Radiation-tolerant microbes might be able to live beneath Mars’ surface for hundreds of millions of years and may yet persist today, thanks in part — counterintuitively — to the Red…
Category: Planetary Science
NASA’s DART mission successfully shoved an asteroid
It worked! Humanity has, for the first time, purposely moved a celestial object. As a test of a potential asteroid-deflection scheme, NASA’s DART spacecraft shortened the orbit of asteroid Dimorphos…
Mars’ buried ‘lake’ might just be layers of ice and rock
“Follow the water” has long been the mantra of scientists searching for life beyond Earth. After all, the only known cradle of life in the cosmos is the watery planet…
Robin Wordsworth re-creates the atmosphere of ancient Mars
Visitors to the village of Drumnadrochit, on the western shore of Scotland’s murky Loch Ness, come to see the nearby ruins of Urquhart Castle or to chance a glimpse of…
NASA’s DART spacecraft just smashed into an asteroid — on purpose
Mission control rooms rarely celebrate crash landings. But the collision of NASA’s DART spacecraft with an asteroid was a smashing success. At about 7:15 p.m. EDT on September 26, the…
Here is the first direct look at Neptune’s rings in more than 30 years
Humankind is seeing Neptune’s rings in a whole new light thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope. In an infrared image released September 21, Neptune and its gossamer diadems of…
Saturn’s rings and tilt might have come from one missing moon
A single, doomed moon could clear up a couple of mysteries about Saturn. This hypothetical missing moon, dubbed Chrysalis, could have helped tilt Saturn over, researchers suggest September 15 in…
Passing through the Milky Way’s arms may have helped form Earth’s solid ground
Earth’s journey through the Milky Way might have helped create the planet’s first continents. Comets may have bombarded Earth every time the early solar system traveled through our galaxy’s spiral…
The James Webb telescope spotted CO2 in an exoplanet’s atmosphere
The James Webb Space Telescope has gotten the first sniff of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of a planet in another solar system. “It’s incontrovertible. It’s there. It’s definitely there,”…
Not one, but two asteroids might have slain the dinosaurs
Chicxulub, the asteroid that wiped out most dinosaurs, might have had a little sibling. Off the coast of West Africa, hundreds of meters beneath the seafloor, scientists have identified what…
