Planetary Science

  1. Planetary Science

    Fresh crater found on lunar images

    Scientists analyzing images of the moon's surface taken from lunar orbit believe they've identified the crater that formed when a small asteroid slammed into the moon almost 5 decades ago.

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  2. Planetary Science

    Fresh crater found on lunar images

    Scientists analyzing images of the moon's surface taken from lunar orbit believe they've identified the crater that formed when a small asteroid slammed into the moon almost 5 decades ago.

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  3. Planetary Science

    Martian History: Weathering a new notion

    Researchers suggest that intermittent impacts by huge asteroids and comets some 3.5 billion years ago profoundly influenced the landscape of Mars.

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  4. Planetary Science

    X rays reveal Eros’ primitive nature

    Aided by a blast of X rays from the sun, a spacecraft orbiting the near-Earth asteroid 433 Eros has gathered preliminary evidence that the rock is a primitive relic, apparently unchanged since the birth of the solar system.

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  5. Planetary Science

    Seeing Saturn

    After 5 years of interplanetary travel, the Saturn-bound Cassini spacecraft has taken its first picture of the ringed planet.

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  6. Planetary Science

    Martian Radiation: Giving off a faint X-ray glow

    Astronomers have for the first time taken an X-ray image of the Red Planet.

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  7. Planetary Science

    Leapin’ Lava! Volcanic eruption on Io breaks the record

    Pointing a ground-based telescope at Jupiter's moon Io, astronomers have recorded the most powerful volcano ever observed in the solar system.

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  8. Planetary Science

    Europa’s freckles

    Reddish spots and shallow pits that pepper the surface of Jupiter's moon Europa may mark regions where warmer and less dense ice percolates to the surface.

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  9. Planetary Science

    Another moon for Uranus

    Astronomers have confirmed the existence of the 21st moon known to be orbiting Uranus.

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  10. Planetary Science

    Echoes of Icequakes: Simple probe could measure Europa’s ocean and icy shell

    A football-size space probe could provide a low-cost way to determine whether there's a liquid ocean on the Jovian moon Europa.

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  11. Planetary Science

    Rocks on the ice

    Pristine fragments of a meteorite that fell January 18 in the frozen Yukon and that remained frozen until they were delivered to a NASA laboratory may reveal much about the earliest days of the solar system.

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  12. Planetary Science

    A Comet’s Long Tail Tickles Ulysses

    Stretching more than half a billion kilometers, the ion tail that Comet Hyakutake flaunted when it passed near the sun in 1996 is the longest ever recorded and suggests that otherwise invisible comets could be detected by searching for their tails.

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