Planet Archives - Page 6 of 9

High-Energy Electrons from Earth’s Plasma Sheet May Be Forming Water on Lunar Surface

By News Staff September 18, 2023

Planetary scientists from the University of Hawaii and elsewhere suggest that although they have confirmed the importance of the solar wind as a major source of water production on the…

ESA’s Mars Express Focuses on Surroundings of Olympus Mons Volcano

By News Staff August 24, 2023

Lava flows on Olympus Mons probably melted ice in the ground, making the volcano flank unstable; rockfalls and landslides moved hundreds of km into the surrounding landscape, forming a characteristic…

Early Mars Had a Sustained, Cyclic, Possibly Seasonal, Climate

By News Staff August 10, 2023

New observations of mud cracks made by NASA’s Curiosity rover show that high-frequency, wet-dry cycling occurred in early Martian surface environments, indicating that the Red Planet may have once seen…

Mars is Spinning Faster, Planetary Researchers Say

By News Staff August 9, 2023

To track the Red Planet’s spin rate, planetary scientists relied on the Rotation and Interior Structure Experiment (RISE) onboard NASA’s InSight lander. They found the planet’s rotation is accelerating by…

Early, Energetic Collisions Could Have Fueled Venus Volcanism: Study

By News Staff July 20, 2023

New research shows that long-lived volcanism, driven by early, energetic collisions on Venus, offers an explanation of its young surface age with stagnant-lid tectonics. This volcanic activity is fuelled by…

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…