Planetary Science News

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

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.
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 atmosphere thinned rapidly to approximately 0.054 bar, suggesting a substantial loss of atmospheric carbon dioxide, either to space or the lithosphere. The mechanism by which Mars lost its carbon dioxide remains poorly understood. For MIT geologists Joshua Murray and Oliver Jagoutz, the answer may lie...

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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...

This graphic shows Juno’s model for radiation intensity at different points in the spacecraft’s orbit around Jupiter. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / DTU.

Planetary Reseachers Create 3D Radiation Map of Jovian System

Aug 27, 2024 by News Staff

Using data gathered by the Advanced Stellar Compass (ASC) and the Stellar Reference Unit (SRU) onboard NASA’s Juno orbiter, scientists have produced...

Venus in real colors, processed from Mariner 10 images. Image credit: Mattias Malmer / NASA.

Venus Express Detects Unexpected Increase of Deuterium to Hydrogen Ratio in Venusian Mesosphere

Aug 26, 2024 by News Staff

Although Venus is sometimes referred to as Earth’s twin, its current surface conditions are drastically different, making it inhospitable to life. Not...

Ankylosaurus magniventris, a large armored dinosaur species, witnesses the impact of an asteroid, falling on the Yucatan peninsula 66 million years ago. Image credit: Fabio Manucci.

Dinosaur-Killing Chicxulub Asteroid Came from beyond Jupiter: Study

Aug 16, 2024 by News Staff

The so-called Chicxulub impactor was a carbonaceous-type asteroid that had formed beyond the orbit of Jupiter, according to a new paper published in the...

This CaSSIS/TGO image shows chloride-bearing deposits (purplish, scaley wave) in Terra Sirenum, Mars. Image credit: ESA / TGO / CaSSIS.

ESA’s Trace Gas Orbiter Spots Chloride-Bearing Deposits on Mars

Aug 13, 2024 by Enrico de Lazaro

Chloride deposits are markers for early Mars’ aqueous past, with important implications for the understanding of the Martian climate and habitability....

Cutaway view of NASA’s InSight lander and data it collected. Image credit: James Tuttle Keane / Aaron Rodriquez.

Mid-Crust of Mars May Contain ‘Oceans of Liquid Water’

Aug 13, 2024 by News Staff

New data about the Martian crust gathered by NASA’s InSight lander allowed geophysicists at the University of California San Diego and the University...

This artist’s impression shows how Mars may have looked about 4 billion years ago. Image credit: M. Kornmesser / ESO.

‘Nanoparticle Warming’ Have Potential to Warm Mars, Planetary Scientists Say

Aug 8, 2024 by News Staff

One-third of Mars’ surface has shallow-buried water, but it is currently too cold for use by life. Proposals to warm Mars using greenhouse gases require...

This image from ESA’s Mars Express shows Caralis Chaos, a Martian region where copious water is thought to have once existed in the form of an ancient lake known as Lake Eridania. Image credit: ESA / DLR / FU Berlin.

Mars Once Hosted Lake Larger than Any on Earth: Lake Eridania

Aug 7, 2024 by News Staff

This new image from the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) onboard ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft shows Caralis Chaos, broken-down and dried-up remnants...

Structural and compositional characterization of few-layer graphene in the Chang’e-5 lunar soil sample. Image credit: Zhang et al., doi: 10.1093/nsr/nwae211.

Flakes of Natural Graphene Found in Lunar Soil Samples

Aug 1, 2024 by Natali Anderson

In lunar regolith samples collected by China’s Chang’e-5 probe, planetary scientists have identified few-layer graphene formed together with complex...

Yellow crystals of elemental sulfur on Mars. Image credit: NASA.

Curiosity Finds Pure Sulfur on Mars

Jul 22, 2024 by News Staff

Yellow crystals of elemental sulfur were revealed after NASA’s Curiosity rover happened to drive over a rock and crack it open on May 30, 2024, according...

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