Tag Archive for 'Solar System'

Mastcam mosaic from the Sol 1686 rover location looking behind the rover (downslope) at the transition point between the Sutton Island and Blunts Point Murray members. Images from Sols 1685-1689 display sedimentary textures of dark-toned manganese-rich sandstones and nearby rocks. Dashed line boxes in the large mosaic are shown as insets along the bottom of figure. Small red outlines show the approximate locations and extent of ChemCam observations. Throughout this transition area, dark-toned sandstones (presumably manganese-rich based on ChemCam observations at three locations) overlie light-toned materials. Insets from left to right: (a) Denning Brook, a manganese-rich fine-grained dark-toned sandstone ChemCam observation; (b) and (c) two light-toned blocks with cross-stratified textures, highlighted with yellow lines, 6 m away from Denning Brook and to the upper left in the large mosaic; (d) dark-toned materials (center of mosaic); and (E1) Newport Ledge, (E2) AEGIS post 1685a, (E3) Sugarloaf Mountain, three thin planar laminated dark-toned sandstones. Image credit: NASA / Caltech-JPL / MSSS.

Manganese-Rich Sandstones Point to Earth-Like Environment on Ancient Mars

May 2, 2024 by News Staff

In May 2017, NASA’s Curiosity rover observed higher than usual amounts of manganese in the lakebed rocks within Gale crater, Mars. These sedimentary...

Earth’s magnetic field lines. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Earliest Evidence of Earth’s Magnetic Field Found in Greenland

Apr 25, 2024 by News Staff

Recovering ancient records of Earth’s magnetic field is challenging because the magnetization in rocks is often reset by heating during tectonic burial...

This image of the Martian Inca City was captured by the High Resolution Stereo Camera onboard ESA’s Mars Express orbiter on February 27, 2024. Image credit: ESA / DLR / FU Berlin.

Mars Express Spots ‘Spiders’ at Outskirts of Martian ‘Inca City’

Apr 24, 2024 by News Staff

ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft have spotted the telltale traces of ‘spiders’ scattered across the southern polar region of Mars. This image of the...

This global view of Io was obtained in January 1999 by NASA’s Galileo spacecraft. Image credit: NASA / JPL / University of Arizona.

Study: Jupiter’s Moon Io Has Been Volcanically Active for All of Its History

Apr 24, 2024 by News Staff

Sulfur and chlorine isotopes in Io’s atmosphere indicate that it has been volcanically active for the entire 4.57 billion-year history of the Solar System. This...

Kane & Byrne describe Venus as an anchor point from which planetary scientists can better understand the conditions that preclude life on exoplanets. Image credit: Kane & Byrne, doi: 10.1038/s41550-024-02228-5.

Uninhabitable Venus Offers Lessons about Potential for Extraterrestrial Life

Apr 23, 2024 by News Staff

Fully understanding how a rocky planet becomes habitable and remains so is a fundamental challenge for planetary scientists and astrobiologists, given...

The JunoCam instrument aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft imaged Io, the most geologically active body in our Solar System, on February 3, 2024, from a distance of about 7,904 km (4,911 miles). Image credit: NASA / SwRI / MSSS.

NASA’s Juno Mission Provides Close-Ups of Intriguing Features on Io

Apr 19, 2024 by News Staff

In December 2023 and February 2024, NASA’s Juno spacecraft made extremely close flybys of Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io, getting within about 1,500 km...

This Hubble image of the barred spiral galaxy UGC 12158 looks like someone took a white marking pen to it. In reality it is a combination of time exposures of a foreground asteroid moving through Hubble’s field-of-view, photobombing the observation of the galaxy. Several exposures of the galaxy were taken, what is evidence in the dashed pattern. The asteroid appears as a curved trail due to parallax: because Hubble is not stationary, but orbiting Earth, and this gives the illusion that the faint asteroid is swimming along a curved trajectory. The uncharted asteroid is in inside the asteroid belt in our Solar System, and hence is 10 trillion times closer to Hubble than the background galaxy. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / Pablo García Martín, UAM / Joseph DePasquale, STScI / Alex Filippenko, UC Berkeley.

Astronomers Discover 454 New Asteroids in Main Belt

Apr 19, 2024 by News Staff

A set of 632 main-belt asteroids (178 previously known and 454 unknown objects) has been identified in the archival images from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space...

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.

Planetary Researchers Solve Mystery of How Pluto Got Its Pear-Shaped Feature

Apr 16, 2024 by Enrico de Lazaro

Pluto’s surface is dominated by the huge, pear-shaped basin Sputnik Planitia. It appears to be of impact origin, but modeling has not yet explained its...

Schematic view of planetary material escaping through Venus magnetosheath flank; the red line and arrow show the region and direction of observations by BepiColombo when the escaping ions (C+, O+, H+) were observed. Image credit: Thibaut Roger / Europlanet 2024 RI / Hadid et al.

BepiColombo Detects Oxygen and Carbon Ions in Magnetosphere of Venus

Apr 15, 2024 by Natali Anderson

In August 2021, the ESA/JAXA Mercury-bound BepiColombo spacecraft performed its second flyby of Venus and provided a short-lived observation of its induced...

This composite image of Ultima Thule was compiled from data obtained by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft as it flew by the object on January 1, 2019. The image combines enhanced color data (close to what the human eye would see) with detailed high-resolution panchromatic pictures. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute / Roman Tkachenko.

Arrokoth and Other Kuiper Belt Objects Contain Pristine Ices, Study Suggests

Apr 2, 2024 by News Staff

A duo of planetary scientists from Brown University and the SETI Institute has found that the Kuiper Belt object (486958) Arrokoth, which was the target...

SOHO-5000, the 5,000th comet discovered with SOHO spacecraft, is noted by a small white box in the upper left portion of this image. A zoomed-in inset shows the comet as a faint dot between the white vertical lines. The image was taken on March 25, 2024, by SOHO’s Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO). Image credit: NASA / ESA / SOHO.

SOHO Observatory Discovers Its 5,000th Comet

Mar 29, 2024 by News Staff

On March 25, 2024, Hanjie Tan, an astronomy Ph.D. student in Prague, Czech Republic, spotted a comet in an image from the ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric...

Fawdon et al. created the most detailed geologic map of Oxia Planum, the landing site for ESA’s Rosalind Franklin rover on Mars. Image credit: Fawdon et al., doi: 10.1080/17445647.2024.2302361.

Scientists Create High-Resolution Geological Map of Oxia Planum

Mar 27, 2024 by News Staff

Using data from ESA’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter and NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, planetary scientists have created the 1:30000 scale geological...

This composite image, taken by JAXA’s Akatsuki spacecraft, shows Venus. Image credit: JAXA / ISAS / DARTS / Damia Bouic.

Clouds of Venus Could Be Hospitable for Some Forms of Life, New Research Suggests

Mar 20, 2024 by News Staff

Planetary scientists have long speculated about the potential habitability of Venus, not at its hot surface, but in the cloud layers located at 48-60 km...

This view of Titan is among the last images NASA’s Cassini spacecraft sent to Earth before it plunged into the giant planet’s atmosphere. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute.

Tricarbon Molecule Detected in Atmosphere of Titan

Mar 18, 2024 by Natali Anderson

The tricarbon molecule (C3) is likely produced in the upper atmosphere of Titan by the reaction of abundant acetylene with atomic carbon. This view of...

Minor planets with activity discoveries resulting from the Active Asteroids project: (a-f) active asteroids and main-belt comet candidates; (g) an active Centaur; (h-l) active active quasi-Hilda asteroids; (m-t) Jupiter-family comets. Image credit: Chandler et al., 10.3847/1538-3881/ad1de2.

Citizen Science Project Discovers 15 New Active Asteroids

Mar 18, 2024 by Enrico de Lazaro

Active asteroids behave dynamically like asteroids but display comet-like comae. These objects are poorly understood, with fewer than 60 identified to...

Jupiter is revisited by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope in these images, taken on January 5-6, 2024, capturing both sides of the giant planet. Image credit: NASA / ESA / STScI / Amy Simon, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Hubble Space Telescope Captures Beautiful New Images of Jupiter

Mar 14, 2024 by News Staff

The many large storms and small white clouds seen in the new Hubble images, taken on January 5 and 6, 2024, are evidence for a lot of activity going on...

Noctis Mons. Image credit: NASA / USGS / Lee et al.

Planetary Scientists Discover Giant Shield Volcano on Mars

Mar 13, 2024 by News Staff

Provisionally designated Noctis Mons, the newly-discovered volcano is located just south of Mars’ equator, in Eastern Noctis Labyrinthus, west of Valles...

This image from Mars Express’ High Resolution Stereo Camera shows the globe of Mars set against a dark background. The disk of the planet features yellow, orange, blue and green patches, all with an overall muted grey hue, representing the varying composition of the surface. Image credit: ESA / DLR / FU Berlin / G. Michael / CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.

Mars Drives Deep-Ocean Circulation in Earth’s Oceans, Study Suggests

Mar 13, 2024 by News Staff

Geoscientists from Australia and France have used the geological record of Earth’s deep oceans to discover a connection between the orbits of our home...

This side of a commemorative plate mounted on NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft features U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón’s handwritten In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

NASA Scientists Unveil Design for Europa Clipper’s ‘Golden Record’

Mar 12, 2024 by News Staff

NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft will carry a triangular metal plate with a special message when it launches in October 2024 and heads toward Jupiter’s...

This illustration shows charged particles from Jupiter impacting Europa’s surface, splitting frozen water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen molecules; scientists believe some of these newly created oxygen gases could migrate toward the moon’s subsurface ocean, as depicted in the inset image. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SWRI / PU.

Europa Produces Less Oxygen than Previously Thought

Mar 4, 2024 by News Staff

Using data from the Jovian Auroral Distributions Experiment (JADE) instrument onboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft, planetary scientists have calculated the...

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