Planetary Science News

New research challenges conventional wisdom by demonstrating that mid-ocean ridges and continental rifts, not volcanic eruptions, played the central role...

New research by MIT planetary scientists shows how striking differences in the polar vortex patterns of Jupiter and Saturn may be driven by deep interior...

A new analysis of stress, tides and interior forces suggests Jupiter’s icy moon Europa lacks the active seafloor faulting needed for robust hydrothermal...

The data from NASA’s Cassini mission to Saturn initially led researchers to suspect a large underground ocean composed of liquid water on Titan. However,...

The composition of Uranus and Neptune might be less icy than previously thought, according to a new study by University of Zürich scientists. Uranus could...

Researchers have detected an unexpectedly high abundance of presolar grains — dust from stellar explosions predating our Solar System — in...

Jupiter’s icy moon Europa is an ocean world that is a prime candidate in the search for potential extraterrestrial habitability and life beyond Earth....

This gum-like material — never seen before in space — was likely formed in the early days of the Solar System, as Bennu’s parent asteroid...

In 1986, NASA’s Voyager 2 provided the only direct measurement of the radiation environment at Uranus. These findings established the well-accepted characterization...

A team of researchers from the United States and Japan has analyzed an extract from a sample of the near-Earth asteroid (101955) Bennu collected by NASA’s...

NASA’s Perseverance rover has discovered several thousand small, light-toned rock fragments, or float rocks, with some exhibiting spectral signatures...

Using data captured by the SuperCam microphone aboard NASA’s Perseverance rover over two Martian years, planetrary scientists have detected 55 triboelectric...

The Moon formed from a giant impact of the proto-Earth with the ancient protoplanet Theia. In a new study, a team of scientists from the United States,...

Titan offers great motivation for the detailed study of organic chemistry in unconventional conditions. Nonpolar hydrocarbons such as ethane and methane...

On some of the dune fields on Mars, parallel channels, called linear dune gullies, are found. Contrary to their name these gullies are often highly sinuous....

Exploring the possibility of the survival of life under extraterrestrial conditions is an important goal of astrobiology. In a new study, scientists used...

Roughly 4.3 billion years ago, when our Solar System was still in its infancy, a giant asteroid slammed into the far side of the Moon, blasting an enormous...

The leading hypotheses for the origin of the Moon call for a giant impact event between proto-Earth and a separate impactor called Theia. The efficiency...

Saturn’s moon Enceladus continuously ejects a plume of ice grains and gases originating from its subsurface ocean via fractures near its south pole....