Scientists at Southwest Research Institute combined dynamical, thermal, and chemical models of the Moon's formation to explain the relative lack of volatile elements in lunar rocks. Lunar rocks closely resemble Earth rocks ...
Space Exploration
Nov 9, 2015
3
741
Using a new process in planetary formation modeling, where planets grow from tiny bodies called "pebbles," Southwest Research Institute scientists can explain why Mars is so much smaller than Earth. This same process also ...
Space Exploration
Oct 26, 2015
39
743
Researchers at Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and Queen's University in Canada have unraveled the mystery of how Jupiter and Saturn likely formed. This discovery, which changes our view of how all planets might have ...
Astronomy
Aug 19, 2015
34
592
An international team of planetary scientists determined that the Moon formed nearly 100 million years after the start of the solar system (4.470 billion years ago), according to a paper to be published April 3 in Nature. ...
Space Exploration
Apr 2, 2014
6
0
(Phys.org) —The surface of Mercury is rather different from those of well-known rocky bodies like the Moon and Mars. Early images from the Mariner 10 spacecraft unveiled a planet covered by smooth plains and cratered plains ...
Space Exploration
Jul 3, 2013
0
0
On November 26, 2011, the Mars Science Laboratory began a 253-day, 560-million-kilometer journey to deliver the Curiosity rover to the Red Planet. En route, the Southwest Research Institute-led Radiation Assessment Detector ...
Space Exploration
May 30, 2013
18
0
More than a 150 years ago, before Neptune was ever sighted in the night sky, French mathematician Urbain Le Verrier predicted the planet's existence based on small deviations in the motion of Uranus. In a paper published ...
Astronomy
May 10, 2012
0
0
For the last few decades, space scientists have generally accepted that the bubble of gas and magnetic fields generated by the sun – known as the heliosphere – moves through space, creating three distinct boundary ...
Space Exploration
May 10, 2012
3
0
New research reveals that the Archean era — a formative time for early life from 3.8 billion years ago to 2.5 billion years ago — experienced far more major asteroid impacts than had been previously thought, with ...
Space Exploration
Apr 25, 2012
2
0
(PhysOrg.com) -- Using data from NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) spacecraft, an international team of researchers has measured neutral "alien" particles entering our solar system from interstellar space. A suite ...
Space Exploration
Jan 31, 2012
0
0
