Tag Archive for 'Solar System'

Mimas’ surface, like the surfaces of most of the other major Saturnian moons without atmospheres, is not pure ice but contains some dark impurities; the relatively dark markings appear along the lower portion of the walls of the 130-km-wide Herschel Crater (the peak in the middle of the crater is about as tall as Mount Everest; the impact that made it likely almost destroyed the moon) and some of the smaller craters; scientists interpret this darkening as evidence for the gradual concentration of impurities from evaporating icy materials in areas where the dark impurities slide slowly down the crater wall. Image credit: NASA / JPL / Space Science Institute.

Saturn’s Moon Mimas Hosts Global Ocean, New Study Suggests

Jan 20, 2022 by News Staff

Mimas, the smallest and innermost of Saturn’s eight main moons, may be warm enough to harbor a global, liquid water ocean beneath a 24-31-km (15-19-mile)...

A selfie taken by NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity on Sol 2291 (January 15, 2019) at the ‘Rock Hall’ drill site, located on Vera Rubin Ridge. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS.

Curiosity’s Samples from Martian Crater Strongly Depleted in Carbon-13, Researchers Say

Jan 18, 2022 by News Staff

An analysis of carbon isotopes in sediment samples taken by NASA’s Curiosity rover from Gale crater, Mars, leave planetary researchers with three plausible...

An artist’s illustration of the Local Bubble with star formation occurring on the bubble’s surface. Image credit: Leah Hustak, Space Telescope Science Institute.

1,000-Light-Year-Wide Local Bubble is Responsible for Formation of All Nearby, Young Stars

Jan 12, 2022 by News Staff

Space Telescope Science Institute astronomer and data visualization expert Dr. Catherine Zucker and her colleagues have shown how a chain of events beginning...

Our ability to explore the cosmos by direct contact has been limited to a small number of lunar and interplanetary missions. However, NASA’s Starlight program points a path forward to send small, relativistic spacecraft far outside our Solar System via standoff directed-energy propulsion. These miniaturized spacecraft are capable of robotic exploration but can also transport seeds and organisms, marking a profound change in our ability to both characterize and expand the reach of known life. Lantin et al. explore the biological and technological challenges of interstellar space biology, focusing on radiation-tolerant microorganisms capable of cryptobiosis. Image credit: University of California, Santa Barbara.

We Must Consider Benefits of Sending Life Outside of Solar System, Researchers Say

Jan 8, 2022 by News Staff

University of California, Santa Barbara’s professors Philip Lubin and Joel Rothman and their colleagues contemplate launching small cryptobiotic lifeforms...

Pachhai et al. employ seismic data analysis and high-resolution geodynamic modeling to study the origin of ultralow-velocity zones beneath the Coral Sea between Australia and New Zealand. Image credit: Pachhai et al., doi: 10.1038/s41561-021-00871-5.

Ultralow-Velocity Zones are Leftovers from Early Earth’s Magma Ocean, New Study Suggests

Jan 3, 2022 by News Staff

Ultra-low velocity zones sit beneath the central Pacific and Africa, atop the outer core of Earth. In these areas, seismic waves slow by as much as half,...

$Possible scenarios of terrestrial planet formation: in the classic Wetherill-type model of oligarchic growth, the terrestrial planets formed by mutual collisions among Moon- to Mars-sized planetary embryos after the gas disk dissipated and accreted only a small fraction of CC planetesimals, which were scattered inward during Jupiter’s growth and/or putative migration; alternatively, the terrestrial planets may have formed within the lifetime of the gas disk by efficiently accreting ‘pebbles’ from the outer Solar System, which drift sunward through the disk due to gas drag; the two models differ in the amount of outer solar system material accreted by the terrestrial planets, which may be quantified using nucleosynthetic isotope anomalies. Image credit: Burkhardt et al., doi: 10.1126/sciadv.abj7601.$

Earth and Other Terrestrial Planets Formed from Inner Solar System Material, Study Suggests

Dec 28, 2021 by News Staff

Two fundamentally different processes of rocky planet formation exist, but it is unclear which one built the Earth and other terrestrial solar system planets....

Trace Gas Orbiter Finds Water Ice in Martian Polar Crater

Dec 27, 2021 by News Staff

ESA’s Trace Gas Orbiter has returned a stunning image of a 4-km- (2.5-mile) wide crater located in Vastitas Borealis, the largest lowland region of Mars. The...

The James Webb Space Telescope lifted off on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana on December 25, 2021, on its exciting mission to unlock the secrets of the Universe. Image credit: ESA / CNES / Arianespace.

Webb Launches to Study Universe in Infrared

Dec 26, 2021 by News Staff

The James Webb Space Telescope, an international partnership between NASA, ESA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), launched at 7:20 a.m. EST (13:20 CET)...

This image, captured by the SoloHI instrument onboard the ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter, shows the comet Leonard. Image credit: ESA / NASA / NRL / SoloHI.

NASA’s and ESA’s Sun-Studying Missions Observe Comet Leonard

Dec 22, 2021 by News Staff

When C/2021 A1 (Leonard), a recently-discovered long-period comet about 1 km wide, makes its closest pass of the Sun on January 3, 2022, it will be a journey...

An artist’s conception of the aerial biosphere in the cloud layers of Venus. In this picture, hypothetical microbial life in the clouds of Venus resides inside protective cloud particles and is carried by winds around the planet. Image credit: J. Petkowska.

Clouds of Venus May Be More Habitable than Previously Thought

Dec 21, 2021 by News Staff

Possible lifeforms in the Venusian clouds could be setting off a cascade of chemical reactions that is making the environment much more habitable, according...

A carbonate-rich grain in the sample of material from the near-Earth asteroid Ryugu. Image credit: Pilorget et al., doi: 10.1038/s41550-021-01549-z.

Hayabusa-2 Sample Reveals New Information about Asteroid Ryugu

Dec 21, 2021 by News Staff

An analysis of the Hayabusa-2 sample of material returned to Earth from the carbon-rich, diamond-shaped, near-Earth asteroid Ryugu shows that the material...

Mars; the center of the scene shows the entire Valles Marineris canyon system. Image credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

ESA’s Trace Gas Orbiter Finds Water in Martian Canyon System

Dec 17, 2021 by News Staff

Planetary researchers using the Fine Resolution Epithermal Neutron Detector (FREND) instrument onboard ESA’s Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) have found evidence...

The Mastcam-Z instrument on NASA’s Perseverance rover took this image of Ingenuity on December 1, 2021, when the rotorcraft was about 295 m (970 feet) away. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / ASU / MSSS.

Ingenuity Helicopter Completes Its Seventeenth Flight on Mars

Dec 16, 2021 by News Staff

On December 5, 2021, NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter successfully flew to a new destination located very close to its original airfield, Wright Brothers...

Sputnik Planum basin: this scene, which is about 250 miles (400 km) across, uses data from New Horizons’ Ralph/MVIC instrument. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.

Planetary Scientists Solve Mystery behind Mysterious Polygonal Structures on Pluto

Dec 15, 2021 by News Staff

University of Exeter’s Dr. Adrien Morison and colleagues have shown how vast ice forms have been shaped in Sputnik Planitia, a nitrogen-ice-filled basin...

Parker Solar Probe has flown through the solar corona and sampled particles and magnetic fields there. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Parker Solar Probe Enters Magnetized Atmosphere of the Sun

Dec 15, 2021 by News Staff

The high temperatures and strong magnetic fields of the Sun’s upper atmosphere — the corona — form streams of the solar wind that expand...

Coadded images of comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein (C/2014 UN271) from 2018 and 2020, showing coma with a sunward asymmetry; coadded images from several Kuiper Belt objects and asteroids show examples of moving objects of similar brightness that are known to have no coma. Image credit: Farnham et al., doi: 10.3847/PSJ/ac323d.

Study: Giant Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein is Among Solar System’s Most Distant Active Comets

Dec 1, 2021 by News Staff

Comet C/2014 UN271 Bernardinelli-Bernstein, the largest comet ever discovered, was already exhibiting coma at heliocentric distances 23.8 and 21.2 AU,...

Daly et al. used atom probe tomography to directly observe an average ~1 mol% enrichment in water and hydroxyls in the solar-wind-irradiated rim of an olivine grain from the S-type asteroid Itokawa. Image credit: Curtin University.

Part of Earth’s Water Came from the Sun, New Study Suggests

Nov 29, 2021 by News Staff

The solar wind, comprised of solar particles largely made of hydrogen ions, created water on the surface of dust grains carried on asteroids that smashed...

Curiosity used its navigation cameras to capture panoramas of this scene at two times of day. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Curiosity Team Releases Stunning Panorama of Martian Landscape

Nov 26, 2021 by News Staff

Members of NASA’s Curiosity rover mission team have combined two versions of the black-and-white images of Martian mountains from different times of...

NASA Successfully Launches DART Mission to Test Asteroid Deflection

Nov 25, 2021 by News Staff

NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission launched November 24, 2021 at 1:21 a.m. EST on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex...

This artist’s impression shows NASA’s InSight lander in Homestead Hollow, a small impact crater; the r SEIS seismometer is the light-colored hemisphere on the ground in front of the lander; the ground beneath it consists of a sandy regolith layer on top of alternate layers of sediments (yellow-orange colors) and basaltic rocks, i.e. former lava flows (brown colors). Image credit: Géraldine Zenhäusern / ETH Zürich.

Mars Has Multi-Layered Subsurface, New Study Says

Nov 24, 2021 by News Staff

Using seismic data collected by the SEIS (Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure) instrument aboard NASA’s InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic...

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