Solar System Archives - Page 4 of 15

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…

Arrokoth and Other Kuiper Belt Objects Contain Pristine Ices, Study Suggests

By News Staff April 2, 2024

A duo of planetary scientists from Brown University and the SETI Institute has found that the Kuiper Belt object (486958) Arrokoth, which was the target of the January 1, 2019…

SOHO Observatory Discovers Its 5,000th Comet

By News Staff March 29, 2024

On March 25, 2024, Hanjie Tan, an astronomy Ph.D. student in Prague, Czech Republic, spotted a comet in an image from the ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft, which…

Scientists Create High-Resolution Geological Map of Oxia Planum

By News Staff March 27, 2024

Using data from ESA’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter and NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, planetary scientists have created the 1:30000 scale geological map of Oxia Planum, the landing site for ESA’s…

Clouds of Venus Could Be Hospitable for Some Forms of Life, New Research Suggests

By News Staff March 20, 2024

Planetary scientists have long speculated about the potential habitability of Venus, not at its hot surface, but in the cloud layers located at 48-60 km altitudes, where temperatures match those found…

Tricarbon Molecule Detected in Atmosphere of Titan

By Natali Anderson March 18, 2024

The tricarbon molecule (C3) is likely produced in the upper atmosphere of Titan by the reaction of abundant acetylene with atomic carbon. This view of Titan is among the last…

Planetary Scientists Discover Giant Shield Volcano on Mars

By News Staff March 13, 2024

Provisionally designated Noctis Mons, the newly-discovered volcano is located just south of Mars’ equator, in Eastern Noctis Labyrinthus, west of Valles Marineris, the planet’s vast canyon system. Noctis Mons. Image…