Planetary Science News

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 Finds Three New Water Bodies below Martian South Pole

Sep 28, 2020 by Natali Anderson

Using new radar data from ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft, researchers have detected three reservoirs of liquid water trapped below the south polar cap...

View of the Chang’E 4 lander with the location of the LND sensor head indicated by the red arrow. LND is mounted in the Chang’E 4 payload compartment; the lid at the tip of the red arrow is closed at night to protect LND from the cold lunar night. Image credit: Chinese National Space Agency / National Astronomical Observatories of China.

Scientists Measure Radiation Dose Rates on Lunar Surface

Sep 28, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

Using the Lunar Lander Neutrons and Dosimetry (LND) experiment aboard China’s Chang’E 4 lander, a team of researchers from Germany and China has measured...

A simulated view from above Tellus Tessera, one of the regions on Venus where Byrne et al identified the presence of layering. Image credit: NASA.

Venusian Tesserae Feature Layered, Folded and Eroded Rocks

Sep 24, 2020 by News Staff

A significant portion of some of the oldest terrain on Venus, known as tesserae, has striations consistent with layering, according to new research led...

The bright boulders (circled in the images) on the surface of near-Earth asteroid Bennu are pyroxene-rich material from Vesta; some bright material appear to be individual rocks (left) while others appear to be clasts within larger boulders (right). Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / University of Arizona.

OSIRIS-REx Finds Fragments of Minor Planet Vesta on Near-Earth Asteroid Bennu

Sep 22, 2020 by News Staff

In 2019, scientists from the OSIRIS-REx team discovered several unusually bright boulders on the surface of near-Earth asteroid Bennu in images acquired...

In these detailed infrared images of Enceladus, reddish areas indicate fresh ice that has been deposited on the surface. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / University of Arizona / LPG / CNRS / University of Nantes / Space Science Instituto.

Cassini Finds Fresh Ice in Northern Hemisphere of Enceladus

Sep 21, 2020 by News Staff

Spectral data gathered by the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) onboard NASA’s Cassini spacecraft provide strong evidence that the northern...

Carbide Planets May Be Made Of Silica and Diamonds

Sep 11, 2020 by News Staff

Extrasolar planets hosted by stars with sufficiently high carbon-to-oxygen ratios could be made of diamonds and silica, according to new research by Arizona...

Hay et al for the first time investigate moon-moon tides in Jupiter’s Galilean moons and show that they can cause significant heating through the excitation of high-frequency resonant tidal waves in their subsurface oceans. Image credit: Galileo Project / Voyager Project / NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Galilean Moons of Jupiter Could Be Warming Each Other

Sep 11, 2020 by News Staff

In a process called tidal heating, gravitational push and pull from Jupiter’s Galilean moons — Europa, Ganymede, Io and Callisto — and the...

Philae at work on the comet. Image credit: ESA / AOES Medialab.

Study: Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko’s Interior is Less Dense than Its Surface

Sep 7, 2020 by News Staff

A new analysis of data gathered by the CONSERT (Comet Nucleus Sounding Experiment by Radio wave Transmission) instrument, a radar onboard ESA’s Rosetta...

Map of hematite (redder color) on the Moon. Image credit: Li et al, doi: 10.1126/sciadv.aba1940.

Mineral Hematite Detected at High Latitudes on Moon

Sep 2, 2020 by News Staff

A ferric mineral called hematite (Fe2O3) is present at high latitudes on the Moon, mostly associated with east- and equator-facing sides of topographic...

This SEM image shows a polished thin section of Asuka 12236. The section is about 1 cm (a third of an inch) across. Most of the bright grains in the image are iron-nickel-metal and/or iron-sulfide. The gray is mostly silicate, with the darker gray areas more magnesium-rich, while the lighter gray areas are more iron-rich. The roundish objects, and some fragments of them, that tend to contain most of the small, bright metal grains are called chondrules, which formed as molten droplets. They are set in a very fine-grained matrix, which is where the organic compounds and presolar grains are found. Image credit: Carnegie Institution for Science / Conel M. O’D. Alexander.

Researchers Find Extraterrestrial Amino Acids in Antarctic Meteorite

Aug 31, 2020 by News Staff

A team of astrobiologists from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and the Carnegie Institution for Science has found a wide diversity of amino acids...

A piece of the enstatite chondrite meteorite Sahara 97096. Image credit: Christine Fieni / Laurette Piani / French National Museum of Natural History.

Earth’s Water Came from Enstatite Chondrite-Like Asteroids, Study Suggests

Aug 28, 2020 by News Staff

A type of meteorite called an enstatite chondrite has similar isotopic composition to terrestrial rocks and thus may be representative of the material...

Open and closed lakes on early Mars. Image credit: University of Texas at Austin.

Heavy Rains Filled Lakes and Rivers on Early Mars, New Research Suggests

Aug 21, 2020 by News Staff

Planetary researchers from the University of Texas at Austin and NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center have used dry paleolakes and riverbeds to determine...

This false-color image shows the dwarf planet Ceres. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA.

Dwarf Planet Ceres is Water-Rich World, New Research Suggests

Aug 10, 2020 by News Staff

High-resolution observations from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft of mysterious bright spots (faculae) in Occator crater on the dwarf planet Ceres suggest the...

This image shows the ultraviolet nightglow in the Martian atmosphere. Green and white false colors represent the intensity of ultraviolet light, with white being the brightest. The nightglow was measured at about 70 km altitude by the Imaging UltraViolet Spectrograph instrument on NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft. A simulated view of the Mars globe is added digitally for context. The image shows an intense brightening in Mars’ nightside atmosphere. The brightenings occur regularly after sunset on Martian evenings during fall and winter seasons, and fade by midnight. The brightening is caused by increased downwards winds which enhance the chemical reaction creating nitric oxide which causes the glow. Image credit: NASA / MAVEN / NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / CU / LASP.

Vast Areas of Mars’ Night Sky Pulse in Ultraviolet

Aug 7, 2020 by News Staff

Using new data from the Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph (IUVS) on NASA’s MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) spacecraft, scientists have...

This image captured by NASA’s Juno orbiter shows a multitude of magnificent, swirling clouds in Jupiter’s North North Temperate Belt. The image was taken at 4:58 p.m. EDT on October 29, 2018 (1:58 p.m. PDT) as the spacecraft performed its 16th close flyby of Jupiter. At the time, Juno was about 4,400 miles (7,000 km) from the planet’s cloud tops, at a latitude of approximately 40 degrees north. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Gerald Eichstaedt / Sean Doran.

Jupiter’s Violent Storms May Form Ammonia-Water Hailstones

Aug 7, 2020 by News Staff

A new study suggests that during Jupiter’s violent storms, hailstones form from a cooled mixture of water and ammonia gas, similar to the process in...

This illustration uses data obtained by NASA’s Juno mission to depict high-altitude electrical storms on Jupiter. Juno’s Stellar Reference Unit camera detected unusual lightning flashes on Jupiter’s dark side during the spacecraft’s close flybys of the planet. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Gerald Eichstädt.

Juno Discovers ‘Shallow Lightning’ on Jupiter

Aug 6, 2020 by News Staff

An unexpected form of electrical discharge, ‘shallow lightning’ originates from Jovian clouds containing an ammonia-water solution, according to a...

New model suggests the shape of the Sun’s bubble of influence, the heliosphere (seen in yellow), may be a deflated croissant shape, rather than the long-tailed comet shape suggested by other research. Image credit: Opher et al, doi: 10.1038/s41550-020-1036-0.

Solar System’s Heliosphere May Be Smaller and Rounder than Previously Thought

Aug 6, 2020 by News Staff

The heliosphere is a giant magnetic bubble that contains our Solar System, the solar wind and the solar magnetic field. Outside the heliosphere is the...

Curiosity rover took this selfie on October 11, 2019. The rover drilled twice in this location, nicknamed Glen Etive. Just left of the rover are the two drill holes, called Glen Etive 1 (right) and Glen Etive 2 (left). Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS.

NASA’s Curiosity Rover Marks Eight Years of Mars Exploration

Aug 5, 2020 by News Staff

NASA’s Curiosity rover has seen a lot since August 5, 2012, when it first set its wheels inside the huge basin of Gale Crater. Curiosity rover took this...

A view of Mars showing the planet’s northern polar ice cap. Image credit: ISRO / ISSDC / Emily Lakdawalla.

Ice Sheets Covered Southern Highlands of Early Mars

Aug 3, 2020 by News Staff

The southern highlands of Mars are dissected by hundreds of ancient valley networks (3.9-3.5 billion years old), which are evidence that water once sculpted...