Tag Archive for 'Crater'

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.

Pluto and Charon’s Ancient Craters Indicate Deficit of Very Small Kuiper Belt Objects

Mar 1, 2019 by News Staff

Collisions between bodies in our Solar System produce impact craters on large objects at a rate that depends on the population of impacting small bodies....

The bright spots near the center of Occator crater are shown in enhanced color in this view from NASA’s Dawn robotic spacecraft. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA / PSI / LPI.

Ceres’ Crust Kept Cryomagma Liquid for Millions of Years, Researchers Say

Feb 13, 2019 by News Staff

NASA’s Dawn mission recently spotted mysterious bright spots in the center of Occator Crater on the dwarf planet Ceres. According to a new study published...

Just 114 miles from the recently-discovered Hiawatha impact crater under the ice of northwest Greenland, lies a possible second impact crater. The 22.7-mile-wide feature would be the second crater found under an ice sheet, and if confirmed, would be the 22nd-largest crater on Earth. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / Jefferson Beck.

Scientists Find Possible Second Subglacial Impact Crater in Northwest Greenland

Feb 12, 2019 by News Staff

Following the discovery of the 19.2-mile (31 km) wide Hiawatha impact crater beneath the northwest margin of the Greenland Ice Sheet, Dr. Joe MacGregor...

Perspective view of Korolev crater. Image credit: ESA / DLR / FU Berlin / CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.

ESA’s Mars Express Orbiter Spots Water Ice-Filled Crater

Dec 21, 2018 by News Staff

New images from the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft show an impact crater in the northern lowlands of Mars. Known...

InSight flipped open the lens cover on its Instrument Context Camera (ICC) on November 30, 2018, and captured this view of Mars. Located below the deck of the InSight lander, the ICC has a fisheye view, creating a curved horizon. Some clumps of dust are still visible on the camera’s lens. One of the spacecraft’s footpads can be seen in the lower right corner. The seismometer’s tether box is in the upper left corner. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

InSight Landed inside Sand-Filled Crater, NASA Researchers Say

Dec 3, 2018 by News Staff

On November 26, 2018, NASA’s InSight probe touched down on the western side of a flat, smooth expanse of lava called Elysium Planitia. Now the mission...

Jezero Crater, one of the paleolakes examined in the study, is a paleolake and potential landing site for NASA’s Mars 2020 rover mission to look for past life; the outlet canyon carved by overflow flooding is visible in the upper right side of the crater; ancient rivers carved the inlets on the left side of the crater. Image credit: NASA / Tim Goudge.

Massive Floods Created Huge Canyons near Ancient Martian Lakes

Nov 19, 2018 by News Staff

From studying rock formations from satellite images, planetary researchers know that hundreds of craters across the Martian surface were once filled with...

This is a photo illustration of the airplane during the survey, radar waves and the actual radar image. Image credit: NASA.

Geoscientists Find Large Impact Crater in Greenland

Nov 15, 2018 by News Staff

An international team of geoscientists from the United States, Canada and Europe has discovered a large impact crater beneath the Hiawatha Glacier in remote...

This mosaic of images from the MDIS Narrow Angle Camera on NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft shows the impact crater Hokusai, located on Mercury at a latitude of 58°N. The crater has an impressive system of rays, which extend as much as a thousand kilometers (more than 600 miles) across the planet and are the longest that have yet been identified on Mercury. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Carnegie Institution of Washington.

The Great Wave that Brought Water to Mercury

Nov 1, 2018 by James Romero

The impact that formed Mercury’s spectacular 100-km (62-mile) wide Hokusai crater, named after the famous Japanese artist, who created the Great Wave...

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

Dwarf Planet Ceres Continues to Evolve and Change

Mar 16, 2018 by News Staff

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has detected recent changes in Ceres’ surface, revealing that the dwarf planet is a dynamic planetary body that continues to...

Dr. Moriarty and Professor Pieters identified four distinct compositional regions within and around the South Pole-Aitken basin on the Moon. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

New Research Details Mineralogy of Enormous Impact Crater on the Far Side of the Moon

Mar 1, 2018 by News Staff

A team of planetary scientists from Brown University and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center has mapped the mineralogy of the South Pole-Aitken basin,...

Gale Crater is 96 miles (154 km) in diameter and holds a layered mountain rising about 3 miles (5 km) above the crater floor. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / ASU / UA.

Mars’ Turbulent Winds Can Make Mountains in Impact Craters

Jan 15, 2018 by News Staff

In a paper published in the journal Physical Review E, a duo of fluid dynamics experts proposes a solution to one of long-standing Martian mysteries. The...

IODP-ICDP Expedition 364 drilled into the subsurface Chicxulub peak ring at borehole M0077A (red dot), which was about 30 km northwest of Progreso and the north shore of the Yucatán Peninsula. The blue circle represents the approximate diameter of the 180-200-km subsurface impact structure. The gravity signature of the structure and locations of other drilling sites are shown in the inset. The only two sites with continuous core are the ICDP Yaxcopoil-1 (Yax-1) and IODP-ICDP M0077A boreholes. Other boreholes are Yucatán-1 (Y1), Yucatán-2 (Y2), Yucatán-6 (Y6), Chicxulub-1 (C1), Sacapuc-1 (S1), and Ticul-1 (T1). Image credit: Kring et al, doi: 10.1130/GSATG352A.1.

Geologists Return from Expedition to Chicxulub Impact Crater

Oct 25, 2017 by Enrico de Lazaro

The Chicxulub crater is the only well-preserved peak-ring crater on Earth and linked to the Cretaceous-Tertiary mass extinction, an event 65 million years...

Deutsch et al found new evidence of ice sheets in permanently shadowed craters near the north pole of the planet Mercury. Image credit: Brown University.

Scientists Find New Evidence for Surface Water Ice at Mercury’s North Pole

Sep 21, 2017 by News Staff

A new study led by Brown University planetary researchers adds three new large members to the list of water ice-filled craters near Mercury’s north pole...

Oxo Crater is the second-brightest feature on Ceres. Only Occator’s central area is brighter. Oxo lies near the 0 degree meridian that defines the edge of many Ceres maps, making this small feature easy to overlook. NASA’s Dawn spacecraft took this image in its low-altitude mapping orbit, at a distance of 385 km from the surface of Ceres. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA / PSI.

Crater Slope Avalanches Reveal Ceres’ Surface Water Ice

Aug 25, 2017 by James Romero

Surface water ice found within a brilliantly bright crater on the dwarf planet Ceres is being exposed by avalanches reprocessing impact deposits in just...

Dr. Mandt and co-authors discovered two geologically young craters - one (right) 16 million, the other (left) between 75 and 420 million, years old - in the Moon’s darkest regions. Image credit: NASA GSFC / SwRI / ASU.

Researchers Find Two ‘Fresh’ Impact Craters near Moon’s South Pole

May 25, 2016 by News Staff

A team of researchers using data from the Lyman-Alpha Mapping Project (LAMP) instrument on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has detected two geologically...

This image of Haulani Crater was acquired by Dawn from a distance of 915 miles (1,470 km). The bluish material visible here indicates relatively fresh material on the surface. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA / PSI.

Latest Images from NASA’s Dawn Orbiter Show Ceres’ Bright Craters

Apr 20, 2016 by News Staff

New images captured by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft from a distance of 240 miles (385 km) show two prominent craters on the surface of Ceres: Oxo and Haulani. This...

Locations of 1,070 craters mapped on Pluto by the New Horizons team indicate a wide range of surface ages, which likely means the dwarf planet has been geologically active throughout its history. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.

Map of Pluto’s Craters Reveals Dwarf Planet’s Turbulent Past

Nov 10, 2015 by News Staff

According to NASA’s New Horizons team, the surface of the dwarf planet Pluto varies in age. Locations of 1,070 craters mapped on Pluto by the New Horizons...

This composite image is based on observations from New Horizons’ Ralph/LEISA instrument made on July 14, when the spacecraft was 50,000 miles (81,000 km) from Charon. The data were downlinked October 1 - 4 and processed into a map of Charon’s 2.2 micron ammonia-ice absorption band (green color). Panchromatic images from New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager used as the background in this composite were taken on July 14 and downlinked October 5 – 6. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.

NASA Researchers Spot Young Ammonia Crater on Pluto’s Moon Charon

Nov 5, 2015 by News Staff

A fresh crater caught attention of New Horizons team members as they were studying high-resolution infrared image of Pluto’s largest moon. This composite...

Artist’s conception of two meteorites striking Earth. Image credit: Don Dixon / Erik Sturkell / University of Gothenburg.

458-Million-Year-Old Twin Impact Craters Found in Sweden

Sep 11, 2015 by News Staff

A team of scientists from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, has found traces of two meteorite impacts in the Swedish county of Jämtland, a twin strike...

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