Space Exploration News

Voyagers Mark 45 Years in Space

This infographic highlights NASA’s Voyager mission’s major milestones, including visiting the four outer planets and exiting the heliosphere, or the protective bubble of magnetic fields and particles created by the Sun. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.
Aug 20, 2022 by News Staff

NASA’s Voyager 2 probe lifted off on August 20, 1977, quickly followed by its twin, Voyager 1, on September 5. This infographic highlights NASA’s Voyager mission’s major milestones, including visiting the four outer planets and exiting the heliosphere, or the protective bubble of magnetic fields and particles created by the Sun. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech. The twin Voyager probes are NASA’s longest-operating mission and the only spacecraft...

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An artist’s impression of the asteroid Polymele. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Trojan Asteroid Polymele Has Small Moon

Aug 17, 2022 by Enrico de Lazaro

The Jupiter trojan asteroid 15094 Polymele and its small satellite are among the targets of NASA’s Lucy mission, which will approach the asteroid system...

The surface of Europa looms large in this newly-reprocessed color view; image scale is 1.6 km per pixel; north on Europa is at right. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SETI Institute.

Study Sheds More Light on Icy Shells of Europa and Other Ocean Worlds

Aug 15, 2022 by News Staff

The underwater snow is known to form in low temperature environments, e.g., beneath ice shelves, on Earth. New research led by University of Texas at Austin...

Giant Meteorite Impacts Played Key Role in Creation of Earth’s Continents

Aug 10, 2022 by News Staff

Earth is the only planet known to have continents, although how they formed and evolved is unclear. An artist’s concept of meteors impacting the ancient...

Since landing on Mars in August 2012, Curiosity has been exploring Mt. Sharp in Gale Crater. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

NASA’s Curiosity Rover Celebrates Ten Years on Mars

Aug 5, 2022 by News Staff

NASA’s Curiosity rover successfully landed in Gale Crater on Mars on August 5, 2012, to search for evidence that the Red Planet could once have supported...

This illustration models the topography of Ceres from NASA’s Dawn mission, with green and blue colors. Image credit: King et al., doi: 10.1029/2021AV000571.

Hemisphere-Scale Instabilities Explain Many Puzzling Features on Dwarf Planet Ceres

Aug 3, 2022 by News Staff

Ceres is the largest body in the asteroid belt. Because Ceres is small, there was not enough gravitational energy when it formed to heat the interior....

Temperature measurements for the Mare Tranquillitatis pit. Image credit: Horvath et al., doi: 10.1029/2022GL099710.

Lunar Pits Stay Warmer than Surface During Night, Finds New Study

Jul 29, 2022 by News Staff

Lunar pits, and caves to which they may lead, would make thermally stable sites — around a comfortable 17 degrees Celsius (63 degrees Fahrenheit)...

(a) Location of the Buckskin mudstone sample (red star) in Gale Crater, Mars; (b and c) images from the Mars Hand Lens Imager onboard the Curiosity rover of (b) Lamoose, a local float block adjacent to Buckskin within the Murray formation showing laminations, and (c) Buckskin. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / University of Arizona.

Rare Mineral from Martian Crater was Created in Explosive Volcanic Eruption Over 3 Billion Years Ago

Jul 26, 2022 by News Staff

Tridymite is a high-temperature, low-pressure form of quartz that is extremely rare on Earth, and it wasn’t clear how a chunk of it ended up in Gale...

An artist’s rendering of Jupiter with rings that rival Saturn’s. Image credit: Stephen Kane / University of California, Riverside.

Study: Massive Galilean Moons Prevented Formation of Giant Ring System around Jupiter

Jul 21, 2022 by News Staff

Planetary rings are often speculated as being a relatively common attribute of giant planets, partly based on their prevalence within the Solar System....

This image, captured by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) onboard ESA’s Mars Express on April 21, 2022, shows Ius and Tithonium Chasmata, which form part of Mars’ Valles Marineris canyon structure. Image credit: ESA / DLR / FU Berlin.

Mars Express Spots Two Huge Canyons in Valles Marineris

Jul 21, 2022 by News Staff

The new image from the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) aboard ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft shows sections of Ius Chasma and Tithonium Chasma —...

The global map of hydrogen abundances on the Moon after corrections for rare-earth element variations were made to the measured epithermal neutron data, and the count rates were calibrated using the linear relation. Image credit: Lawrence et al., doi: 10.1029/2022JE007197.

Scientists Create Global Map of Hydrogen Abundances across Moon

Jul 21, 2022 by News Staff

The new global map of bulk hydrogen abundances on the Moon’s surface allows planetary researchers to address many previously unexplored areas in the...

An artist’s impression of where an asteroid hit the surface of Mars 5-10 million years ago, ejected NWA 7034 and its transit to the Earth. Image credit: Curtin University.

Planetary Scientists Identify Home Crater of Famous Martian Meteorite

Jul 13, 2022 by Natali Anderson

New research shows that the Martian meteorite Northwest Africa (NWA) 7034, known more commonly as ‘Black Beauty,’ was ejected between 5 and 10 milliom...

An artist’s impression of the Gliese 414 system. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Study: Location and Amount of Land on Planet’s Surface Can Significantly Impact Its Habitability

Jul 12, 2022 by News Staff

University of Toronto astronomer Evelyn Macdonald and her colleagues have identified substantial differences in surface temperature, sea ice and water...

Surface changes around the circumference of TAGSAM: (A) close-up view of the sample collection site just before contact; TAGSAM (round) can be seen at the end of its mechanical arm, and the arrow indicates the 20-cm rock that was first contacted; (B) post-contact image with arrow indicating the lofted debris; (C, D) same image as in (B), with a yellow boundary around the 0.51-m2 area that envelopes surface disturbance (C) and a zoom-in with contrast adjusted to show the lofted debris (solid arrows) and shadows over the lip of the sampler head (dashed arrows) (D). Image credit: Walsh et al., doi: 10.1126/sciadv.abm6229.

Asteroid Bennu’s Surface Regolith is Primarily Loose Rubble, Scientists Say

Jul 8, 2022 by News Staff

According to a new analysis of data from NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx)...

This illustration shows the NASA cryobot concept called Probe using Radioisotopes for Icy Moons Exploration (PRIME) deploying tiny SWIM robots into the ocean miles below a lander on the frozen surface of an ocean world. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Swarm of Cellphone-Size Robots Could Look for Alien Life on Europa or Enceladus

Jul 7, 2022 by News Staff

Someday, dozens of tiny swimming robots could whisk through the water beneath the icy shell of Jupiter’s moon Europa or Saturn’s moon Enceladus, looking...

2020 CD3 is estimated to be only between one and six meters across. Image credit: Jonny Lindner.

Huge All-Season Ozone Hole Discovered over Tropics

Jul 5, 2022 by News Staff

University of Waterloo’s Professor Qing-Bin Lu has discovered a large, all-season ozone hole in the lower stratosphere over the tropics (30 deg N –...

Gabel et al. examined bone strength, density, and microarchitecture in seventeen astronauts using high-resolution peripheral quantitative computed tomography. Image credit: NASA.

Microgravity Induces Irreversible Damage to Bone Strength and Density, Says New Study

Jul 4, 2022 by News Staff

Scientists from the University of Calgary and elsewhere have followed 17 International Space Station astronauts before and after spaceflight over the last...

An artist’s impression of ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft. Image credit: ESA / ATG Medialab / DLR / FU Berlin / CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.

Mars Express Orbiter’s Instrument Gets Major Software Upgrade

Jun 29, 2022 by News Staff

The Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionospheric Sounding (MARSIS) instrument onboard ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft is receiving a major software...

SEM image of the carbon crystals in the Chelyabinsk meteoritic dust. Image credit: Taskaev et al., doi: 10.1140/epjp/s13360-022-02768-7.

Scientists Find Exotic Carbon Microcrystals in Chelyabinsk Meteoritic Dust

Jun 28, 2022 by Natali Anderson

When a space body enters Earth’s atmosphere, its surface is exposed to high pressure and temperatures. The airflow tears off small droplets from the...

BepiColombo captured this view of Mercury on June 23, 2023 as the spacecraft flew past the planet for its second of six gravity assist maneuvers at Mercury. This image was taken at 09:51:07 UTC by the Mercury Transfer Module’s Monitoring Camera 3, when the spacecraft was 1,406 km from the surface of Mercury. Closest approach of 200 km took place shortly before, at 09:44 UTC. In this view, north is up. While clearly a heavily cratered region, this image also highlights some of Mercury’s volcanic history. Mercury’s smooth plains were formed by volcanic eruptions of runny lavas that spread across the planet 3.7 billion years ago -- such as the plains visible between BepiColombo’s high-gain antenna and towards Mercury’s limb. The eruptions that formed these plains did not commonly build volcanoes that we are familiar with on Earth. The floor of the 125-km-wide Heaney crater (next to BepiColombo’s high-gain antenna in the centre of this image) is covered in smooth volcanic plains, and a small mound is illuminated. This is a rare example of a candidate volcano on Mercury, which will be an important target for BepiColombo’s high resolution imaging suite once in orbit. North of Heaney, past the high-gain antenna, is the 105-km-wide Amaral crater with a clearly defined rim and a central peak cluster. The region surrounding Amaral is pockmarked with so-called secondary craters caused by material ejected from Amaral during its formation re-impacting onto the surface nearby. This texture is common around fresh craters on Mercury. Image credit: ESA / BepiColombo / MTM.

BepiColombo Makes Its Second Gravity Assist Flyby of Mercury

Jun 24, 2022 by News Staff

BepiColombo, a joint endeavor between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), captured beautiful views of the...

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