Category Astronomy/Space

Data from NASA’s recent Dawn mission answers two long-unresolved questions: Is there liquid inside Ceres, and how long ago was the dwarf planet geologically active? NASA’s Dawn spacecraft gave scientists extraordinary close-up views of the dwarf planet Ceres, which lies in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. By the time the mission ended in October 2018, the orbiter had dipped to less than 22 miles (35 kilometers) above the surface, revealing crisp details of the mysterious bright regions Ceres had become known for.

Scientists had figured out that the bright areas were deposits made mostly of sodium carbonate – a compound of s...

Helium is the second most abundant element in the universe after hydrogen. But scientists aren’t sure just how much there actually is in the Sun’s atmosphere, where it is hard to measure. Knowing the amount of helium in the solar atmosphere is important to understanding the origin and acceleration of the solar wind—the constant stream of charged particles from the Sun.

In 2009, NASA launched a sounding rocket investigation to measure helium in the extended solar atmosphere—the first time we’ve gathered a full global map...

Researchers from Kobe University and the National Institute of Technology, Oshima College have conducted a detailed reanalysis of image data from Voyager 1, 2 and Galileo spacecraft in order to investigate the orientation and distribution of the ancient tectonic troughs found on Jupiter’s moon Ganymede. They discovered that these troughs are concentrically distributed across almost the entire surface of the satellite. This global distribution indicates that these troughs may be actually part of one giant crater covering Ganymede.

Based on the results of a computer simulation conducted using the “PC Cluster” at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ), it is speculated that this giant crater could have resulted from the impact o...

Analysis of NASA lander seismograph data reveals boundaries from crust to core. Using data from NASA’s InSight Lander on Mars, Rice University seismologists have made the first direct measurements of three subsurface boundaries from the crust to the core of the red planet.

“Ultimately it may help us understand planetary formation,” said Alan Levander, co-author of a study available online this week in Geophysical Research Letters...