Planetary Science News

Researchers Say the Reason Pluto Lost Its Planet Status is Not Valid

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.
Sep 10, 2018 by News Staff

In 2006, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) established a definition of a planet that required it to clear its orbit, or in other words, be the largest gravitational force in its orbit. Since Neptune’s gravity influences Pluto, and Pluto shares its orbit with frozen gases and objects in the Kuiper Belt, that meant Pluto was out of planet status. However, in a new paper published August 29 in the journal Icarus, Florida Space Institute researcher...

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The Reiner Gamma formation is a well known lunar swirl region, due to its nearside location. Swirls are described by curving, diffuse bright patterns, which are interspersed with darker lanes. These anomalous albedo patterns are associated with local magnetic anomalies of varying intensities; swirl complexes are often extensive and may stretch across thousands of kilometers, well beyond localized magnetic anomalies. Image credit: NASA / LPI.

Lunar Swirls May Be Produced by Strongly Magnetized Lava

Sep 7, 2018 by News Staff

Planetary researchers from Rutgers University and the University of California, Berkeley may have solved the mystery behind lunar swirls, wispy bright...

Huge Northern Polar Vortex Spotted Forming in Saturn’s Stratosphere

Sep 5, 2018 by News Staff

When NASA’s Cassini spacecraft arrived at Saturn in 2004, the gas giant’s southern hemisphere was enjoying summertime, while the northern was in the...

If the Moon has enough water

Researchers Find Direct Evidence of Water Ice in Moon’s Polar Regions

Aug 21, 2018 by News Staff

A team of researchers led by Dr. Shuai Li of the University of Hawaii and Brown University has directly observed definitive evidence of surface-exposed...

Magnetic fields around Jupiter can overpower zonal jets that affect atmospheric circulation. Image credit: JAXA.

Magnetic Fields Impact Atmospheric Circulation of Gaseous Planets, Scientists Find

Aug 15, 2018 by News Staff

A team of researchers from the Australian National University and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has solved the mystery underlying Jupiter’s...

An artist’s rendition of NWA 11119 (far right bottom corner of illustration), the oldest-ever igneous meteorite. Image credit: University of New Mexico.

4.56-Billion-Year-Old Igneous Meteorite Contains Clues to Planetary Building Blocks

Aug 7, 2018 by News Staff

Northwest Africa (NWA) 11119, a stone meteorite found in December 2016 in Mauritania, is the world’s oldest igneous meteorite, according to new research. An...

An artist’s impression of a potentially habitable exoplanet. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Planets Don’t Need Plate Tectonics to Be Habitable

Aug 1, 2018 by News Staff

There may be more habitable exoplanets than we previously thought, according to Pennsylvania State University researchers Bradford Foley and Andrew Smye,...

An artist’s impression of a terraformed Mars. Image credit: Daein Ballard / CC BY-SA 3.0.

Mars Terraforming is Not Possible Using Currently Available Technology, Researchers Say

Jul 31, 2018 by News Staff

On Mars, the atmospheric pressure is around 0.6% of Earth’s. Any liquid water on the surface would very quickly evaporate or freeze. One of the challenges...

Illustration of the early solar disk, with an inset image of a blue crystal of hibonite, one of the first minerals to form in the Solar System. Image credit: Field Museum / University of Chicago / NASA / ESA / E. Field, STScl.

Meteorite Researchers Find Strong Evidence Early Sun Was Highly Active

Jul 31, 2018 by News Staff

By examining microscopic ice-blue crystals of mineral hibonite trapped inside a carbonaceous chondrite meteorite, an international team of scientists was...

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 Huge Reservoir of Liquid Water below Martian Surface

Jul 25, 2018 by News Staff

ESA’s Mars Express orbiter has used radar signals bounced through underground layers of ice to find evidence of liquid water trapped below the south...

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.

NASA Unveils Radiation Maps of Europa

Jul 25, 2018 by News Staff

Jupiter’s moon Europa is one of the most compelling targets in the search for life beyond Earth. However, its water-ice surface is affected by the harsh...

Early Moon. Image credit: NASA.

Moon May Have Had Conditions Suitable for Life, Astrobiologists Say

Jul 24, 2018 by News Staff

There may have been two windows of habitability for the Moon, according to new research by University of London’s Professor Ian Crawford and Dr. Dirk...

On Earth, the Northern and Southern lights occur when the solar wind (electrically charged particles from the Sun) follow our planet’s geomagnetic field lines to the poles and collide with the upper atmosphere. Mars lacks a global magnetic field, so instead the solar wind piles up in front of Mars in a bow shock, which blocks charged particles from reaching the bulk of the atmosphere. However, in a process first observed by NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft, some solar wind protons can slip past the bow shock by first bonding with electrons from the Martian upper atmosphere to form hydrogen atoms. Because these hydrogen atoms are electrically neutral, they can pass through the bow shock and go on to create an ultraviolet proton aurora on the dayside of Mars. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Proton Aurora Discovered on Mars

Jul 24, 2018 by News Staff

NASA’s MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) spacecraft has found a new type of Martian aurora that occurs over much of the day side of the...

Mosaic of the Valles Marineris hemisphere of Mars projected into point perspective, a view similar to that which one would see from a spacecraft. The distance is 1,550 miles (2,500 km) from the surface of the planet. The mosaic is composed of 102 Viking Orbiter images of Mars. The center of the scene shows the entire Valles Marineris canyon system, over 1,240 miles (2,000 km) long and up to 5 miles (8 km) deep, extending form Noctis Labyrinthus, the arcuate system of graben to the west, to the chaotic terrain to the east. Many huge ancient river channels begin from the chaotic terrain from north-central canyons and run north. The three Tharsis volcanoes (dark red spots), each about 15.5 miles (25 km) high, are visible to the west. South of Valles Marineris is very ancient terrain covered by many impact craters. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Mars’ Atmosphere Acts as Single, Interconnected System

Jul 20, 2018 by News Staff

A new study using data from the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionospheric Sounding (MARSIS) instrument on ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft has...

This image from NASA’s Galileo spacecraft shows a volcanic explosion on Io. Image credit: NASA / JPL / University of Arizon.

Juno Spots New Active Volcano on Jupiter Moon’s Io

Jul 16, 2018 by News Staff

Infrared data collected by NASA’s Juno spacecraft point to a new heat source in the southern hemisphere of Io — Jupiter’s third-largest moon...

Perspective view of Pluto’s highest mountains, Tenzing Montes, along the western margins of Sputnik Planitia. Image credit: Paul Schenk, Lunar and Planetary Institute.

Global Mosaic and Topographic Maps of Pluto and Charon Released

Jul 11, 2018 by News Staff

NASA’s New Horizons team has released the first official global mosaic and topographic maps of the dwarf planet Pluto and its largest moon, Charon. Perspective...

Sulaiman et al found a powerful interaction of plasma waves moving from Saturn to its rings and Enceladus. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Sounds of Saturn: Evidence of Communication between Saturn, Its Rings and Enceladus via Plasma Waves

Jul 10, 2018 by News Staff

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft’s high-inclination Grand Finale orbits offered an unprecedented new view of Saturn and its environment. New research from...

Nitrogen is most-commonly bonded with itself in diatomic N2 molecules; a new study confirms that it becomes a metallic fluid when subjected to the extreme pressure and temperature conditions found deep inside the Earth and other planets. Image credit: Alexander Goncharov.

Extreme Pressures and Temperatures Turn Nitrogen Metallic

Jul 10, 2018 by News Staff

New research indicates that nitrogen, one of the most-common elements in the Universe and the dominant gas in the atmosphere of Earth, becomes a metallic...

Jupiter’s aurora. Image credit: JAXA.

Juno Images Show Unusual ‘Footprint’ of Io and Ganymede on Jupiter’s Aurorae

Jul 6, 2018 by News Staff

High-resolution infrared images from the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) on NASA’s Juno spacecraft show that, rather than casting one ‘shadow’...

This artist’s concept shows a young planetary system. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Inner Main-Belt Asteroids Are Remnants of Few Ancient Minor Planets, Study Shows

Jul 4, 2018 by News Staff

According to new research, at least 85% of 200,000 asteroids in the inner asteroid belt — the main source of Earth’s meteorites — originate...

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