Planet Archives - Page 6 of 9

Auroral Mechanisms May Be Universal throughout Our Solar System

By News Staff July 18, 2023

An analysis of data obtained during the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo spacecraft’s first Mercury flyby reveals that Mercury’s southern magnetosphere aurorae are similar to those seen on Earth and Mars. An artist’s…

Perseverance Finds Diverse Organic Molecules in Jezero Crater

By News Staff July 12, 2023

The Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals (SHERLOC) instrument onboard NASA’s Perseverance rover has detected several species of aromatic organic molecules in the Máaz and…

Martian Gullies Could Have Been Formed by On-And-Off Periods of Liquid Meltwater

By News Staff July 4, 2023

Some steep slopes on Mars have gullies with morphologies suggesting that they were formed by a liquid. However, the planet’s current climate is not conducive to the melting of water…

MAVEN Observes Mars in Ultraviolet Light

By News Staff June 22, 2023

Planetary scientists using the Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph (IUVS) instrument onboard NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft have captured two amazing images of the Red Planet. By viewing the…

Study: Plate Tectonics is not a Requirement for Life to Originate on Earth-Like Planet

By News Staff June 15, 2023

Plate tectonics is a fundamental factor in the sustained habitability of Earth, but its time of onset is unknown, with ages ranging from the Hadean to Proterozoic eon. University of…

Watch First-Ever Livestream from Mars

By News Staff June 2, 2023

On June 2, 2023, to celebrate the 20th birthday of ESA’s Mars Express, you’ll have the chance to get as close as it’s currently possible get to a live view…

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…

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…