Planetary Science News

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.

Pole-to-Pole Map of Saturn’s Thermosphere Reveals Likely Reason Why It’s So Hot

Apr 8, 2020 by News Staff

A team of planetary researchers from the United States and the United Kingdom has created a 2D map of densities and temperatures in Saturn’s thermosphere...

$Illustration showing the present-day hydrogen reservoirs in and on Mars. The mass fractions (pie chart) of Martian water are based on the mass of water in the bulk crust (C), the mantle (M) and the combined inventory (A) of the atmosphere and polar ice deposits (PID). The mantle mass fraction is the combination of depleted shergottites (DS) and enriched shergottites (ES). Image credit: Barnes et al, doi: 10.1038/s41561-020-0552-y.$

Early Mars Had Multiple Water Sources, New Study Shows

Mar 31, 2020 by News Staff

An analysis of two Martian meteorites — Northwest Africa (NWA) 7034 and Allan Hills (ALH) 84001 — shows that Mars likely received water from...

Space Physicists Find Plasmoid in Magnetosphere of Uranus

Mar 27, 2020 by News Staff

Uranus possesses an intrinsic magnetic field that encircles the ice giant and influences the local space environment. The solar wind plasma, made up of...

Model of the hemolithin molecule: space-filling mode (top), ball and stick (center), enlarged view of iron, oxygen and lithium termination (bottom). White = H; orange = Li; gray = C; blue = N; red = O and green = Fe. Hydrogen bonds are shown by dotted lines. Image credit: McGeoch et al, arXiv: 2002.11688.

Researchers Find Extraterrestrial Protein in Meteorite Acfer 086

Mar 26, 2020 by Sergio Prostak

A research team led by Harvard University scientist Julie McGeoch has found a never-before-seen protein inside a meteorite called Acfer 086. A sample of...

This colorful view of Mercury was produced by using images from the color base map imaging campaign during MESSENGER’s primary mission. These colors are not what Mercury would look like to the human eye, but rather the colors enhance the chemical, mineralogical, and physical differences between the rocks that make up the planet’s surface. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Carnegie Institution of Washington.

Mercury’s Extreme Daytime Heat May Help It Make Its Polar Ice

Mar 16, 2020 by News Staff

In 2011, NASA’s MESSENGER orbiter detected signals typical of glacial ice near the poles on Mercury. The ice was dingy and lurked in permanent shadows...

Perspective view of the Moreux crater. Image credit: ESA / DLR / FU Berlin / CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.

Mars Express Sees Intriguing Geological Features in Moreux Crater

Mar 10, 2020 by News Staff

The High Resolution Stereo Camera on ESA’s Mars Express orbiter has captured stunning images of Moreux crater, a huge impact crater in the Terra Sabaea...

As NASA’s Dawn spacecraft takes off for its next destination, this mosaic synthesizes some of the best views the spacecraft had of the giant asteroid Vesta. Dawn studied Vesta from July 2011 to September 2012. The towering mountain at the south pole -- more than twice the height of Mount Everest -- is visible at the bottom of the image. The set of three craters known as the ‘snowman’ can be seen at the top left. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA.

Asteroid Vesta Has Turbulent Past

Mar 5, 2020 by News Staff

A new study by Curtin University researchers has shed light on the early days of Vesta, the second largest asteroid of the main belt and the fourth such...

Curiosity captured this panorama of the Martian surface between November 24 and December 1, 2019. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS.

Curiosity Captures 1.8-Billion-Pixel Panorama of Martian Surface

Mar 5, 2020 by News Staff

NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity has captured its highest-resolution panorama (high-resolution file, 2.43 GB) yet of the Martian surface. The new panorama...

An artist’s impression of a terraformed Mars. Image credit: Daein Ballard / CC BY-SA 3.0.

Martian Thiophenes May Be Biological in Origin, Astrobiologists Say

Mar 5, 2020 by News Staff

NASA’s Curiosity rover recently discovered various classes of organic matter in the Martian sediments. One intriguing group of detected organic compounds...

The Yutu-2 rover moves across the far side of the Moon. Image credit: CNSA.

China’s Yutu-2 Rover Reveals What Lies Beneath Moon’s Farside Surface

Feb 28, 2020 by News Staff

On January 3, 2019, China National Space Administration’s Chang’e-4 probe successfully landed on the eastern floor of Von Karman, a 180-km- (112 mile)...

NASA’s InSight Mission to Mars Releases Preliminary Results

Feb 25, 2020 by News Staff

More than a year after NASA’s Mars InSight lander touched down in ‘Homestead hollow,’ a sand-filled impact crater on the western side of a flat,...

Thick white clouds are present in this JunoCam image of Jupiter’s equatorial zone. These clouds complicate the interpretation of infrared measurements of water. At microwave frequencies, the same clouds are transparent, allowing Juno’s Microwave Radiometer to measure water deep into Jupiter’s atmosphere. The image was acquired during Juno’s flyby of the gas giant on December 16, 2017. Imager credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Kevin M. Gill.

Juno Mission Releases First Science Results on Jupiter’s Atmospheric Water

Feb 19, 2020 by News Staff

Water makes up about 0.25% (almost three times that of the Sun) of the molecules in Jupiter’s atmospheric molecules at the gas giant’s equator, according...

A tiny grain of lunar soil brought back by Apollo 17, magnified under a scanning electron microscope. Image credit: Jennika Greer, Field Museum.

Researchers Find New Way to Analyze Chemistry of Lunar Soil

Feb 7, 2020 by News Staff

An international team of planetary scientists and geochemists from the United States and Switzerland has demonstrated that a technique called atom probe...

This high-resolution image of Pluto was taken by New Horizons on July 14. Pluto’s surface sports a remarkable range of subtle colors, enhanced in this view to a rainbow of pale blues, yellows, oranges, and deep reds. Many landforms have their own distinct colors, telling a complex geological and climatological story that scientists have only just begun to decode. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.

Pluto’s ‘Nitrogen Heart’ Controls Its Atmospheric Circulation: Study

Feb 5, 2020 by News Staff

Pluto’s famous heart-shaped structure, named Tombaugh Regio, controls winds in the atmosphere of the dwarf planet and may give rise to features on its...

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...

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