Space Exploration News

This illustration is a speculative representation of the interior of Enceladus with a global ocean between its rocky core and icy crust. The thickness of layers shown here is not to scale. Scientists determined that the slight wobble of the moon as it orbits Saturn is much too large for the moon to be frozen from surface to core. The wobble, technically referred to as a libration, reveals that the crust of Enceladus is disconnected from its rocky interior. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Enceladus Harbors Global Subsurface Ocean

Sep 16, 2015 by News Staff

Planetary researchers with NASA’s Cassini mission have found a large body of water beneath the surface of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. This color view...

This colorful view of Mercury was produced by using images from the color base map imaging campaign during MESSENGER’s primary mission. These colors are not what Mercury would look like to the human eye, but rather the colors enhance the chemical, mineralogical, and physical differences between the rocks that make up the planet’s surface. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Carnegie Institution of Washington.

Planet Mercury Spins Faster Than Expected

Sep 15, 2015 by News Staff

By analyzing data collected by NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft, scientists have found that, on average, Mercury spins on its axis 9 seconds faster than had...

This image of Charon, taken by New Horizons ten hours before its closest approach to Pluto on July 14, 2015 from a distance of 290,000 miles (470,000 km), is a recently downlinked, much higher quality version of a Charon image released on July 15. The smallest visible features are 2.9 miles (4.6 km) in size. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.

New Horizons Beams Back New Images of Charon, Pluto’s Small Moons

Sep 15, 2015 by News Staff

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has sent back new, better images of Pluto’s largest moon, Charon, and the dwarf planet’s smaller satellites Nix and...

This image from NASA’s Galileo spacecraft shows Io. There are rugged mountains several miles high, layered materials forming plateaus, and many irregular depressions called volcanic calderas. Several of the dark, flow-like features correspond to hot spots, and may be active lava flows. There are no landforms resembling impact craters, as the volcanism covers the surface with new deposits much more rapidly than the flux of comets and asteroids can create large impact craters. The picture is centered on the side of Io that always faces away from Jupiter; north is to the top. Image credit: NASA / JPL / University of Arizona.

Jupiter’s Moon Io May Have Subsurface Magma Ocean

Sep 14, 2015 by News Staff

Io is the Solar System’s most volcanically active planetary body. However, concentrations of volcanic activity are displaced from where they are expected...

Channels in Kasei Valles, Mars. Image credit: MarsTrek / NASA.

Study Sheds New Light on Origins of Outflow Channels on Mars

Sep 11, 2015 by News Staff

Catastrophic floods generated 3.2 billion years ago by rapid groundwater outbursts scoured the Solar System’s largest flood channels on Mars. Based on...

This view of Pluto, based on the latest images to be downlinked from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, shows what you would see if you were approximately 1,100 miles (1,800 km) above Pluto’s equatorial area, looking northeast over the dark, cratered, named Cthulhu Regio toward the bright, smooth, expanse of icy plains called Sputnik Planum. The entire expanse of terrain seen in this image is 1,100 miles (1,800 km) across. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.

New Horizons Sends Back New Close-Up Images of Pluto

Sep 11, 2015 by News Staff

NASA’s New Horizons probe has beamed back new detailed images of Pluto’s surface, revealing icy and mountainous regions. This view of Pluto, based...

Mars Express Sees Red Planet’s South Pole

Sep 10, 2015 by News Staff

This new image from ESA’s Mars Express orbiter shows the planet’s south polar ice cap and ancient, cratered highlands. The high-resolution HRSC camera...

NASA Unveils New, Close-Up Image of Ceres’ Bright Spots

Sep 9, 2015 by News Staff

A stunning new image from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft shows a cluster of bright spots on Ceres’ surface in unprecedented detail. NASA’s Dawn spacecraft...

This Sentinel-2A image shows an eye of algal bloom in exquisite detail as well as a ship. The ship’s wake can be seen as a straight dark line where the bloom has been disturbed by the ship’s propellers. The image has a spatial resolution of 33 feet (10 m). Image credit: Copernicus Sentinel data / ESA.

ESA’s Sentinel-2A Satellite Sees Algal Storm in Baltic Sea

Sep 8, 2015 by News Staff

ESA’s Sentinel-2A satellite has captured detailed images of a phytoplankton bloom in the middle of the Baltic Sea on 7 August 2015. This particular bloom...

Comet Hitchhiker is a concept for orbiting and landing on comets and asteroids. The idea involves using a carbon nanotube tether to hitchhike on to a comet as it flies by. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Cornelius Dammrich.

Comet Hitchhiker: New Concept for Orbiting, Landing on Comets and Asteroids

Sep 3, 2015 by News Staff

Researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) have devised a new way to get into orbit and land on Solar System’s small bodies. Comet Hitchhiker...

This image of the dwarf planet Pluto is as New Horizons saw it in July 2015. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.

NASA Releases Animation of New Horizons’ Flight through Pluto System

Sep 3, 2015 by News Staff

This flyby animation was compiled by Dr Stuart Robbins, a member of the New Horizons team and a research scientist at the Southwest Research Institute...

Artist’s impression of New Horizons encountering a Pluto-like object in the distant Kuiper Belt. Image credit: NASA / JHUAPL / SwRI / Alex Parker.

NASA Selects Next Target for New Horizons Spacecraft: 2014 MU69

Aug 31, 2015 by News Staff

The next destination for NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is a Kuiper Belt object known as 2014 MU69. Hubble images of 2014 MU69 taken on June 24, 2014....

This image is a close-up from the image above and shows the Occator crater with a cluster of mysterious bright spots. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA.

Dawn Beams Back New Image of Ceres’ Bright Spots

Aug 31, 2015 by News Staff

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft captured this image of Ceres and its mysterious bright spots on June 25, 2015, from a distance of 2,700 miles (4,400 km). This...

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.

What Would Alien Lifeforms on Titan and Mars-Type Exoplanets Be Like?

Aug 27, 2015 by News Staff

In a new paper published in the journal Life, Prof Dirk Schulze-Makuch of Washington State University and his colleagues from Germany draw upon what is...

Dawn spotted this conical mountain on Ceres from a distance of 915 miles (1,470 km). The image was taken on August 19, 2015. The mountain, located in the southern hemisphere, stands 4 miles (6 km) high. Its perimeter is sharply defined, with almost no accumulated debris at the base of the brightly streaked slope. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA.

NASA’s Dawn Spacecraft Returns New Images of Dwarf Planet Ceres

Aug 25, 2015 by News Staff

New close-up pics of Ceres show the dwarf planet’s features in detail, including tall, conical mountain; narrow, braided fractures and a large crater...

Volcanic eruption on Iceland. Image credit: Peter Hartree / CC BY-SA 2.0.

Mystery of Lunar Fire Fountains: Researchers Claim to Have Answer

Aug 25, 2015 by News Staff

Very small pieces of volcanic glass found on the surface of Moon by Apollo 15 and 17 astronauts are the products of volatile-rich, fire-fountain eruptions....

This composite image shows Saturn’s main rings, the F ring, and its shepherd satellites: the narrow F ring is located just outside of the outer edge of the main rings; slightly above and to the left of the center of the image are the shepherd satellites Prometheus (inner orbit) and Pandora (outer orbit). Image credit: NASA.

Saturn’s F Ring is Natural Outcome of Satellite System Formation, Researchers Say

Aug 23, 2015 by News Staff

Saturn’s F ring and its shepherd satellites, Prometheus and Pandora, are natural outcome of the final stage of formation of Saturn’s satellite system,...

A noticeable feature of the Atlantis basin is the several hundred mesas and small peaks strewn ‘chaotically’ across its roughly 200-km expanse. The uppermost layer of these elevated areas consists of light-colored material. Spectroscopic measurements have shown these consist of phyllosilicates, minerals produced in the presence of water. Image credit: ESA / DLR / FU Berlin / CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.

Fly Over Mars’ Atlantis Basin in New Video

Aug 21, 2015 by News Staff

A virtual flight across the Atlantis basin reveals a broad variety of phenomena, etched into this landscape billions of years ago. The animation is based...

This view from Cassini looks toward Dione, with giant Saturn and its rings in the background, just prior to the mission’s final close approach to the moon on August 17. The view was acquired at distances ranging from approximately 106,000 miles (170,000 km) to 39,000 miles (63,000 km) from the icy moon and at a Sun-Dione-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 35 degrees. At lower right is the large, multi-ringed impact basin Evander, which is about 220 miles (350 km) wide. The canyons of Padua Chasma, features that form part of Dione’s bright, wispy terrain, reach into the darkness at left. Scientists combined nine visible light images to create this mosaic view: eight from Cassini’s narrow-angle camera and one from the wide-angle camera, which fills in an area at lower left. The scene is an orthographic projection centered on terrain at 0.2 degrees north latitude, 179 degrees west longitude on Dione. An orthographic view is most like the view seen by a distant observer looking through a telescope. North on Dione is up. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute.

Stunning Images from Cassini’s Final Close Flyby of Dione

Aug 21, 2015 by News Staff

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft returned new images of Saturn’s moon Dione during its flyby of 17 August 2015. The probe zoomed in as close as 295 miles...