The Ingenuity Mars helicopter was never supposed to last this long. NASA engineers built and tested the first self-powered aircraft to fly on another planet to answer a simple question:…
Category: Planetary Science
A space rock called Kamoʻoalewa may be a piece of the moon
The moon’s violent history is written across its face. Over billions of years, space rocks have punched craters into its surface, flinging out debris. Now, for the first time, astronomers…
Pluto’s dark side reveals clues to its atmosphere and frost cycles
Pluto’s dark side has come into dim view, thanks to the light of the dwarf planet’s moon. When NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft flew past Pluto in 2015, almost all the…
What the Perseverance rover’s quiet landing reveals about meteor strikes on Mars
The lander was listening. On February 18, NASA’s InSight lander on Mars turned its attention to the landing site for another mission, Perseverance, hoping to detect its arrival on the…
5 cool things to know about NASA’s Lucy mission to the Trojan asteroids
For the first time, a spacecraft is headed to Jupiter’s odd Trojan asteroids. What Lucy finds there could provide a fresh peek into the history of the solar system. “Lucy…
Earth is reflecting less light. It’s not clear if that’s a trend
The amount of sunlight that Earth reflects back into space — measured by the dim glow seen on the dark portions of a crescent moon’s face — has decreased measurably…
China’s lunar rock samples show lava flowed on the moon 2 billion years ago
Lava oozed across the moon’s surface just 2 billion years ago, bits of lunar rocks retrieved by China’s Chang’e-5 mission reveal. A chemical analysis of the volcanic rocks confirms that…
Space rocks may have bounced off baby Earth, but slammed into Venus
Squabbling sibling planets may have hurled space rocks when they were young. Simulations suggest that space rocks the size of baby planets struck both the newborn Earth and Venus, but…
NASA’s Perseverance rover snagged its first Martian rock samples
The Perseverance rover has captured its first two slices of Mars. NASA’s latest Mars rover drilled into a flat rock nicknamed Rochette on September 1 and filled a roughly finger-sized…
