A composite image of the Western hemisphere of the Earth. Credit: NASA How did the molecular building blocks for life end up on Earth? One long-standing theory is that they could have been delivered by comets. Now, researchers from the University of Cambridge have shown how comets could deposit similar building blocks to other planets…
Category: Planets
Water on asteroid Ryugu's parent found to have shaped distribution of its elements
The non-nebular origins of nucleosynthetic Cr-Ti isotope variations in Ryugu can help unravel the chemical history of the early solar system. Credit: Tokyo Tech A large international team of space scientists, geochemists, and engineers, has found that water that existed on the parent of Ryugu had an impact on the distribution of elements on the…
NASA's Curiosity rover clocks 4,000 days on Mars
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover captured this 360-degree panorama using its black-and-white navigation cameras, or Navcams, at a location where it collected a sample from a rock nicknamed “Sequoia.” The panorama was captured on Oct. 21 and 26, 2023. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Four thousand Martian days after setting its wheels in Gale Crater on Aug. 5, 2012,…
JWST detects water vapor, sulfur dioxide and sand clouds in the atmosphere of a nearby exoplanet
Artist impression of WASP-107b and its parent star. Credit: Illustration: LUCA School of Arts, Belgium/ Klaas Verpoest (visuals), Johan Van Looveren (typography). Science: Achrène Dyrek (CEA and Université Paris Cité, France), Michiel Min (SRON, the Netherlands), Leen Decin (KU Leuven, Belgium) / European MIRI EXO GTO team / ESA / NASA A team of European…
Unveiling Mercury's geological mysteries: Salt glaciers, primordial atmosphere, and the new frontiers of astrobiology
A view of Mercury’s north polar chaotic terrain (Borealis Chaos) and the Raditladi and Eminescu craters where evidence of possible glaciers has been identified. Credit: NASA. Scientists from the Planetary Science Institute have uncovered evidence of potential salt glaciers on Mercury, opening a new frontier in astrobiology by revealing a volatile environment that might echo…
Webb follows neon signs toward new thinking on planet formation
In this artist concept, the young star SZ Chamaeleontis (SZ Cha) is surrounded by a disk of dust and gas with the potential to form a planetary system. Once our solar system looked something like this, before planets, moons, and asteroids formed. The raw ingredients, including those for life on Earth, were present in the…
Presence of atomic oxygen confirmed on both day and night sides of Venus
Maps of temperature and atomic oxygen. a brightness temperature, b atomic oxygen temperature, and c atomic oxygen column density of Venus. The light gray area of Venus marks the nightside. The evening terminator is the border between the white (daytime) and the gray (nighttime) area. The LT refers to the equator. The size of the…
NASA's Lucy spacecraft discovers 2nd asteroid during Dinkinesh flyby
This image shows the “moonrise” of the satellite as it emerges from behind asteroid Dinkinesh as seen by the Lucy Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (L’LORRI), one of the most detailed images returned by NASA’s Lucy spacecraft during its flyby of the asteroid binary. This image was taken at 12:55 p.m. EDT (1655 UTC) Nov. 1, 2023,…
Most Martian meteorites are curiously young in age
The vast majority of meteorites from Mars are shergottites, but the difficulty in ageing these rocks created something of a paradox. Credit: The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London Earth is occasionally hit by little pieces of Mars. These bits of Martian rock are incredibly rare, but can tell us a lot about the…
Venus had Earth-like plate tectonics billions of years ago, study suggests
Venus, a scorching wasteland of a planet according to scientists, may have once had tectonic plate movements similar to those believed to have occurred on early Earth, a new study found. Credit: NASA/JPL Venus, a scorching wasteland of a planet according to scientists, may have once had tectonic plate movements similar to those believed to…