Planetary Science

  1. Astronomy

    Young, hot exoplanet takes title for longest year

    Newly discovered exoplanet sits a whopping 2,000 times farther from its star than Earth does from the sun.

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  2. Planetary Science

    Titan’s haze gives clues to clouds on exoplanets

    Titan’s hazy atmosphere may help astronomers better understand what’s going on in the clouds of exoplanets.

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  3. Planetary Science

    Rosetta spacecraft’s comet develops dusty envelope

    Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the target of ESA’s Rosetta mission, has developed a dust coma.

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  4. Planetary Science

    The ice of a distant moon

    Jupiter’s moon Europa hides a liquid ocean, and conceivably life, under kilometers of ice. The challenge for engineers is how to penetrate that frozen barrier with technology that can be launched into space and operated remotely.

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  5. Planetary Science

    Mountains on Saturn moon may have come from space

    A mountainous ridge around the equator of Iapetus, one of Saturn’s moons, may have formed from cosmic debris.

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  6. Planetary Science

    RIP LADEE: 9/6/2013 – 4/18/2014

    NASA’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) mission ended April 18.

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  7. Planetary Science

    Saturn may be getting a new moon

    An icy object within Saturn's rings may be a new moon in the making.

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  8. Astronomy

    Early Mars couldn’t hold liquid water long

    Small rocks hit Mars 3.6 billion years ago, suggesting an early atmosphere too thin for liquid water to hang around very long.

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  9. Astronomy

    Neutrinos from space rain down from all directions

    Using Earth as a filter, scientists detect thousands of neutrinos from beyond the solar system.

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  10. Planetary Science

    Mercury’s surface once exploded in volcanoes

    Newly released images show ancient vents and ash scattered within craters on Mercury's surface.

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  11. Planetary Science

    Subsurface sea hides below ice of Saturn moon

    Astronomers add to evidence for a subsurface ocean on Enceladus using subtle variations in the moon’s gravity.

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  12. Planetary Science

    Moon gets younger age estimate

    The moon may have formed about 95 million years after the birth of the solar system, up to 70 million years later than some scientists previously predicted.

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