Space Exploration

An international team of scientists has studied both the water and organic contents from a dust particle recovered from the surface of the near-Earth S-type asteroid 25143 Itokawa by JAXA’s Hayabusa mission, which was the first mission that brought pristine asteroidal materials to Earth. The S-type asteroid Itokawa. Image credit: …

On March 4, 2021, NASA’s Perseverance rover covered 6.5 m (21.3 feet) across the Martian landscape. This image was captured while Perseverance drove on Mars for the first time on March 4, 2021. One of Perseverance’s Hazard Avoidance Cameras (Hazcams) captured this image as the rover completed a short traverse …

Almost 300 g of the so-called Winchcombe meteorite, a space rock that fell from the fireball that lit up the sky over the United Kingdom and Northern Europe on February 28, 2021, have been located in Winchcombe, Gloucestershire, the United Kingdom. A fragment of the Winchcombe meteorite. Image credit: Trustees …

The zodiacal light is sunlight reflected by interplanetary dust in the inner Solar System. Variations in the zodiacal light with ecliptic latitude reveal discrete bands of dust orbiting near the ecliptic plane. NASA’s Juno spacecraft, in transit from Earth to Jupiter, recorded a sufficient number of impacts with these dust …

    (Credit: Eduard Muzhevskyi/Getty Images) Exploring the universe in Star Trek is as easy as firing up the warp drive and zipping off to the next adventure, but real life is much more tedious without faster-than-light (FTL) travel. Physicists have speculated on the possibility of a real warp drive for …

  The NASA Perseverance rover touched down on Mars last month, kicking off what we all hope will be many years studying the red planet. Perseverance isn’t the only robot in that part of the solar system. The ESA’s Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) is one of several missions looking down …

Hurricanes in the Earth’s low atmosphere are well known; however, disturbances resembling hurricanes had never before been detected in the upper atmosphere. An artist’s impression of a space hurricane. Image credit: Qing-He Zhang, Shandong University. “Until now, it was uncertain that space plasma hurricanes even existed, so to prove this …

  NASA launched the Parker Solar Probe in 2018, but the spacecraft just returned an amazing shot of Venus from its most recent flyby. According to NASA, Parker spotted a previously unseen glow that could be a product of oxygen in the inhospitable planet’s atmosphere. The unexpected clarity of surface …

New images of NASA’s Perseverance rover, along with its parachute, heat shield and descent stage, were captured by the CaSSIS camera aboard ESA’s Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) on February 23, 2021. TGO spotted the Perseverance rover, along with its parachute and back shell, heat shield and descent stage, in the …

In a study published in the journal Science Advances, a team of European astronomers shows that water can be delivered to a terrestrial planet in the form of ‘pebble snow’ in the early phases of the planet’s growth. An artist’s impression of a water-world exoplanet. Image credit: Sci-News.com. “All our …