Planetary Science
- Planetary Science
Martian water everywhere
Combining data taken from two craft orbiting Mars with images and spectra collected by one of the Mars rovers, a scientist has found evidence that a body of water greater in area than all the Great Lakes combined once covered the Red Planet.
- Planetary Science
Tiny scope spies distant planet
Using a telescope not much bigger than Galileo's, astronomers have discovered a planet orbiting a star 500 light-years from Earth.
- Planetary Science
Exploring Mars
Here’s your chance to help NASA explore the surface of Mars. At its Marsoweb site, the agency provides detailed maps, engineering data, and interactive tools for studying the Red Planet’s alien terrain. Visitors are invited to look for and report important geologic features that haven’t yet been catalogued or even viewed by researchers. Go to: […]
- Planetary Science
A really cool map
A new infrared image of Saturn's rings provides the most detailed temperature map ever taken of these icy particles.
- Planetary Science
Martian ice could be sculpting surface patterns
Images taken by the Mars Global Surveyor suggest that most areas with geological features known as patterned ground appear at high latitudes.
- Planetary Science
Saturn Watch: Cassini finds two new moons and lightning
The Cassini spacecraft has detected two moons that may be the smallest ever found around Saturn as well as changes in the character of lightning first detected in Saturn's atmosphere in the early 1980s.
- Planetary Science
Finding a lunar meteorite’s home
Scientists have for the first time pinpointed the source of a meteorite that came from the moon.
- Planetary Science
The sound of rings
When Cassini reached Saturn on June 30, it twice dashed through a gap in the planet's rings, and onboard science instruments recorded a flurry of ring dust harmlessly striking the spacecraft.
- Planetary Science
Meteorites quickly reach Earth
Fragments from collisions between large bodies in the asteroid belt can reach Earth in as little as 100,000 years.
- Planetary Science
A little bit of Mars on Earth
Scouring an ice field in Antarctica, scientists have made the latest discovery of a chunk of rock that was blasted from Mars and fell to Earth.
- Planetary Science
Titanic Images, Groovy Shots: Cassini arrives at Saturn
After a 7-year, 3.5-billion-mile journey, the Cassini spacecraft last week slipped through a gap between two of the icy rings circling Saturn and became the first spacecraft to orbit the distant planet.
- Planetary Science
Cometary encounter
Planetary scientists are feasting on close-up images of Comet Wild 2 as well as on the first information about its composition.
