Universe Today
Chang'e-6 Samples Provide an Ancient Record of the Moon's Far Side.
The samples returned by the Chang'e-6 mission from the far side of the Moon reveal that the two hemispheres have had rather different experiences when it comes to space weather.
Planetary Science
The study of planets and moons
Recent Articles
-
-
Mars Express Captures 'Metallic' Waves Rolling Across an Ancient Martian Crater
When we think of Mars as the “Red Planet”, the image that comes to mind is just that - a lot of red. That comes from the oxidization of the dust and rocks that cover the planet's surface, but there are some instances where the Red Planet still has a few visual tricks up its sleeve. One such trick was recently captured by the European Space Agency’s venerable Mars Express orbiter, which captured what seems to be a set of metallic waves inside a giant impact basin. But on closer inspection, it becomes clear they aren’t liquid metal or some sort of alien architecture, but a manifestation of Mars’ complex environment.
-
Astronomers Catch a "Dark Comet" Red-Handed
Our ability to track and visualize small rocks in space is still improving. And occasionally we’ll find a space rock that will remind us of that fact. One such rock is detailed in a new paper, led by Davide Farnocchia of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and recently published in Nature Astronomy, where the research team discovered what they thought was a normal, run of the mill asteroid, was actually a “dark comet”.
-
800 Million Years Ago, a Catastrophic Asteroid Breakup Rained Fire on the Inner Solar System
On Earth, it’s hard to track events that reshape its surface, as the surface itself is being reshaped constantly by weather and tectonic or volcanic upheavals. However, the Moon is much more static, and scientists have been slowly unraveling a pattern that is noticeable in its craters - that something dramatic happened around 800 million years ago. A new paper by researchers at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), led by Dr. William F. Bottke, and accepted for publication in the Planetary Science Journal, suggests they might have found a culprit - the parent body of a family of asteroids now known as Eulalia.
-
Researchers Narrow Down the Type of Meteorite that Killed the Dinosaurs
An international team of Earth scientists has narrowed down the class of impactor that caused the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event. According to their findings, it was a rare type of rock that originated in the outer Solar System.
-
NASA's Perseverance Rover Uncovers Evidence of 4 Billion Year Old Impacts
Old rocks exposed on the rim of Jezero Crater preserve a roughly 4-billion-year-old cosmic “weather report” from the solar system’s most dynamic era.
-
Satellite Images of Pengiun Poo Reveal Climate Change's Impact on the Species
Researchers utilized 30 years of Landsat satellite imagery to analyze the color and spectral signatures of Adélie penguin guano across Antarctica, marking the first time space-based observations have captured food-web and population dynamics at a continental scale.
-
After a Billion Kilometres, China's Asteroid Hunter Finally Arrives
After chasing a small asteroid across a billion kilometres of space, China's Tianwen-2 probe has finally caught up, closing to within twenty kilometres of its target and beginning detailed scientific study. What it uncovers next could help settle a genuinely intriguing question, whether this quiet companion of Earth is simply another asteroid, or a long lost piece of the Moon itself.
-
Chemistry Reveals the Origins of an Interstellar Comet
Somewhere in the Milky Way Galaxy is an old star that has lost one of its comets. By some quirk of orbital mechanics, that frozen nucleus of ice and dust got kicked out of its home system and into a long and winding trajectory across space. It entered our Solar System sometime in the distant past and traveled somewhat near to Earth on October 30, 2025, on its way through the system.
-
Most Of Moon’s Water Likely Remains Chemically Bound In Its Deep Interior
Aside from an unknown quantity of water in the Moon’s permanently shaded polar craters, the lion’s share of what water the Moon may have is likely chemically bound in its deep interior.
-
New Horizons Watches the Solar Wind as it Slows Down
Where does the Solar System end and interstellar space begin? That's a question scientists have been working to answer using spacecraft traveling out beyond the Sun's influence. A team of researchers from the Southwest Research Institute led by Heather Elliott, is using the Solar Wind around Pluto instrument onboard New Horizons to track the solar wind in the outer reachers of the Solar System.
-
This Giant Planet Survived the Death of its Star
Some planets can survive when their main sequence stars "die" and evolve into red giants. Astronomers have found several of them. One of them in particular is orbiting extremely close to its star, providing an opportunity to study it with the JWST to determine how it got there.
-
An Extended Barrage of Asteroid Impacts Made Earth Too Hot to Form Continents
New research shows that repeated impacts on Earth during the Hadean eon prevented thick and stable crustal material from forming. The heat from these impacts penetrated deep into the planet, and along with radiogenic heating, delayed the formation of a solid crust.
-
ESA’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter Has Yet to Detect Methane On Mars
After more than eight years of searching and with instruments designed to detect it, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Mars Trace Gas Orbiter has yet to find methane in the red planet’s atmosphere.
-
Mars May Have Vast Magma Systems Beneath Its Surface
Researchers from the University of Oxford have uncovered evidence that Mars once hosted widespread, Earth-like magmatic systems deep beneath its surface – despite the planet lacking the plate tectonics long thought necessary for this kind of geological complexity. The findings, published June 26th in Nature Astronomy, reveal fascinating new possibilities for how rocky planets become habitable.
-
Europa’s Ice Shell Secrets Unlocked by Ground Radar Study
Jupiter’s moon, Europa, has become high-value real estate for astrobiologists and the search for life beyond Earth. This is because the small moon, which is slightly smaller than Earth’s Moon, boasts a massive subsurface ocean of liquid water that scientists estimate contains about double the amount of water of all Earth’s oceans combined. As seen on Earth, water equals life, so scientists are eager to continue to explore Europa in any way possible to determine if it could harbor life as we know it, or even as we don’t know it.
-
Deuterium in Comets Tells Interesting Tales
Comets have play an interesting role in astronomy history. From antiquity, many cultures saw them omens or spirits, portending good or bad news for kings, queens, and emperors. Over the past few hundred years, however, astronomers have studied them intently to understand the science behind these visitors to the inner Solar System. Today we know that these ghostly apparitions in the sky are made of dirty balls of ice and rock blasting through space, scattering dust and gases as they go.
-
Powerful Solar Storms Can Change Precipitation for Parts of North America
For decades, scientists have searched for a clear link between the Sun’s explosive storms and the weather that occurs on Earth. A breakthrough study from the University of New Hampshire reveals that in the hours and days following a solar storm, parts of North America can see sharp changes in the weather — such as declines in precipitation — and the more powerful the storm, the more dramatic the shift. However, the exact mechanism behind the effects is still waiting for an explanation.
-
Mars Express Captures Dozens of Dust Devils in Mars Valley
The European Space Agency’s Mars Express has captured part of Mars’s Mamers Valles: a fascinating valley system speckled with brief, tornado-like whirlwinds known as dust devils.
-
Uranus, Neptune May Be Magma Worlds, Not Ice Giants
Uranus and Neptune remain two of the most mysterious objects in the solar system, primarily because they’ve only been visited by NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1986 and 1989, respectively. Their “ice giant” moniker comes from longstanding hypotheses that their interiors are comprised of an icy mantle beneath their hydrogen/helium atmospheres. While Jupiter and Saturn are also comprised primarily of hydrogen and helium, Uranus and Neptune are hypothesized to have a layered structure comprised of icy elements within their interiors.