The BepiColombo Mercury Transfer Module (MTM), which is currently on an ambitious mission to the best planet with a payload of two orbiters, has sent us its first image from space.
NASA has had quite a bit on its plate recently between its Hubble Space Telescope entering safe mode, the prolonged silence from its Opportunity rover, and a technical issue with its Curiosity rover on Mars. But one bright spot appears to be the return of some science operations by Curiosity following a memory anomaly…
Mercury is the best planet, in my humble but well-researched opinion. Sure, it may be small, rocky, and lacking an atmosphere, but how it came to look the way it does absolutely baffles scientists. It might even have water and carbon hidden away from the beginning of the Solar System. Tonight, scientists from the…
Jupiter’s moon Europa, with its subsurface ocean, may have what it takes to foster alien life. A mission to this icy moon is on the wishlist of many astronomers, but new research suggests it won’t be easy to land spacecraft there: Its surface seems to be littered with icy spikes, the tallest of which measure five…
The Saturn-orbiting Cassini-Huygens spacecraft died fighting—in fact, it kept gathering data right up until its final plummet into the gas giant. The daring plunge revealed incredible new things about the charismatic planet—like organic ring rain.
Astronomers have confirmed thousands of planets outside our Solar System, but not a single exomoon. New research is bolstering the case for a suspected exomoon first detected last year, but scientists say the evidence is still not definitive.
A German-French probe called MASCOT is now collecting valuable data from the surface of Ryugu, an asteroid located 190 million miles from Earth. But it better get cracking—the shoebox-sized probe has only 16 hours to live.
Japan’s MINERVA-II rovers have sent back a batch of new photos from Ryugu, including a stunning new video taken from the asteroid’s rocky surface.
The discovery of enigmatic dust storms on Titan means the Solar System’s most exotic moon just took it up a notch.
During its 15th flyby of Jupiter, NASA’s Juno spacecraft captured a rare image of a Jovian “brown barge.” It’s not nearly as impressive or picturesque as the Great Red Spot, but this big brown splotch is yet another reminder of many complex atmospheric processes happening on our Solar System’s largest planet.
As the planet-wide Martian dust storm clears, NASA scientists have increased their efforts to contact the nearly 15-year-old Opportunity rover, which has been silent since June 10.
A new 360-degree panorama captured by the Curiosity Rover is one of its best yet.
Sitting atop Saturn’s north pole is one of the Solar System’s most striking weather patterns: a rotating, color-changing hexagon slightly wider than Earth. A new study shows there’s another hexagon directly on top of the first one—and that’s weird.
Jupiter is strange for a number of reasons. It’s the biggest planet in our Solar System, of course. It harbors perhaps the most intense radiation environments. And, according to a new study, it has a magnetic field unlike that of any other known planet.
Sometimes, things line up just perfectly. For example, back in 2017, the Hubble Space Telescope got a full view of Saturn’s northern aurora. The newly-released image above isn’t exactly what Hubble saw—but it’s still exciting, I promise.
NASA’s Galileo spacecraft surprised scientists when it revealed that Jupiter’s moon Ganymede generated its own magnetic field. But new research shows Ganymede also creates incredibly powerful waves that rocket particles to enormous energies.
NASA doesn’t just randomly decide what telescopes and satellites to shoot into space and what planet to study next. Instead, a committee of outside scientists drafts a set of goals and recommendations in what’s called a decadal survey. And though it notes some financial setbacks, a midterm review of the last decadal…
By searching for the telltale, periodic dimming of light from distant stars, astronomers can spot orbiting exoplanets tens to hundreds of light-years away. But how do they know what these bodies look like? Perhaps they first try to imagine how the planets in our own Solar System might appear to a faraway alien world.
NASA’s newest exoplanet-hunting spacecraft has started taking scientific data as of last week, according to a NASA release.
