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UrduOn Jupiter’s icy moon Europa, powerful eruptions may spew into space, raising questions among hopeful astrobiologists on Earth: What would blast out from miles-high plumes? Could they contain signs of extraterrestrial life? And where in Europa would they originate? A…
Tag: PLANETS/MOONS
Life on ancient Earth and alien planets
Two research teams at the University of Arizona have been selected to lead NASA astrobiology projects under the agency’s Interdisciplinary Consortia for Astrobiology Research (ICAR) program
Radioactive elements may be crucial to the habitability of rocky planets
Earth-size planets can have varying amounts of radioactive elements, which generate internal heat that drives a planet’s geological activity and magnetism
Mining rocks in orbit could aid deep space exploration
The first mining experiments conducted in space could pave the way for new technologies to help humans explore and establish settlements on distant worlds, a study suggests. Tests performed by astronauts on the International Space Station suggest that bacteria can…
Hundreds of copies of Newton’s Principia found in new census
Findings suggest that Isaac Newton’s 17th-century masterpiece was more widely read
Galaxies have gotten hotter as they’ve gotten older
Study of 10 billion years of microwaves reveals a warming predicted by dark matter theory
The universe is getting hot, hot, hot, a new study suggests
Temperature has increased about 10 times over the last 10 billion years
SwRI scientist studies tiny craters on Bennu boulders to understand asteroid’s age
Scientists inferred Bennu’s sojourn in the inner Solar System at 1.75 million years
NASA deems SwRI-developed satellites healthy, extends CYGNSS mission
Hurricane wind monitoring mission will continue through 2023
Researchers present wild theory: Water may be naturally occurring on all rocky planets
The emergence of life is a mystery. Nevertheless, researchers agree that water is a precondition for life. The first cell emerged in water and then evolved to form multicellular organism. The oldest known single-cell organism on Earth is about 3.5…
Clay subsoil at Earth’s driest place may signal life on Mars
ITHACA, N.Y. – Earth’s most arid desert may hold a key to finding life on Mars. Diverse microbes discovered in the clay-rich, shallow soil layers in Chile’s dry Atacama Desert suggest that similar deposits below the Martian surface may contain…
New mineral discovered in moon meteorite
Donwilhelmsite is important for understanding the inner structure of the earth
The craters on Earth
Prof. Dr. Thomas Kenkmann, geologist from the University of Freiburg’s Institute of Earth and Environmental Sciences, together with mineralogist Prof. Dr. Wolf Uwe Reimold from the University of Brasilia, Brazil, and Dr. Manfred Gottwald from the German Aerospace Center (DLR)…
New remote sensing technique could bring key planetary mineral into focus
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Planetary scientists from Brown University have developed a new remote sensing method for studying olivine, a mineral that could help scientists understand the early evolution of the Moon, Mars and other planetary bodies. “Olivine is…
First light on a next-gen astronomical survey toward a new understanding of the cosmos
Groundbreaking all-sky survey will bolster our understanding of the formation and evolution of galaxies
An Earth-sized rogue planet discovered in the Milky Way
Our Galaxy may be teeming with rogue planets, gravitationally unbound to any star. An international team of scientists, led by Polish astronomers, has announced the discovery of the smallest Earth-sized free-floating planet found to date.
An Earth-sized rogue planet discovered in the Milky Way
Our Galaxy may be teeming with rogue planets, gravitationally unbound to any star. An international team of scientists, led by Polish astronomers, has announced the discovery of the smallest Earth-sized free-floating planet found to date. Over four thousand extrasolar planets…
Where were Jupiter and Saturn born?
An additional planet between Saturn and Uranus was kicked out of the Solar System in its infancy
Asteroid Ryugu shaken by Hayabusa2’s impactor
The artificial impactor disturbed boulders within a 30m radius from the center of the impact crater- providing important insight into asteroids’ resurfacing processes
Astronomers discover activity on distant planetary object
Findings lead to reclassification of Centaur as comet
Data reveals evidence of molecular absorption in the atmosphere of a hot Neptune
An international team of scientists recently measured the spectrum of the atmosphere of a rare hot Neptune exoplanet, whose discovery by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) was announced just last month. The discovery was made with data provided from…
Tiny moon shadows may harbor hidden stores of ice
Hidden pockets of water could be much more common on the surface of the moon than scientists once suspected, according to new research led by the University of Colorado Boulder. In some cases, these tiny patches of ice might exist…
Stars and planets grow up together as siblings
ALMA shows rings around the still-growing proto-star IRS 63
New study details atmosphere on ‘hot Neptune’ 260 light years away that ‘shouldn’t exist’
LAWRENCE — A team led by an astronomer from the University of Kansas has crunched data from NASA’s TESS and Spitzer space telescopes to portray for the first time the atmosphere of a highly unusual kind of exoplanet dubbed a…
AI and photonics join forces to make it easier to find ‘new Earths’
Australian scientists’ invention will decipher the ‘twinkle’ of stars
ALMA shows volcanic impact on Io’s atmosphere
New radio images from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) show for the first time the direct effect of volcanic activity on the atmosphere of Jupiter’s moon Io. Io is the most volcanically active moon in our solar system. It…
Two planets around a red dwarf
Red dwarfs are the coolest kind of star. As such, they potentially allow liquid water to exist on planets that are quite close to them. In the search for habitable worlds beyond the borders of our solar system, this is…
Australian research shows NASA’s James Webb telescopes will reveal hidden galaxies
Blinding glare of quasars can be overcome
Magnetic fields on the moon are the remnant of an ancient core dynamo
Simulations show that alternative explanatory models such as asteroid impacts do not generate sufficiently large magnetic fields
SwRI planetary scientist to fly aboard NASA-funded commercial space flight
Suborbital flight to support two ‘human-tended’ experiments
The mountains of Pluto are snowcapped, but not for the same reasons as on Earth
In 2015, the New Horizons space probe discovered spectacular snowcapped mountains on Pluto, which are strikingly similar to mountains on Earth. Such a landscape had never before been observed elsewhere in the Solar System. However, as atmospheric temperatures on our…
Mass loss driven shape evolution model unveils formation of flattened ‘snowman’ (486958) Arrokoth
The small Kuiper Belt object (486958) Arrokoth, encountered by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft on Jan 1 2019, is so far the most distant and most primitive object ever explored by a spacecraft. The discoveries from the mission have provided detailed…
Spitzer space telescope legacy chronicled in Nature Astronomy
To understand the significance of the Spitzer Space Telescope on the understanding of our solar system, think of what the steam engine meant for the industrial revolution. A national team of scientists today published in the journal Nature Astronomy two…
SwRI scientists study the rugged surface of near-Earth asteroid Bennu
New papers outline what NASA’s OSIRIS-REx will collect from asteroid surface
Vaporized metal in the air of an exoplanet
WASP-121b is an exoplanet located 850 light years from Earth, orbiting its star in less than two days – a process that takes Earth a year to complete. WASP-121b is very close to its star – about 40 times closer…
Scientists peer inside an asteroid
New findings from NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission suggest that the interior of the asteroid Bennu could be weaker and less dense than its outer layers–like a crème-filled chocolate egg flying though space. The results appear in a study published today in…
Planetary astronomer co-authors studies of asteroid as member of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission
Mission’s science team publishes findings characterizing asteroid’s surface in advance of sample collection event
Moon’s magnetic crust research sees scientists debunk long-held theory
New international research into the Moon provides scientists with insights as to how and why its crust is magnetised, essentially ‘debunking’ one of the previous longstanding theories. Australian researcher and study co-author Dr Katarina Miljkovic, from the Curtin Space Science…
NASA’s TESS creates a cosmic vista of the northern sky
Familiar stars shine, nebulae glow, and nearby galaxies tantalize in a new panorama of the northern sky assembled from 208 pictures captured by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). The planet hunter imaged about 75% of the sky in a…
On the trail of causes of radiation events during space flight
Scientists have made significant progress in understanding the sources of radiation events that could impact human space-flight operations.
Some planets may be better for life than Earth
PULLMAN, Wash. – Earth is not necessarily the best planet in the universe. Researchers have identified two dozen planets outside our solar system that may have conditions more suitable for life than our own. Some of these orbit stars that…
On the trail of causes of radiation events during space flight
Lessons from conjunction observations with ISS detectors and the Arase satellite
Venus might be habitable today, if not for Jupiter
Study shows destabilizing effect of the giant gas planet
Geoscience: Cosmic diamonds formed during gigantic planetary collisions
International research team solves theory of how diamonds formed inside protoplanets
First study with CHEOPS data describes one of the most extreme planets in the universe
Eight months after the space telescope CHEOPS started its journey into space, the first scientific publication using data from CHEOPS has been issued. CHEOPS is the first ESA mission dedicated to characterising known exoplanets. Exoplanets, i.e. planets outside the Solar…
Remnants of an ancient asteroid shed new light on the early solar system
Researchers have shaken up a once accepted timeline for cataclysmic events in the early solar system.
Yiğit exploring processes in Mars upper atmosphere with MAVEN EUVM solar occultations
Erdal Yiğit, Associate Professor, Physics and Astronomy, received $9,087 from NASA for a project in which he will run simulations of the Mars upper atmosphere. He will do so for time periods corresponding with when Extreme Ultraviolet Monitor (EUVM) solar…
First measurements of radiation levels on the moon
In the coming years and decades, various nations want to explore the moon, and plan to send astronauts there again for this purpose. But on our inhospitable satellite, space radiation poses a significant risk. The Apollo astronauts carried so-called dosimeters…
Solving the strange storms on Jupiter
At the south pole of Jupiter lurks a striking sight–even for a gas giant planet covered in colorful bands that sports a red spot larger than the earth.
CMU’s MoonRanger will search for water at moon’s south pole
Small, speedy rover completes preliminary design review