Planetary Science News

Europa Clipper lifts off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 12:06 p.m. EDT on October 14, 2024. Image credit: NASA / Kim Shiflett.

NASA’s Europa Clipper Spacecraft Launches to Jupiter’s Icy Moon

Oct 14, 2024 by News Staff

Europa Clipper lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 12:06 p.m. EDT on October 14, 2024 to begin a six-year journey to Jupiter’s...

Simon et al. measured the Great Red Spot’s size, shape, brightness, color, and vorticity over one full oscillation cycle. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Amy Simon, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / Joseph DePasquale, STScI.

Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is Wobbling and Fluctuating in Size, Hubble Observations Show

Oct 14, 2024 by News Staff

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope observed Jupiter’s most distinctive feature, the Great Red Spot, with on eight dates over a single,...

An artist’s concept of an early Mars with liquid water (blue areas) on its surface. Image credit: NASA / MAVEN / Lunar and Planetary Institute.

Carbonate Minerals from Gale Crater Shed Light on Ancient Martian Climate

Oct 8, 2024 by News Staff

Carbonate minerals are of particular interest in paleoenvironmental research as they are an integral part of the carbon and water cycles, both of which...

This illustration shows the distribution of permanently shadowed regions (in blue) on the Moon poleward of 80 degrees south latitude. They are superimposed on a digital elevation map of the lunar surface (gray) from the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter instrument on board NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Image credit: NASA / GSFC / Timothy P. McClanahan.

Lunar Ice Deposits are More Extensive than Previously Thought

Oct 3, 2024 by News Staff

Prior studies found signs of ice in the permanently shadowed regions near the south pole of the Moon, including areas within Cabeus, Haworth, Shoemaker...

The center of this infographic shows the sharpest-ever image of the cloud of charged particles trapped in Earth’s magnetic field, while the insets show measurements of high-energy ions and electrons detected along the JUICE’s flyby route. Image credit: ESA / NASA / Johns Hopkins APL / Josh Diaz.

JUICE Captures Sharpest Ever Image of Earth’s Radiation Belt

Oct 2, 2024 by News Staff

In August 2024, ESA’s JUpiter ICy Moons Explorer (JUICE) made history with a daring Moon-Earth flyby and double gravity assist maneuver. As the spacecraft...

Darren Williams & Michael Zugger examined the concept of collision-less binary exchange for capturing massive satellites -- comparable to and larger than the Moon -- around terrestrial-mass objects either inside or outside the Solar System.

Young Earth May Have Captured Moon from Space, Research Suggests

Oct 2, 2024 by News Staff

The Moon may have been captured during a close encounter between a young Earth and a terrestrial binary (a system of the Moon and another rocky object),...

Protopapa et al. detected carbon dioxide and hydrogen peroxide spectral signatures on Charon using Webb telescope observations (white), which extend the wavelength coverage of previous New Horizons flyby measurements (pink). Image credit: S. Protopapa / SwRI / NASA / ESA / CSA / STScI / JHUAPL.

Webb Detects Carbon Dioxide and Hydrogen Peroxide on Charon’s Surface

Oct 1, 2024 by Enrico de Lazaro

Using data from the Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) onboard the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have detected carbon dioxide...

This false-color image shows the dwarf planet Ceres. Scientists use false color to examine differences in surface materials. The color blue on Ceres is generally associated with bright material, found in more than 130 locations, and seems to be consistent with salts. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA.

Ceres is Former Ocean World, Planetary Scientists Say

Sep 27, 2024 by News Staff

Ceres is a key object in understanding the evolution of small bodies and is the only dwarf planet to have been orbited by a spacecraft, NASA’s Dawn mission....

This schematic illustrates the progressive alteration of iron-rich rocks on Mars as the rocks interact with water containing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Image credit: Joshua Murray & Oliver Jagoutz, doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adm8443.

Early Martian Atmosphere Could Be Locked Up in Planet’s Clay Surface

Sep 27, 2024 by News Staff

Geological observations of Mars indicate a dense early atmosphere ranging from 0.25 to 4 bar of carbon dioxide. But 3.5 billion years ago, the Martian...

This artist’s illustration shows the ejection of a cloud of debris after NASA’s DART spacecraft collided with the asteroid Dimorphos. Image credit: ESO / M. Kornmesser.

X-ray Pulses from Nuclear Explosions Can Deflect Dangerous Asteroids, Researchers Say

Sep 24, 2024 by News Staff

Around 66 million years ago, the Chicxulub asteroid impact triggered mass extinction, mega-tsunamis and a spell of global warming that lasted for around...

This image from NASA’s Galileo spacecraft shows a volcanic explosion on Io. Image credit: NASA / JPL / University of Arizon.

Planetary Scientists Create Global Map of Volcanic Hotspots on Io

Sep 20, 2024 by News Staff

Io is the most volcanically active body in the Solar System. Io’s volcanoes are powered by both the extreme tides from Jupiter and the gravitational...

Tomkins et al. suggest that a large chondrite asteroid had a near miss encounter with Earth 466 million years ago, which caused it to break up as it passed through Earth’s Roche limit.

Earth Had Ring System 466 Million Years Ago, New Research Suggests

Sep 18, 2024 by News Staff

Breakup of an asteroid passing within Earth’s Roche limit likely formed the debris ring during the middle Ordovician period, according to new research...

A comparison of the JunoCam image from February 2024 with Galileo spacecraft imagery of the same area in November 1997 (grayscale insert) reveals a new volcanic feature on the surface of Io. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Europlanet.

NASA’s Juno Orbiter Discovers New Volcano on Io

Sep 13, 2024 by News Staff

Using images from the JunoCam instrument aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft, planetary scientists have spotted a fresh volcano with multiple lava flows and...

Examples of the ‘Kieffer zoo’ features proposed to be formed by seasonal carbon dioxide sublimation dynamics on Mars: (a) ‘thin’ spiders within the south polar layered deposits; (b) dark spots on top of a layer of translucent carbon dioxide slab ice covering a cluster of ‘fat’ spiders at Martian ‘Inca City;’ (c) ‘fried eggs’ showing rings of dark dust surrounded by bright halos; (d) patterned ground within the high south polar latitudes with dark oriented fans indicative of wind direction and some bright, white fans; (e) bright halos surrounding Swiss cheese depressions; (f) ‘lace terrain,’ a type of patterned ground suggested to be polygonally patterned ground later scoured and eroded by surface-flowing carbon dioxide gas from the Kieffer model. Image credit: HiRISE / NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory / University of Arizona.

Martian ‘Spiders’ Re-Created in Lab for First Time

Sep 12, 2024 by Natali Anderson

Martian ‘spiders’ are small, dark, spider-shaped features up to 1 km (0.6 miles) across. The leading theory is that they form when spring sunshine...

Lee waves on Mars are created by the wind encountering obstacles and build up on the ‘leeward’ or downwind side. Image credit: ESA / DLR / FU Berlin.

Planetary Researchers Create Cloud Atlas of Mars

Sep 11, 2024 by News Staff

The images in the Martian Cloud Atlas have been captured by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) instrument on ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft. Lee...

This is a far-ultraviolet Hubble image of Mars near its closest approach to the Sun, called perihelion, on December 19, 2016. Image credit: NASA / ESA / STScI / John T. Clarke, Boston University.

MAVEN and Hubble Observations Shed New Light on Mars’ Water History

Sep 9, 2024 by News Staff

Mars’ water history is fundamental to understanding an evolution of Earth-like planets. Water escapes to space as atoms, and hydrogen (H) atoms escape...

Volcanic eruption producing glass beads on the Moon. Image credit: T. Zhang & Y. Wang.

Study: There Were Volcanic Eruptions on Moon as Recently as 123 Million Years Ago

Sep 6, 2024 by News Staff

There is extensive geologic evidence of ancient volcanic activity on the Moon, but it is unclear how long that volcanism persisted. Magma fountains produce...

Distribution of furrows and location of the center of the furrow system shown in the hemisphere that always faces away from Jupiter (top) and the cylindrical projection map of Ganymede (bottom). The gray regions represent geologically young terrain without furrows. Furrows (green lines) exist only on geologically old terrains (black regions). Image credit: Naoyuki Hirata, doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-69914-2.

Ganymede Was Struck by Giant Asteroid 4 Billion Years Ago, New Research Suggests

Sep 3, 2024 by News Staff

Jupiter’s moon Ganymede has an ancient impact structure called a furrow system. This system is the largest impact structure in the outer Solar System,...

Collinson et al. report the existence of a +0.55 ± 0.09 V electric potential drop between 250 km and 768 km from a planetary electrostatic field generated exclusively by the outward pressure of ionospheric electrons; they experimentally demonstrate that the ambipolar field of Earth controls the structure of the polar ionosphere, boosting the scale height by 271%. Image credit: NASA.

NASA’s Endurance Mission Measures Earth’s Ambipolar Electric Field for First Time

Aug 28, 2024 by News Staff

First hypothesized more than 60 years ago, the ambipolar electric field is a key driver of the polar wind, a steady outflow of charged particles into space...