Planetary Science Archives - Page 10 of 13

Iron-Rich Meteoritic and Volcanic Particles May Have Promoted Origin of Life Reactions on Early Earth

By Enrico de Lazaro May 26, 2023

Precursors of the molecules needed for the origin of life may have been generated by chemical reactions promoted by meteoritic and volcanic particles approximately 4.4 billion years ago, says a…

Saturn’s Rings are No More Than Few Hundred Million Years Old, Scientists Say

By News Staff May 16, 2023

Saturn’s ring system may well have formed when dinosaurs were still walking on the Earth, and will last only another few hundred million years at most, according to two new…

ESA’s Mars Express Orbiter Sees Fissured Flanks of Mars’ Second-Tallest Volcano

By Natali Anderson May 15, 2023

Ascraeus Mons is the northernmost and tallest of three prominent volcanoes found in the Tharsis region of Mars, a volcanic plateau in the planet’s western hemisphere. This image from ESA’s…

Four Uranian Moons Host Subsurface Oceans, New Research Suggests

By News Staff May 5, 2023

The five large moons of Uranus — Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, and Oberon — are important targets for future spacecraft missions. Studying these bodies would help address the extent of…

ShadowCam Captures Spectacular Photos of Moon’s South Polar Region

By News Staff May 1, 2023

NASA’s ShadowCam instrument is flying with five other instruments aboard KARI’s Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO), also known as Danuri, which launched on August 4, 2022. This image of Shackleton…

Genetically Modified Rice Could Actually Grow in Martian Regolith, New Study Suggests

By Enrico de Lazaro April 27, 2023

One of the biggest challenges to growing food on Mars is the presence of perchlorate salts, which have been detected in the Martian regolith (soil) and are generally considered to…

InSight Detects Seismic Waves Traveling through Martian Liquid Core

By News Staff April 25, 2023

Mars has a liquid iron alloy core at its center. Using seismic data gathered by NASA’s InSight lander, planetary scientists have made the first observations of seismic waves traveling through…

Local Tectonic Activity Could Cause Landslides on Icy Satellites of Jupiter and Saturn

By News Staff April 17, 2023

Intense tectonism is evident on many outer solar system satellites — such as Ganymede, Europa, and Enceladus — with some surface regions showing ridge-and-trough structures which have characteristics suggestive of…

Saturn’s Rings are Heating Gas Giant’s Upper Atmosphere, Astronomers Say

By News Staff March 30, 2023

The most feasible explanation is that icy ring particles raining down onto Saturn’s atmosphere cause this heating, according to a team of astronomers who analyzed several datasets obtained by the…

Venus is Home to At Least 85,000 Volcanoes, Planetary Researchers Say