Pluto has long been viewed as a distant, cold and mostly dead world, but the first spacecraft to pass by it last year revealed many surprises about this distant dwarf planet.
Space Exploration
Feb 23, 2017
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228
(Phys.org)—A pair of researchers with the Physical Research Laboratory in India studying data sent back from NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) probe has found possible evidence of the development of ...
Thin, blade-like walls, some as tall as a 16-story building, dominate a previously undocumented network of intersecting ridges on Mars, found in images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Space Exploration
Jan 26, 2017
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136
Pluto's relationship with its moon Charon is one of the more unusual interactions in the solar system due to Charon's size and proximity. It's more than half of Pluto's diameter and orbits only 12,000 or so miles away. To ...
Space Exploration
Jan 9, 2017
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308
Powerful solar storms can charge up the soil in frigid, permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles, and may possibly produce "sparks" that could vaporize and melt the soil, perhaps as much as meteoroid impacts, according ...
Space Exploration
Jan 6, 2017
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For the first time since the twin Voyager spacecraft missions in 1979, scientists have produced far-infrared maps of Jupiter using NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, SOFIA. These maps were created from ...
Space Exploration
Jan 5, 2017
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Erosion-carved troughs that grow and branch during multiple Martian years may be infant versions of larger features known as Martian "spiders," which are radially patterned channels found only in the south polar region of ...
Space Exploration
Dec 20, 2016
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245
(Phys.org)—A team of researchers with Purdue University has found evidence from lunar-mapping spacecraft that the moon may have large lava tubes that could conceivably be used to house astronauts and supplies. In their ...
As a cosmic dust magnet, Saturn's C ring gives away its youth. Once thought formed in an older, primordial era, the ring may be but a mere babe – less than 100 million years old, according to Cornell-led astronomers in ...
Space Exploration
Dec 9, 2016
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Freshly harvested data from NASA's Cassini mission reveals that Saturn's bulging core and twisting gravitational forces offer clues to the ages of the planet's moons. Astronomers now believe that the ringed planet's moons ...
Space Exploration
Dec 7, 2016
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