

At the end of its mission in 2017, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft performed a set of ‘Grand Finale’ orbits bringing it closer to Saturn than ever before....

This is an artist impression of the protoplanetary disk around HD 107146. Image credit: A. Angelich / NRAO / AUI / NSF.

New Study Sheds Light on Solar System’s Great Divide

Jan 14, 2020 by News Staff

A new study, published in the journal Nature Astronomy, suggests that our young Solar System’s protoplanetary disk was divided into two regions: on the...

Scanning electron microscope image of the 6.2-billion-year-old grain of silicon carbide from the Murchison meteorite. Image credit: Heck et al, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1904573117.

Scientists Find 7-Billion-Year-Old Stardust in Murchison Meteorite

Jan 13, 2020 by News Staff

A team of researchers from the United States, Switzerland and Australia has found 4.6 to 7-billion-year-old presolar grains of silicon carbide (SiC) in...

Artist’s impression of a volcano erupting on Venus. Image credit: ESA / AOES Medialab.

New Research Provides More Evidence that Venus is Volcanically Active Today

Jan 6, 2020 by News Staff

Young lava flows detected by ESA’s Venus Express spacecraft are just few years old, according to new research from Universities Space Research Association...

Martian moon Phobos. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / University of Arizona.

Mars Express Captures New Views of Martian Moon Phobos

Dec 17, 2019 by News Staff

On November 17, 2019, ESA’s Mars Express orbiter made a close flyby of Phobos, the larger and inner of the two natural satellites of Mars. The probe...

A series of JunoCam images from Juno’s 23rd close science pass by Jupiter on November 3, 2019, revealed a sixth circumpolar cyclone in the cluster around Jupiter’s south pole. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS.

Juno Spots New Circumpolar Cyclone at Jupiter’s South Pole

Dec 14, 2019 by News Staff

NASA’s Juno spacecraft spied the new Jovian cyclone on November 3, 2019, during its 23rd science pass of the gas giant. A series of JunoCam images from...

Computer-generated visualization of the orbital paths (white dots) taken by NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft as it mapped winds (blue lines) in the Martian upper atmosphere; red lines coming from the white dots represent local wind speed and direction, measured by MAVEN’s Neutral Gas and Ion Mass Spectrometer instrument. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / MAVEN / SVS / Greg Shirah.

NASA’s MAVEN Orbiter Maps Martian Upper Atmospheric Winds

Dec 13, 2019 by News Staff

Using NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft, a team of planetary researchers have measured the speed and direction of winds...

On Earth, the Northern and Southern lights occur when the solar wind (electrically charged particles from the Sun) follow our planet’s geomagnetic field lines to the poles and collide with the upper atmosphere. Mars lacks a global magnetic field, so instead the solar wind piles up in front of Mars in a bow shock, which blocks charged particles from reaching the bulk of the atmosphere. However, in a process first observed by NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft, some solar wind protons can slip past the bow shock by first bonding with electrons from the Martian upper atmosphere to form hydrogen atoms. Because these hydrogen atoms are electrically neutral, they can pass through the bow shock and go on to create an ultraviolet proton aurora on the dayside of Mars. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

‘Proton Aurora’ is Most Common Type of Aurora on Mars, Researchers Say

Dec 13, 2019 by News Staff

Proton aurora, a type of Martian aurora first identified in 2016, forms when protons from the solar wind interact with hydrogen in the extended portions...

This map shows near-surface water ice on Mars; cool colors represent less than one foot (30 cm) below the surface; warm colors are over two feet (60 cm) deep; sprawling brown zones on the map represent areas where a landing spacecraft would sink into fine dust; the outlined box represents the ideal region to send astronauts for them to be able to dig up water ice. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / ASU.

New Map Shows Near-Surface Water Ice on Mars

Dec 12, 2019 by News Staff

Using data from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Odyssey orbiter, a team of planetary researchers have crated a map of the water ice depth...

Enceladus’ tiger stripes are known to be spewing ice from the moon’s icy interior into space, creating a cloud of fine ice particles over the moon’s south pole and creating Saturn’s mysterious E-ring. Evidence for this has come from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft that orbited Saturn from 2004 to 2017. Pictured here, a high resolution image of Enceladus is shown from a close flyby. Tiger stripes are visible in false-color blue. Image credit: NASA / ESA / JPL / SSI / Cassini Imaging Team.

Enceladus’ Tiger Stripes Finally Explained

Dec 10, 2019 by News Staff

Saturn’s 300-mile- (500 km) diameter moon Enceladus is thought to have an outer ice shell covering a liquid water ocean. Slashed across the moon’s...

The yellow-white cloud in the bottom-center of this image, taken on November 30, 2010 by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, is a ‘dust tower’ -- a concentrated cloud of dust that can be lofted dozens of miles above the surface. The blue-white plumes are water vapor clouds. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS.

‘Dust Towers’ Spotted on Mars

Nov 28, 2019 by News Staff

NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter observed a high number of ‘dust towers’ — concentrated clouds of dust that warm in sunlight and rise high...

This image shows a region of Mars named Deuteronilus Mensae. The oblique perspective view was generated using a digital terrain model and Mars Express data gathered on February 25, 2018. Image credit: ESA / DLR / FU Berlin / CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.

ESA’s Mars Express Orbiter Spots Fractured Ice Sheets

Nov 26, 2019 by News Staff

The two Martian hemispheres are drastically different; the smooth northern lowlands sit up to 3 km below the rugged southern highlands, and the surface...

SEM image of the Acfer 094 polished section. CAI - Ca-Al-rich inclusion. Image credit: Matsumoto et al, doi: 10.1126/sciadv.aax5078.

Scientists Find Fossil Asteroidal Ice in Meteorite

Nov 26, 2019 by News Staff

An international team of scientists from the UK and Japan has found ‘fossilized asteroidal ice’ and pristine dust materials in a 4.6-billion-year-old...

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