Planetary Science Archives - Page 3 of 13

Planetary Scientists Create Map of Ceres’ Cold Traps

By News Staff May 13, 2024

The dwarf planet Ceres hosts permanently shadowed areas in its polar regions, and these regions are an interesting analog to Mercury and the Moon. Ceres’ permanently shadowed regions were mapped…

Cassini Observations Suggest Underground Ocean on Titan

By News Staff May 10, 2024

Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, harbors an internal low-density ocean of water or ammonia, according to an analysis of archival data from NASA’s Cassini mission. Representation of Cassini’s orbits…

New Study Explains Why Venus is Extremely Dry

By News Staff May 7, 2024

Despite its Earth-like size and source material, Venus is extremely dry, indicating near-total water loss to space. Using computer simulations, planetary scientists from the University of Colorado, Boulder and the…

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

By News Staff May 2, 2024

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

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

By News Staff April 24, 2024

ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft have spotted the telltale traces of ‘spiders’ scattered across the southern polar region of Mars. This image of the Martian Inca City was captured by the…

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

By News Staff April 24, 2024

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 global view of Io was…

Uninhabitable Venus Offers Lessons about Potential for Extraterrestrial Life

By News Staff April 23, 2024

Fully understanding how a rocky planet becomes habitable and remains so is a fundamental challenge for planetary scientists and astrobiologists, given the diversity and complexity of intrinsic and extrinsic processes…

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

By News Staff April 19, 2024

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 (930 miles) of the surface and obtaining…

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

By Enrico de Lazaro April 16, 2024

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 peculiar geometry. Planetary scientists at…

BepiColombo Detects Oxygen and Carbon Ions in Magnetosphere of Venus

By Natali Anderson April 15, 2024

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 magnetosphere. The spacecraft detected cold oxygen and carbon…