Space Exploration

A new image from the High Resolution Stereo Camera onboard ESA’s Mars Express shows the part of Nirgal Vallis, a dried-up river valley on Mars. This image, taken by ESA’s Mars Express on November 16, 2018, shows Nirgal Vallis on Mars. Image credit: ESA / DLR / FU Berlin / …

  The prevailing scientific wisdom on Mars, based on information gathered by the Spirit, Opportunity, and Curiosity rovers, as well as via multiple orbiting satellites, is that the planet once had substantial reserves of liquid water on its surface. The question of what happened to those reserves, and how Mars …

  Most people like eating meat, but the ecological impacts of raising livestock to feed seven billion humans is not insignificant. So, companies around the world are trying to come up with alternative ways of producing meat and meat-like materials. That’s all happened on Earth, but what about meat-loving astronauts? …

Using data from NASA’s Voyager spacecraft, a team of scientists has calculated the total pressure from particles in the outer region of the Solar System, known as the heliosheath — and it was found to be greater than expected. NASA’s Voyager spacecraft, one in the heliosheath and the other just …

NASA’s Curiosity rover recently discovered rocks enriched in mineral salts within the 3.7-billion-year-old Gale Crater on Mars. According to a new paper in the journal Nature Geoscience, these salt-rich rocks represent evidence of shallow briny ponds that went through episodes of overflow and drying. Lithology of sulfate enrichments in Gale …

  You can’t take a trip to the real moon, at least not right now. You might be able to visit the surface virtually before long, though. NASA has released a visual data set that it calls the “CGI Moon Kit,” which will allow designers to create authentic moonscapes in …

  NASA’s InSight lander arrived on Mars in 2018, after which the team spent months carefully surveying its surroundings and deploying a suite of instruments that will peer inside the red planet. One of those instruments is a seismometer, which has recorded the rumbles of another planet for the first …

  If you wanted to pick an example of how NASA’s deep space missions of exploration have changed our understanding of the solar system over just one lifetime, Enceladus’ would be a great choice. Voyager 2’s observations of the Saturnian moon showed a surface that might have been shaped by …

  Japan’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft has been hanging around the asteroid Ryugu for more than a year, dropping off robots and blasting the surface with metal slugs. The Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) hopes to bring Hayabusa2 and its precious cargo of asteroid samples home soon, but first, there’s just one more …

Saturn’s moon Enceladus is erupting a plume of gas and ice grains from its south pole. According to new research using data from NASA’s Cassini mission, the Enceladean ice grains contain low-mass nitrogen-, oxygen-bearing, and aromatic compounds. This artist’s painting of the south polar region of Enceladus shows massive jets …