Space Exploration News

Perseverance’s Navigation Camera (Navcam) observations of the direct dust devil encounter: the Navcam scene (the average background image, top panel) and each dust devil image processed to dust amount (five lower panels), masking out only the truly indeterminate areas (gray); the color scale ranges from optical depth, τ = 0 at the bottom (blue) to τ = 0.12 at the top (yellow), and is linear in between; the areas with low signal-to-noise ratio are masked out, and the images also show non-random noise (banding from instrument electronics during readout); the grid on the scene image (top panel) is 5 degrees in local level azimuth and elevation; the darker gray contours are elevation=0 degrees and azimuth=165 degrees. Image credit: Murdoch et al., doi: 10.1038/s41467-022-35100-z.

NASA’s Perseverance Rover Records Sound of Martian Dust Devil

Dec 13, 2022 by News Staff

Dust devils — convective vortices loaded with dust — are common at the surface of Mars, particularly at Jezero crater, the landing site of...

NASA’s uncrewed Orion spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on December 11, 2022, after a 25.5 day mission to the Moon. Image credit: NASA.

NASA’s Orion Spacecraft Successfully Lands in Pacific Ocean

Dec 12, 2022 by News Staff

NASA’s uncrewed Orion spacecraft successfully splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off Mexico’s Baja California at 12:40 p.m. ET on December 10, 2022....

An artist’s impression of an active mantle plume -- a large blob of warm and buoyant rock -- rising from deep inside Mars and pushing up Elysium Planitia, a plain within the planet’s northern lowlands. Image credit: Adrien Broquet & Audrey Lasbordes.

Planetary Scientists Find Evidence for Active Mantle Plume on Mars

Dec 6, 2022 by News Staff

Elysium Planitia, a flat-smooth plain just north of the Martian equator, is underlain by an 4,000-km-diameter active mantle plume, according to new research...

An illustration of an asteroid on its way to ancient Mars. Image credit: M. Kornmesser / ESO / Nathan Owen-Price / Sci.News.

Chicxulub-Like Asteroid Caused Megatsunami on Early Mars

Dec 1, 2022 by News Staff

The Chicxulub-like asteroid crash landed in shallow ocean waters in the Martian region of Chryse Planitia 3.4 billion years ago (Hesperian period) and...

The young Mars would have had enough water to cover its entire surface in a liquid layer about 140 m deep, but it is more likely that the liquid would have pooled to form an ocean occupying almost half of Mars’s northern hemisphere, and in some regions reaching depths greater than 1.6 km. Image credit: M. Kornmesser / ESO / N. Risinger, skysurvey.org.

Early Martian Ocean Was Over 300 Meters Deep, New Research Suggests

Nov 18, 2022 by News Staff

An analysis of chromium isotopes in Martian meteorites suggests that approximately 4.5 billion years ago, there was enough water for the entire planet...

NASA’s Space Launch System carrying the Orion spacecraft launches on the Artemis I flight test from Launch Complex 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 1:47 a.m. EST on November 16, 2022. Image credit: NASA / Joel Kowsky.

NASA’s Orion Spacecraft is on Its Way to the Moon

Nov 16, 2022 by News Staff

Carrying an uncrewed Orion, NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) — the most powerful rocket in the world — lifted off today at 1:47 a.m. EST...

A spiral-shaped dust storm is visible in this image taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) imager on ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft. This image, taken on May 26, 2019, depicts the formation of a spiral shape whose main arm is approximately 2,000 km in length. A granular pattern of dust cells is visible in the storm, formed by a process called closed-cell convection. This type of convection is also responsible for some cloud patterns on Earth. Image credit: ESA / DLR / FU Berlin.

Martian Springtime Dust Storms Churn Up Surprisingly Earth-Like Cloud Patterns: Study

Nov 16, 2022 by News Staff

Using images obtained by two orbiting spacecraft, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and ESA’s Mars Express, planetary researchers analyzed textured...

Bonsor et al. present distinct observational evidence from white dwarf planetary systems for planetesimal formation occurring during the first few hundred thousand years after cloud collapse in exoplanetary systems. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Stars and Building Blocks of Their Planets ‘Grow Up’ Together, New Study Suggests

Nov 15, 2022 by News Staff

The timing and locations of formation of planetesimals — the building blocks of planets — are crucial to the understanding of planet formation....

This image of the asteroid Ryugu was captured by the Optical Navigation Camera - Telescopic (ONC-T) on JAXA’s Hayabusa-2 spacecraft on June 26, 2018, from a distance of 13.7 miles (22 km). Image credit: JAXA / University of Tokyo / Kochi University / Rikkyo University / Nagoya University / Chiba Institute of Technology / Meiji University / Aizu University / AIST.

Researchers Find Extraterrestrial Noble Gases in Asteroid Ryugu Sample

Nov 3, 2022 by Sergio Prostak

The sample of material delivered to our planet from the near-Earth asteroid Ryugu contained a mixture of extraterrestrial (helium and neon) and terrestrial...

This image, taken by Mars Express’ High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on April 5, 2022, shows the Terra Sirenum region on Mars. Image credit: ESA / DLR / FU Berlin / CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.

Mars Express Sees Craters and Fractures in Terra Sirenum

Oct 31, 2022 by News Staff

This new image from the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) aboard ESA’s Mars Express orbiter shows a diverse region southeast of the Pickering crater...

Boulder-size blocks of water ice can be seen around the rim of an impact crater in the Amazonis Planitia regionon Mars, as viewed by the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / University of Arizona.

Meteoroid Impact on Mars Excavated Large Chunks of Water Ice, Planetary Scientists Say

Oct 28, 2022 by News Staff

On December 24, 2021, NASA’s InSight lander recorded a magnitude 4 marsquake with a distinct signature rippling across the surface of Mars. In a pair...

Benjamin Cardenas & Michael Lamb show definitive evidence of a roughly 3.5-billion-year-old shoreline with substantial sedimentary accumulation, at least 900 m thick, that covered hundreds of thousands of square kilometers. Image credit: Benjamin Cardenas / Penn State.

New Evidence for Northern Ocean on Early Mars

Oct 28, 2022 by News Staff

A major question in Mars history is whether the planet had an ocean in its northern hemisphere. New research provides evidence for a northern ocean or...

This map shows the size and shape of the ozone hole over the South Pole on October 5, 2022, when it reached its single-day maximum extent for the year. Image credit: Joshua Stevens / NASA’s Earth Observatory.

Antarctic Ozone Hole Continues to Shrink, Researchers Say

Oct 27, 2022 by News Staff

The annual ozone hole over the South Pole reached an average area of 23.2 million km2 (8.9 million square miles) between September 7 and October 13, 2022,...

This image of the Moon was taken by the Lucy LOng Range Reconnaissance Imager (L’LORRI) aboard NASA’s Lucy spacecraft on October 16, 2022, between 7.5 and 8 hours after it flew by the Earth for the first gravity assist. Image credit: NASA / NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / SwRI / JHU-APL / Tod R. Lauer, NOIRLab.

Lucy Captures Stunning New Images of the Moon

Oct 27, 2022 by News Staff

The Lucy LOng Range Reconnaissance Imager (L’LORRI) aboard NASA’s Lucy spacecraft captured new close-ups of the lunar surface on October 16, 2022,...

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

Chances of Finding Ancient Bacteria on Mars are Better than Previously Expected: Study

Oct 27, 2022 by Natali Anderson

Radiation resistance of microbes is a key parameter in considering survivability of microbes over geologic times on the frigid, arid surface of Mars that...

An UAP from a declassified video captured by a U.S. Navy aircraft. Image credit: U.S. Navy.

NASA Kicks Off Study on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena

Oct 25, 2022 by News Staff

Unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs), popularly known as UFOs, are of interest for both national security and air safety and NASA’s independent study...

At the top right of the image, there are arrows indicating the direction of impact by NASA’s DART spacecraft. The direction of impact arrow points in the 10 o’clock direction. The ‘to Sun’ arrow points in the 8 o’clock direction. At the bottom right are compass arrows indicating the orientation of the image on the sky. The north arrow points in the directly straight up. The east arrow points to the left in the 9 o’clock direction. Image credit: NASA / ESA / STScI / Jian-Yang Li, PSI / Joseph DePasquale.

Asteroid Moonlet Dimorphos Develops Two Tails after DART Impact

Oct 23, 2022 by News Staff

A new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows two tails of dust ejected from the 160-m-wide asteroid moonlet Dimorphos, which orbits a larger,...

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft in orbit around Saturn. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Cassini Sheds New Light on Saturn’s Rings

Oct 19, 2022 by News Staff

The Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph instrument onboard NASA’s Cassini spacecraft observed 41 solar occultations by Saturn’s rings. Now, planetary...

An artist’s conception of Haumea, its moons Hi’iaka and Namaka, and its ring system; the moons are much more distant than depicted here. Image credit: Pablo Carlos Budassi.

New Research Sheds More Light on Formation and Evolution of Dwarf Planet Haumea

Oct 18, 2022 by News Staff

The dwarf planet Haumea resides in the Kuiper Belt beyond the orbit of the outermost planet Neptune. An artist’s conception of Haumea, its moons Hi’iaka...