Future astronauts on the moon will need to have water, and now NASA has designed a new CubeSat spacecraft to search for ice in lunar craters using laser beams. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/lunar-flashlight-moon-ice-infrared-laser-beams…
Tag: Planetary Science
Are giant magnetic bubbles depleting Uranus’ atmosphere?
Researchers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, looking at old data from Voyager 2, have found evidence that plasmoids are slowly causing Uranus’ atmosphere to leak into space. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/uranus-atmosphere-plasmoids-voyager-2…
Archivists Uncover Earliest Evidence of a Person Being Killed By a Meteorite
sciencehabit writes: Although tales of people being killed by meteorite impacts date back to biblical times, few have been documented until the past decade or so. Now, Turkish researchers have uncovered the earliest evidence that a meteorite killed one man and paralyzed another when it slammed into a hilltop in what is now Iraq in August 1888. Documents chronicling the event…
Arizona meteorite fall points researchers to source of LL chondrites
The Dishchii’bikoh meteorite fall in the White Mountain Apache reservation in central Arizona has given scientists a big clue to finding out where so-called LL chondrites call home. They report their results in the April 14 issue of Meteoritics and Planetary Science. Source: https://phys.org/news/2020-04-arizona-meteorite-fall-source-ll.html…
Update on 2I/Borisov, the first known interstellar comet
The first known interstellar comet – 21/Borisov – probably came here from a red dwarf star, according to a new study of data from the Hubble Space Telescope. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/comet-21-borisov-comets-red-dwarf-stars-hubble-space-telescope…
Impacts on asteroids produce regolith, erase small craters
Impact cratering both produces new regolith and causes seismic events that can degrade and erase small craters on the surface of asteroids, a paper by Planetary Science Institute Senior Scientist James Richardson says. Source: https://phys.org/news/2020-04-impacts-asteroids-regolith-erase-small.html…
Ripples on Pluto hint at subsurface ocean
A new study of unusual ripples on Pluto’s far side add to the evidence for a subsurface ocean on this distant and cold dwarf planet. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/pluto-subsurface-ocean-new-horizons…
What makes Saturn’s atmosphere so hot
The upper layers in the atmospheres of gas giants—Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune—are hot, just like Earth’s. But unlike Earth, the Sun is too far from these outer planets to account for the high temperatures. Their heat source has been one of the great mysteries of planetary science. Source: https://phys.org/news/2020-04-saturn-atmosphere-hot.html…
Was Mercury once habitable?
As unlikely as it may sound, Mercury may have once been able to support subsurface microscopic life, according to a new study from the Planetary Science Institute. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/mercury-habitability-chaotic-terrain-messenger-astrobiology…
Subsurface Mercury: Window to ancient, possibly habitable, volatile-rich materials
New research raises the possibility that some parts of Mercury’s subsurface, and those of similar planets in the galaxy, once could have been capable of fostering prebiotic chemistry, and perhaps even simple life forms, according to a paper by a team led by Planetary Science Institute Research Scientist Alexis Rodriguez. Source: https://phys.org/news/2020-03-subsurface-mercury-window-ancient-possibly.html…