Enlarge (credit: NASA/JPL ) The formation of a gas giant involves a race against time. Planets come into being as newly forming stars heat up, a process that quickly drives all the stray gas out of the planet-creating regions nearby. To create the gas giant, a large, rocky planet has to form prior to this […]
Enlarge / Some seismic waves bounce off Mars’ core before reaching the InSight lander. (credit: Chris Bickel / Science ) We’ve learned a lot about our planet’s interior simply by tracking how the seismic energy released by earthquakes moves through or reflects off the different layers present beneath Earth’s surface. For over a Martian year, […]
(credit: NASA) Jupiter’s moon Europa, a large world with a vast sub-ice ocean, is thought to be one of the best candidates for hosting life elsewhere in the Solar System. NASA has considered sending a lander to the moon’s surface to see if its ice contains chemicals indicative of the presence of life, although that […]
Enlarge / Venus’ thick atmosphere was photographed in ultraviolet light in 1979 by the Pioneer Venus Orbiter. (credit: NSSDCA Photo Gallery) Last year, a study made waves by suggesting a chemical that had been proposed as a potential indicator of life was present in the atmosphere of Venus. While the hellish conditions on the planet’s […]
Enlarge / Artist’s conception of the Earth-sized planet and its atmosphere. (credit: NASA, ESA, and R. Hurt (IPAC/Caltech)) The atmosphere most planets start with is often not the same as the one they end up with. Most of the gas present at the formation of a solar system will be hydrogen and helium. But a […]
Enlarge / While we know of locations with ice on Mars, not all of them are located in places we’d want to land. (credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona) Over the last couple of decades, plans to return to the Moon for longer stays or to go to Mars have gradually moved away from sci-fi tinged “what […]
Enlarge (credit: NASA) In September of last year, a paper announced a startling finding: evidence that a highly unstable chemical is present in the atmosphere of Venus. Since the chemical is expected to be destroyed rather quickly in the Venusian environment, its presence seems to imply that there was a steady source of the chemical, […]
Enlarge / A selfie taken by the InSight Lander. (credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech) Today, NASA announced that it was giving up on its attempts to place a temperature sensor several meters under the Martian surface. Part of the agency’s InSight lander, the hardware was supposed to be placed deep enough to avoid the influence of Mars’ weather, […]
Enlarge / Pluto’s atmosphere is fairly hazy. (credit: NASA) Saturn’s moon Titan is distinctive, in part for its orange-ish and hazy atmosphere. It’s virtually impossible to see surface features because the haze is so opaque in the visible portion of the spectrum; what we know of it comes from things like radar imagery, instead. The […]
Expand / / An ancient design of this Europa Clipper spacecraft. When everything goes according to plan, then 2024 will visit NASA launching the Europa Clipper app, which was made to create numerous moves to research the water-rich moon’s possible to host life. The large challenge that the assignment will confront is {} liquid water […]