https://phys.org/space-news/planetary-sciences/ en-us Planetary science and exoplanets exploration news stories and features from Phys.org Scientists have discovered a crater on the moon that's bigger than the Roman Colosseum and is the result of a powerful impact two years ago that initially went undetected. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-nasa-spacecraft-huge-crater-moon.html Space Exploration Thu, 17 Sep 2026 04:12:32 EDT news708837122 Seasonal changes redistribute enough water around Earth to shift the planet's center of mass back and forth by fractions of an inch relative to its geometric center. NASA scientists are on the case, tracking the oscillations because Earth's center of mass is a crucial reference point for satellite navigation and elevation measurements. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-monsoons-oceans-shift-earth-center.html Planetary Sciences Wed, 16 Sep 2026 16:30:01 EDT news708789181 Astronomers have confirmed a world less than a million years old as the youngest known planet, using data from archives. Called Elias 2-24 b, the baby planet is still whirling in its natal disk of dust and gas. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-newfound-baby-planet-youngest-world.html Planetary Sciences Wed, 16 Sep 2026 16:00:02 EDT news708781861 A 178-year-old mystery surrounding one of the earliest recorded examples of space weather affecting technology has been solved by an international team led by Lancaster University. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-minute-delay-solar-storm-disrupted.html Planetary Sciences Wed, 16 Sep 2026 09:00:07 EDT news708682561 Scientists from Trinity College Dublin have developed a way to unravel changing weather patterns on distant worlds. Using this approach, they discovered that the weather on a well-studied brown dwarf, SIMP 0136, previously linked to northern lights-like phenomena, is largely shaped by just two dominant processes: changes in temperature and the vertical structure of its clouds. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-world-years-reveals-jupiter-weather.html Space Exploration Wed, 16 Sep 2026 03:00:01 EDT news708599341 Launched on Oct. 20, 2018, the joint ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission has traveled for almost eight years, using a carefully planned but eventful sequence of planetary flybys and solar-electric propulsion to gradually approach its destination, Mercury. The mission is now entering the final stage of its journey to the smallest and innermost planet of our solar system. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-laser-altimeter-bela-ready-explore.html Planetary Sciences Tue, 15 Sep 2026 11:00:01 EDT news708687483 In May 2024, Earth experienced its most intense geomagnetic storm since the Halloween storms of 2003. This "superstorm" filled night skies in many parts of the world with colorful aurorae, and it disrupted some infrastructure, such as GPS signals used by agricultural equipment. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-solar-superstorm-earth-belt.html Planetary Sciences Mon, 14 Sep 2026 12:00:12 EDT news708601125 The discovery of water in dark craters at the moon's poles has sparked a "moon rush" to establish bases there, followed by villages, cities and heavy industry. How sustainable is this rush? https://phys.org/news/2026-09-cities-moon-isnt-scientists.html Space Exploration Mon, 14 Sep 2026 00:00:02 EDT news708349073 Scientists have discovered that there is ice deep inside planets like Neptune and Uranus and want to find out what form it takes and how it behaves. They cannot dig for it and transport it all the way back to Earth, so they do the next best thing: recreate those extreme conditions in the lab. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-scientists-strange-ice-interiors-neptune.html Planetary Sciences Fri, 11 Sep 2026 14:40:08 EDT news708352479 The sun is capable of great things. In massive eruptions, it repeatedly hurls particles and radiation into space. This solar bombardment can be dangerous for technical infrastructure on Earth: For example, satellites and transformers in substations can be damaged. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-sun-largest-sunspots-potential-trigger.html Planetary Sciences Thu, 10 Sep 2026 11:40:06 EDT news708251101 Mars is a terrible place to build a house. It's bitterly cold, blasted by radiation and a near vacuum. Not to mention that the building materials, even for a modest shelter, could spend months hurtling through space before construction begins. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-scientists-3d-houses-mars-yeast.html Space Exploration Thu, 10 Sep 2026 11:00:01 EDT news708089999 The joint BepiColombo mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is settling into orbit around Mercury after an eight-year journey. In early September, BepiColombo's two orbiters, the Mercury Planetary Orbiter and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter, separated from the transfer module. The orbiters will enter Mercury's orbit in November and separate from each other in December. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-bepicolombo-mercury-particle-bombardment.html Planetary Sciences Thu, 10 Sep 2026 10:40:09 EDT news708249205 Nitrogen is a key ingredient in the biomolecules that form the building blocks of life. Yet as an unbonded gas, it is far more likely to drift into space than to lock itself into solid compounds, making it difficult for astronomers to trace its journey to Earth in the distant past. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-asteroid-ryugu-reveals-nitrogen-complex.html Astrobiology Thu, 10 Sep 2026 10:30:11 EDT news708252153 It is thought the sun may have engulfed a super-Earth-sized planet early in its history. Now, a new study has gone a step further, suggesting that such an event may have left behind detectable clues inside the sun that could still be visible today. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-fingerprints-sun-reveal-swallowed-planet.html Planetary Sciences Thu, 10 Sep 2026 09:20:02 EDT news708248158 Mercury's surface is riddled with wrinkles, evidence of a once-larger planet that has shrunk over time. A new study finds that Mercury may have contracted 10% to 30% more than previously thought—a loss of nearly 12 miles (19 kilometers) of total diameter since the planet formed—due to debris from impact craters obscuring signs of the planet's shrinking. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-mercury-thought.html Planetary Sciences Thu, 10 Sep 2026 09:00:05 EDT news707736901 An international team led by researchers from the University of São Paulo (USP) in Brazil has developed an innovative method to identify stars that have consumed the planets around them. The technique detects variations in the abundance of beryllium, a relatively rare chemical element, and could open a new window into studying the evolution of planetary systems. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-beryllium-stars-swallowed-rocky-planets.html Astronomy Wed, 09 Sep 2026 17:30:01 EDT news708191461 Until just over a decade ago, ring systems were thought to be exclusive to the giant planets of the solar system, such as Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. However, in 2013, a small body barely 250 kilometers (155 miles) in diameter, located at nearly 17 times the Earth–sun distance, joined this small group. The object is Chariklo, a small body orbiting between Saturn and Uranus, around which astronomers discovered two dense rings. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-jwst-chariklo-invisible.html Planetary Sciences Wed, 09 Sep 2026 14:00:04 EDT news708089366 Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) scientists used simulations to understand the role disruptive impacts play on icy moons with subsurface oceans in our solar system. A recent paper published in the journal Nature Astronomy concludes that disruptive impacts can affect the presence and persistence of subsurface oceans in these moons but do not seem to create new oceans. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-giant-impacts-small-icy-moons.html Astrobiology Tue, 08 Sep 2026 15:40:10 EDT news708093484 For the first time, scientists used the combined power of NASA's Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes to study some of the most far-flung bodies in our solar system, trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs). Some are the smallest and faintest ever directly seen. The researchers unexpectedly found fewer small TNOs than expected and that the colors of these bodies followed the same relationships as those of their larger family members. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-hubble-webb-solar.html Astronomy Tue, 08 Sep 2026 12:05:13 EDT news708087880 UK astronomers have uncovered new clues about the origin of 3I/ATLAS—only the third known object from beyond the solar system ever spotted. In a new paper published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, researchers reveal that the comet formed in extremely cold conditions, far from any star. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-interstellar-visitor-3iatlas-clues-frozen.html Astronomy Tue, 08 Sep 2026 11:50:01 EDT news708080978 We usually think of auroras as beautiful lights in the night sky. I see them as visible traces of a connection between the sun, Earth's magnetic field and the atmosphere. This led me to an origin-of-life question: Could the planetary structure that produces auroras also have organized chemical reactions on early Earth? https://phys.org/news/2026-09-early-earth-auroral-belts-natural.html Astrobiology Mon, 07 Sep 2026 20:40:04 EDT news707989182 In 1967, a solar storm nearly triggered World War III by jamming early-warning radar systems in the United States, causing U.S. leaders to think the Soviet Union was responsible. Though society averted catastrophe thanks to timely information from solar forecasters, the threat from space weather remains real. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-economic-solar-storms-pose-power.html Planetary Sciences Mon, 07 Sep 2026 11:40:01 EDT news707994751 As the BepiColombo mission prepares to enter the final phase of its journey to Mercury, a series of studies conducted by researchers at the University of Liège and KU Leuven sheds new light on the early stages of the evolution of the planet closest to the sun. Using experimental petrology, the researchers are reconstructing in the laboratory the formation of Mercury's core, the crystallization of its magma ocean and the formation of its mantle. The studies are published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters, Nature Communications and Advances in Geochemistry and Cosmochemistry. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-mercury-graphite-crust-core.html Planetary Sciences Fri, 04 Sep 2026 16:00:01 EDT news707746443 In a new Nature Communications study, researchers developed a universal scaling framework for the strength of granular asteroids, showing that their tensile strength can be predicted from the size and shape of their constituent particles. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-particle-size-asteroid-strength-revealing.html Planetary Sciences Fri, 04 Sep 2026 14:20:06 EDT news707737328 Venus is one of the solar system's most unusual planets. It may sometimes be called "Earth's twin" because of its similar size and density, but it rotates on its axis in the opposite direction of most planets, has surface temperatures hot enough to melt lead and lacks a moon. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-doesnt-venus-moon.html Planetary Sciences Thu, 03 Sep 2026 13:10:02 EDT news707657547 Two Mercury-bound spacecraft left their mother ship behind on Thursday and headed down the home stretch of their nearly decade-long voyage to the solar system's smallest and closest-to-the-sun planet. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-pair-spacecraft-closer-mercury-decade.html Planetary Sciences Thu, 03 Sep 2026 12:30:02 EDT news707656831 Recent observations with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have revealed a giant, evolving, 10-sided atmospheric wave encircling Saturn's south pole. This discovery marks the first time a large, regular-sided jet pattern has been observed in the planet's southern hemisphere. The feature appears remarkably similar to Saturn's famous hexagon at its north pole but is also distinctly different, suggesting scientists may be witnessing a new atmospheric phenomenon developing on the iconic gas giant. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-hubble-tracks-decagon-encircling-saturn.html Astronomy Wed, 02 Sep 2026 16:40:07 EDT news707580122 High above Earth, thin veils of metallic haze drift through the edge of space. Known as sporadic E layers, these high-altitude "clouds" form from the vaporized dust of burned-up meteors, earning their name from the unpredictable way they emerge and then dissipate. Now, new results from a NASA sounding rocket—a suborbital research rocket—that flew five detectors through one of these layers simultaneously reveal unexpected complexity in the layer for the first time. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-nasa-rocket-multi-radio-disrupting.html Planetary Sciences Wed, 02 Sep 2026 14:20:10 EDT news707570942 Astronomers at Lund University in Sweden have found evidence of exocomets—comets in other solar systems—orbiting a young star similar to our sun. The observations point to a possible mechanism for how water might be transported from the cold outer regions of the planetary system to regions where planets form. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-young-sunlike-reveals-comets-planets.html Astrobiology Wed, 02 Sep 2026 12:20:01 EDT news707564222 When Blue Origin's New Glenn launch vehicle accidentally exploded during a static test fire in May 2026, the explosion generated low frequency soundwaves below the range of human hearing. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-blue-explosion-infrasound.html Space Exploration Wed, 02 Sep 2026 07:40:03 EDT news707543821