Phase-folded photometry of LHS 475 highlighting the 3-hour window surrounding the planetary transits. Credit: Ment et al, 2023 Using NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), a team of astronomers from…
Category: Planetary Science
Europe’s Jupiter probe set for new launch attempt
Thursday’s launch was called off just minutes before countdown due to bad weather in Kourou. The European Space Agency’s JUICE mission to explore Jupiter’s icy, ocean-bearing moons will again try…
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover gets a major software upgrade
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover will drive faster and reduce wear on its wheels thanks to two of the new capabilities included with a major software update that was completed on…
Astronomers peer inside the ‘Dragon Cloud’
arXiv (2023). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2303.15499″> The inner core of the “dragon cloud” complex. Credit: Barnes et al, arXiv (2023). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2303.15499 How did the most massive stars form? Astronomers have debated…
Lots of Tatooine-like planets around binary stars may be habitable
SEATTLE — Luke Skywalker’s home planet in Star Wars is the stuff of science fiction. But Tatooine-like planets in orbit around pairs of stars might be our best bet in…
Enceladus is blanketed in a thick layer of snow
Saturn’s moon Enceladus is shrouded in a thick layer of snow. In some places, the downy stuff is 700 meters deep, new research suggests. “It’s like Buffalo, but worse,” says…
Methylated gases could be an unambiguous indicator of alien life
SEATTLE — Attention alien hunters: If you want to find life on distant planets, try looking for signs of toxic chemical cleanup. Gases that organisms produce as they tidy up…
Io may have an underworld magma ocean or a hot metal heart
CHICAGO — An entire ocean of liquid magma, or maybe a hot heart of solid metal, may lurk in Io’s underworld. The surface of Jupiter’s innermost moon is covered in…
The last vital ingredient for life has been discovered on Enceladus
CHICAGO — The last key ingredient for life has been discovered on Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus. Phosphorus is a vital building block of life, used to construct DNA and RNA.…
NASA’s Perseverance rover captured the sound of a dust devil on Mars
Thanks to a bit of good luck, the Mars rover Perseverance has captured the first-ever sound of a Martian dust devil. The NASA rover has witnessed dusty whirlwinds before. But…
