Solar System Archives - Page 13 of 15

Impact Glass Beads from the Moon Contain Solar Wind-Derived Water, Study Shows

By News Staff March 29, 2023

Scientists from China and the United States have analyzed the impact glass beads from a lunar soil sample returned by China’s Chang’e-5 mission. Asteroid and comet impacts are the major…

Scientists Explain Why Jupiter’s and Saturn’s Icy Moons Have Extreme Radar Properties

By News Staff March 23, 2023

The radar properties of icy satellites of Jupiter and Saturn commonly differ by more than an order of magnitude from those of rocky planets because of the lower absorptivity of…

Scientists Find Vitamin B3 and Uracil in Samples from Asteroid Ryugu

By News Staff March 22, 2023

An international team of researchers has detected nicotinic acid (also known as vitamin B3 or niacin) and uracil, one of the four nucleobases in ribonucleic acid, in aqueous extracts from…

Relict Glacier Spotted near Martian Equator

By News Staff March 20, 2023

A so-called light-toned deposit (LTD) in Eastern Noctis Labyrinthus, about 160 km (99.4 miles) north-west of Oudemans crater near Mars’ equator, presents distinctive morphologic characteristics of a glacier, according to…

StarCrete: Materials Scientists Create Starch-Based Concrete for Extraterrestrial Construction

By Enrico de Lazaro March 17, 2023

The StarCrete is twice as strong as regular concrete and is made from extraterrestrial dust, potato starch, and a pinch of salt. Aled Roberts and Nigel Scrutton used simulated Martian…

Study Offers New Insights into Extraterrestrial Origins of Earth’s Water

By News Staff March 16, 2023

In new research, planetary scientists from the University of Maryland and elsewhere analyzed melted meteorites that had been floating around in space since the Solar System’s formation around 4.5 billion…

Venus Has Ongoing Active Volcanism, New Study Confirms

By News Staff March 15, 2023

Planetary scientists have examined volcanic areas on Venus that were imaged two or three times by NASA’s Magellan spacecraft and identified a 2.2-km2 volcanic vent that changed shape in the…

Rotation of Europa’s Ice Shell May Be Controlled By Dynamics of Subsurface Ocean: Study

By News Staff March 14, 2023

The subsurface ocean of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa is heated from below via tidal heating and radioactive decay of the rocky interior, while being cooled from above by its frozen…

Curiosity Rover Images Sun Rays and Feather-Shaped Clouds on Mars

By News Staff March 6, 2023

‘Sun rays’ are also known as crepuscular rays, from the Latin word for twilight. It was the first time sun rays have been so clearly viewed on Mars. This feather-shaped…

DART Offers Insight into How Deflection Missions Can Protect Earth from Hazardous Asteroids

By News Staff March 2, 2023

On September 26, 2022, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) intentionally slammed into the 160-m-wide asteroid moonlet Dimorphos — which orbits the larger, 780-m-wide asteroid Didymos — for the first…