For future colonists, Mars’ Utopia Planitia or “Plains of Paradise” may be rather aptly named despite its less than appealing appearance. In a paper highlighted last week on NASA.gov, scientists using the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s shallow ground penetrating radar (SHARAD) have concluded that the region contains a volume of ice equivalent to the amount of […]
When NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft sailed past Pluto on July 14th, 2015, it gathered a treasure trove of information regarding what used to be the 9th planet. Among the most intriguing was an odd “heart shaped” feature on Pluto’s surface which is clearly of more recent origin than what surrounds it. Now, a new study […]
Did the United States foolishly overlook what should have been an obvious call to action when DOD’s (not NASA’s) Clementine mission discovered water ice at the lunar poles? And is there still time to do something about it? Spacepolicyonline’s Marcia Smith has a writeup on comments made by U.S. Representative Jim Bridenstine at a meeting […]
The solar system just keeps getting wetter and wetter. According to a new study published in Geophysical Research Letters, Enceladus is not the only Saturnian moon harboring a global ocean beneath its frozen surface. Based on new modeling, Dione, the fourth largest moon in the system, can now be called a water world as well. […]
A paper published in Geophysical Research Letters concludes that in addition to whatever ice reserves the dwarf planet Ceres may harbor under its surface, (and they could be substantial, including even a subsurface ocean) the largest body in the main asteroid belt has also likely accumulated quite a bit of water ice in permanently shadowed […]
Just in time for yesterday’s transit of innermost planet Mercury across the face of the sun, NASA released the first global elevation model of the sun scorched world, courtesy of the MESSENGER spacecraft. While Mercury is hardly at the top of anyone’s list of habitable planets, it is at least worth recalling that among its […]
A slew of recent discoveries point to our solar system being a much wetter place than we once thought it was. From permanently shadowed ice on the Moon, to seasonal Recurrent Slope Linea evidence on Mars, and subsurface oceans on outer planet moons, space offers an abundant supply of life’s most vital element. Melting a […]
The journal Nature has published a fascinating paper which provides convincing evidence that the Moon’s axis shifted by roughly 5 degrees some 3 billion years ago. What makes the work more than a matter of scientific curiosity however, is the fact that the shift was traced by using data from a variety of spacecraft to […]
Ceres Photographed on January 15 / Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA Closing in on its March 6 rendezvous with the dwarf planet Ceres, NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has provided its best image yet of the enigmatic ice world which is the largest object in the main asteroid belt. The images, shown below in a looped 2 second YouTube […]
Image Credit: Lunar Mission One Lunar Mission One, a private effort aimed at drilling at least 20 meters deep into the Moon’s South pole was announced in London today. As with an increasing number of missions, inital funding is being sought through a crowd-sourced KickStarter campaign. In this case key incentives are a digital memory […]
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