Space Exploration News

Researchers Find Methane Ice Dunes on Pluto

This Pluto mosaic was made from New Horizons LORRI images taken on July 14, 2015, from a distance of 49,700 miles (80,000 km). This view is projected from a point 1,118 miles (1,800 km) above Pluto’s equator, looking northeast over the dark, cratered Cthulhu Regio toward the bright, smooth expanse of icy plains called Sputnik Planum. Pluto’s North Pole is off the image to the left. This mosaic was produced with panchromatic images from the New Horizons LORRI camera, with color overlaid from the Ralph color mapper onboard New Horizons. Image credit: S.A. Stern et al.
Jun 1, 2018 by News Staff

Wind-blown dunes are known on Earth, Mars, Venus, Saturn’s moon Titan, and Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko — and, now on Pluto, according to a team of planetary researchers led by a University of Plymouth scientist. This Pluto mosaic was made from New Horizons LORRI images taken on July 14, 2015, from a distance of 49,700 miles (80,000 km). This view is projected from a point 1,118 miles (1,800 km) above Pluto’s equator, looking northeast...

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This artist’s concept depicts the dry environment seen at Mars today versus the early Martian environment. Image credit: Simon Fraser University.

Iron-Rich Rocks are Best Place to Seek Fossil Evidence of Martian Life, Scientists Say

May 29, 2018 by News Staff

Iron-rich rocks near ancient lake sites on Mars are the most promising and best understood astropaleontological targets, according to new research led...

This high-resolution image of Pluto was taken by New Horizons on July 14. Pluto’s surface sports a remarkable range of subtle colors, enhanced in this view to a rainbow of pale blues, yellows, oranges, and deep reds. Many landforms have their own distinct colors, telling a complex geological and climatological story that scientists have only just begun to decode. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.

Is Pluto ‘an Agglomeration of a Billion Comets’?

May 28, 2018 by News Staff

Planetary researchers working with data from NASA’s New Horizons and ESA’s Rosetta missions have developed a new theory for the formation of the dwarf...

NASA’s InSight spacecraft is on its way to Mars. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

NASA’s InSight Spacecraft Makes Its First Course Correction toward Mars

May 25, 2018 by News Staff

NASA’s Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) spacecraft is currently cruising to Mars. On May 22, 2018,...

Novel drugs could one day protect astronauts on deep-space missions from dangerous cosmic radiation. Image credit: Jonny Lindner.

New Drug Prevents Memory Impairment in Mice Exposed to Simulated Deep Space Radiation

May 23, 2018 by News Staff

A team of neuroscientists from the University of California, San Francisco, and Loma Linda University has identified the first potential treatment for...

This image from NASA’s MarCO-B (known as ‘Wall-E’ to the MarCO team) CubeSat shows the spacecraft’s unfolded high-gain antenna at right and the Earth and the Moon in the center. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

NASA’s MarCO-B CubeSat Captures Earth-Moon Image

May 16, 2018 by News Staff

NASA’s MarCO-B spacecraft — one of two CubeSats accompanying the space agency’s Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and...

Artist’s illustration of Jupiter and Europa with NASA’s Galileo spacecraft after its pass through a plume erupting from Europa’s surface. A new computer simulation gives us an idea of how the magnetic field interacted with a plume. The magnetic field lines (depicted in blue) show how the plume interacts with the ambient flow of Jovian plasma. The red colors on the lines show more dense areas of plasma. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / University of Michigan.

Archival Data from NASA’s Galileo Mission Yield New Evidence of Water Plumes on Europa

May 15, 2018 by News Staff

A new analysis of data collected by NASA’s Galileo spacecraft in 1997 has found strong evidence that the underground ocean of Jupiter’s moon Europa...

NASA’s Mars Helicopter. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

NASA to Send Autonomous Helicopter to Mars

May 14, 2018 by News Staff

The Mars Helicopter, a technology demonstration that will travel to the Red Planet with NASA’s Mars 2020 rover, will attempt controlled flight in the...

Our planet is surrounded by the magnetosphere, shown here in blue. As charged particles from the Sun flow around the Earth’s magnetosphere, it forms the magnetosheath, shown in yellow. Image credit: Mary Pat Hrybyk-Keith / NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

NASA’s MMS Mission Discovers New Magnetic Process in Earth’s Magnetosheath Region

May 10, 2018 by News Staff

Earth is surrounded by a protective magnetic environment, the magnetosphere, which deflects a supersonic stream of charged particles from the Sun, known...

Gravity of Venus and Jupiter Elongates Earth’s Orbit Every 405,000 Years

May 8, 2018 by News Staff

A research team led by Rutgers University’s Professor Dennis Kent has documented a gradual shift in Earth’s orbit that repeats regularly every 405,000...

The United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket lifts off with NASA’s InSight spacecraft, seen through a thick fog blanketing Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Image credit: NASA.

NASA’s InSight Mission Launches to Study Mars’ Interior

May 5, 2018 by News Staff

NASA’s Mars InSight mission successfully launched today at 7:05 a.m. EDT (4:05 a.m. PDT) from Space Launch Complex 3 at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California,...

Ganymede, larger than even Mercury and Pluto, has an icy surface speckled with bright young craters overlying a mixture of older, darker, more cratered terrain laced with grooves and ridges; the large circular feature on the upper right, called Galileo Regio, is an ancient region of unknown origin; Ganymede is thought to have an ocean layer that contains more water than Earth and might contain life; like Earth’s Moon, Ganymede keeps the same face towards its central planet, in this case Jupiter; this image was taken about 20 years ago by NASA’s Galileo probe, which ended its mission by diving into Jupiter’s atmosphere in 2003; currently, NASA’s Juno spacecraft orbits Jupiter and is studying the giant planet’s internal structure, among many other attributes. Image credit: NASA / JPL / Galileo probe.

NASA Reveals New Results from Galileo’s Historic Flyby of Jupiter’s Moon Ganymede

May 1, 2018 by News Staff

On June 27, 1996, NASA’s Galileo spacecraft made humanity’s first flyby of Ganymede, Jupiter’s largest moon, discovering that it is the only moon...

TGO’s CaSSIS camera captured this view of the rim of Korolev crater on April 15, 2018. The image is a composite of three images in different colors that were taken almost simultaneously. Image credit: ESA / Roscosmos / CaSSIS.

ESA’s ExoMars Orbiter Sends First Images from Its New Orbit around Mars

Apr 27, 2018 by News Staff

ESA’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) has sent back its first, color images of Mars from its new, near-circular orbit. ESA’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter...

This image of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot and surrounding turbulent zones was captured by NASA’s Juno spacecraft. The color-enhanced image is a combination of three separate images taken on April 1 between 6:09 a.m. EDT (3:09 a.m. PDT) and 6:24 a.m. EDT (3:24 a.m. PDT). At the time the images were taken, the spacecraft was 15,379 miles (24,749 km) to 30,633 miles (49,299 km) from the tops of the clouds of the planet at a southern latitude spanning 43.2 to 62.1 degrees. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Gerald Eichstaedt / Sean Doran.

Juno Sends Back Breathtaking New Images of Jupiter

Apr 25, 2018 by Enrico de Lazaro

NASA’s Juno mission took its twelfth trip around Jupiter on April 1, 2018, and the orbiter has sent back extraordinary images of the gas giant. This...

Mars is kept company by two cratered moons -- an inner moon named Phobos and an outer moon named Deimos. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Malin Space Science Systems / Texas A&M University.

Violent Collision May Have Created Martian Moons Phobos and Deimos

Apr 24, 2018 by News Staff

A colossal impact between proto-Mars and a Vesta-to-Ceres-sized object likely produced the two Martian moons, Phobos and Deimos, according to new research. Mars...

The Almahata Sitta meteorite. Image credit: Peter Jenniskens.

Diamond-Bearing ‘Almahata Sitta’ Meteorites Came from Long-Lost Protoplanet

Apr 19, 2018 by News Staff

The Almahata Sitta meteorites — diamond-bearing space rock fragments that rained down on the Nubian Desert in Sudan in 2008 — are remnants...

This composite image, derived from data collected by the JIRAM instrument aboard NASA’s Juno orbiter, shows the central cyclone at Jupiter’s north pole and the eight cyclones that encircle it. JIRAM collects data in infrared, and the colors in this composite represent radiant heat: the yellow (thinner) clouds are about 9 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 13 degrees Celsius) in brightness temperature and the dark red (thickest) are around minus 181 degrees Fahrenheit (83 degrees Celsius). Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / ASI / INAF / JIRAM.

New Flyover Video Takes You on Tour of Jupiter’s North Pole

Apr 12, 2018 by Enrico de Lazaro

Researchers on NASA’s Juno mission shared a 3D infrared movie depicting densely packed cyclones and anticyclones that permeate the north polar region...

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

Venus’ Atmosphere Could Host Acid-Resistant Microorganisms

Apr 2, 2018 by News Staff

In the search for alien life, astrobiologists have turned over all sorts of rocks. For example, Mars has geological features that suggest it once had subsurface...

Greenwood et al discovered that water was present on Earth at an early stage in its evolution and survived the giant impact, which formed the Moon. This is an artist’s depiction of a catastrophic collision between two celestial bodies; such an impact between the proto-Earth and Theia likely formed the Moon. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Earth’s Water was Present before Moon-Forming Impact, Research Shows

Mar 30, 2018 by News Staff

The high-energy impact about 100 million years after our Solar System formed, resulted in the two colliding planetary objects completely merging to create...

The early ocean known as Arabia (left, blue) would have looked like this when it formed 4 billion years ago on Mars, while the Deuteronilus ocean, about 3.6 billion years old, had a smaller shoreline; both coexisted with the massive volcanic province Tharsis, located on the unseen side of the planet, which may have helped support the existence of liquid water; the water is now gone, perhaps frozen underground and partially lost to space, while the ancient seabed is known as the northern plains. Image credit: Robert Citron, University of California, Berkeley.

Martian Oceans Formed Earlier than Thought, Geophysicists Say

Mar 20, 2018 by News Staff

A team of geophysicists at the University of California, Berkeley, proposes that Martian oceans originated several hundred million years earlier than thought,...

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