Space Exploration News

Mystery of Lunar Fire Fountains: Researchers Claim to Have Answer

Volcanic eruption on Iceland. Image credit: Peter Hartree / CC BY-SA 2.0.
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. A group of researchers, led by Dr Alberto Saal of Brown University, has now identified the gas that drove those eruptions. Hawaiian volcanic eruptions are noted for their jet-like sprays of lava called fire fountains. This image shows a fire fountain above Pu’u O’o vent on the Southeast Rift...

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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...

Moon. Image credit: Gregory H. Revera / CC BY-SA 3.0.

LADEE Confirms Presence of Neon in Lunar Exosphere

Aug 18, 2015 by News Staff

While planetary researchers have speculated on the presence of the noble gas neon in the Moon’s atmosphere (called a surface boundary exosphere) for...

This image from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft shows a part of Dione’s surface that is covered by linear, curving features, called chasmata. The Voyager spacecrafts observed Dione in 1980 showing a complex surface structure, with wispy features on its trailing hemisphere. The nature of these features was unclear until 2004, when the Cassini spacecraft showed that they weren’t surface deposits of frost, as some had suspected, but rather a pattern of bright icy cliffs among myriad fractures. One possibility is that this stress pattern may be related to Dione’s orbital evolution and the effect of tidal stresses over time. This view looks toward the trailing hemisphere of Dione. Cassini obtained the image with its narrow-angle camera on April 11, 2015. The view was acquired at a distance of 68,000 miles (110,000 km) from Dione. North on Dione is up. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute.

NASA’s Cassini Spacecraft to Make Final Close Flyby of Saturn’s Moon Dione

Aug 17, 2015 by News Staff

Cassini’s closest approach, within 295 miles (474 km) of Dione’s surface, will occur today, August 17. This flyby will be the fifth targeted encounter...

Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko Reaches Perihelion

Aug 14, 2015 by News Staff

ESA’s Rosetta orbiter yesterday witnessed 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko making its closest approach to the Sun. The comet and the spacecraft were 186 million...

This mosaic provides the best view ever obtained of the dwarf planet Pluto. The lower right edge of the planet in this view currently lacks high-resolution color coverage. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.

Pluto’s Atmospheric Nitrogen Likely Has Internal Origin, Scientists Say

Aug 12, 2015 by News Staff

Researchers at Southwest Research Institute are studying the data collected by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft to discover what is pumping up the nitrogen...

This image was taken from a distance of 186 km from the center of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko; the jet is estimated to have a minimum speed of 10 m/s and originates from a location on the comet’s neck, in the rugged Anuket region. Image credit: ESA / Rosetta / MPS for OSIRIS Team / MPS / UPD / LAM / IAA / SSO / INTA / UPM / DASP / IDA.

Rosetta Captures Dramatic Outburst from Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko

Aug 11, 2015 by News Staff

A dramatic short-lived outburst from 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko was captured by the OSIRIS narrow-angle camera aboard ESA’s Rosetta orbiter on July 29,...

Scientists Find Evidence for Ancient Lake in Meridiani Planum on Mars

Aug 7, 2015 by News Staff

A team of scientists – led by Dr Brian Hynek from the University of Colorado Boulder – has discovered evidence of an ancient lake that likely...

The mysterious bright spots on Ceres lie in the Occator crater, which is about 60 miles (90 km) across and two miles (4 km) deep. This image comes from the animation, generated using data from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft; vertical relief has been exaggerated by a factor of five; exaggerating the relief helps scientists understand and visualize the topography much more easily, and highlights features that are sometimes subtle. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA / LPI.

NASA Dawn’s Flight over Dwarf Planet Ceres

Aug 7, 2015 by News Staff

Explore the craters, bright spots, mountains and other features of Ceres, a dwarf planet in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The data for this...

The asteroid 31 Euphrosyne glides across a field of background stars in this time-lapse view from NASA’s WISE spacecraft. WISE obtained the images used to create this view over a period of about a day around May 17, 2010, during which it observed the asteroid four times. The moving asteroid appears as a string of orange dots because it is much cooler than the distant background stars. Stars have temperatures in the thousands of degrees, but the asteroid is cooler than room temperature. Thus the stars are represented by shorter wavelength blue colors in this view, while the asteroid is shown in longer wavelength reddish colors. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Researchers Track Down Origins of Some Near-Earth Objects

Aug 6, 2015 by News Staff

A new study using data from NASA’s NEOWISE space telescope has traced some dark Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) back to their likely source – a family...

The far side of the Moon and Earth as seen on July 16, 2015 from a distance of one million miles by NASA’s EPIC camera. Image credit: NASA / NOAA.

DSCOVR Satellite Captures Far Side of Moon Passing over Earth

Aug 6, 2015 by News Staff

The Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) – a four megapixel CCD camera aboard the DSCOVR (Deep Space Climate Observatory) satellite –...

In this simulated image of Saturn’s rings, color is used to present information about ring particle sizes in different regions based on the measured attenuations of three radio signals. Image credit: NASA.

Planetary Rings Have Universal Particle Distribution

Aug 5, 2015 by News Staff

In a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists have discovered that planetary rings, such as those orbiting Saturn,...

Global map of Charon as of July 30, 2015. The map is in simple cylindrical projection, with zero longitude (the Pluto-facing direction) in the center. It includes all available resolved images of the moon’s surface captured between July 7-14, 2015 on the anti-Pluto facing hemisphere. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.

NASA Releases Global Map of Pluto’s Moon Charon

Aug 3, 2015 by News Staff

NASA scientists have created the best-ever global map of Charon, using images taken by New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager in July 2015. Global...

Rosetta NavCam image taken on 14 March 2015 at 85.7 km from the center of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko; it has been cleaned to remove the more obvious bad pixels and cosmic ray artefacts, and intensities have been scaled. Image credit: ESA / Rosetta / NAVCAM / CC BY-SA IGO 3.0.

Philae Lander Finds Organic Compounds on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko

Jul 31, 2015 by News Staff

A special issue of the journal Science highlights seven new studies that delve into the data that has been collected by ESA’s probe Philae on 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. This...

Reddish streaks cut across the surface of Tethys in this image. The streaks are narrow, curved lines on the moon’s surface, only a few miles wide but several hundred miles long. The yellowish tones on the left side of the view are a result of alteration of the moon’s surface by high-energy particles from Saturn’s magnetosphere. This particle radiation slams into the moon’s trailing hemisphere, modifying it chemically and changing its appearance in enhanced-color views like this one. The area of Tethys shown here is centered on 30 degrees north latitude, 187 degrees west longitude, and measures 305 by 258 miles (490 by 415 km) across. The original color images were obtained at a resolution of about 2,300 feet (700 m) per pixel on April 11, 2015. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute.

Cassini Spots Strange Red ‘Arcs’ on Saturn’s Moon Tethys

Jul 30, 2015 by News Staff

This enhanced-color mosaic of Tethys shows a range of features including mysterious arc-shaped streaks. This mosaic of Tethys is an orthographic projection...

NASA Scientists Produce New Topographic Maps of Ceres

Jul 29, 2015 by News Staff

Researchers at NASA have just released colorful new topographic maps of the dwarf planet Ceres, based on data gathered by the agency’s Dawn spacecraft. This...

Global map of Pluto as of July 28, 2015. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.

NASA Releases Updated Global Map of Pluto

Jul 28, 2015 by News Staff

This map-projected view of the dwarf planet Pluto was created from images taken by New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) between July...

Several images taken using green, UV and IR spectral filters were combined to create this color view of Tethys. The moon’s dark side is faintly illuminated by reflected light from Saturn. North on Tethys is up in this view. The impact crater Odysseus is seen at the left. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute.

Cassini Snaps New Image of Saturn’s Moon Tethys

Jul 28, 2015 by News Staff

The 280-mile-wide (450 km) impact crater Odysseus on Tethys stands out brightly from the rest of the illuminated crescent as seen by the NASA/ESA Cassini...

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