In 2015, when NASA's New Horizons spacecraft encountered the Pluto-Charon system, the Southwest Research Institute-led science team discovered interesting, geologically active objects instead of the inert icy orbs previously ...
Astronomy
Feb 7, 2023
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652
Comet strikes on Jupiter's moon Europa could help transport critical ingredients for life found on the moon's surface to its hidden ocean of liquid water—even if the impacts don't punch completely through the moon's icy ...
Astrobiology
Dec 15, 2022
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60
Below Europa's thick icy crust is a massive, global ocean where the snow floats upwards onto inverted ice peaks and submerged ravines. The bizarre underwater snow is known to occur below ice shelves on Earth, but a new study ...
Astrobiology
Aug 15, 2022
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709
When Galileo pointed his telescope at Jupiter 400 years ago, he saw three blobs of light around the giant planet, which he at first thought were fixed stars. He kept looking, and eventually, he spotted a fourth blob and noticed ...
Space Exploration
Jul 12, 2022
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21
Europa is a prime candidate for life in our solar system, and its deep saltwater ocean has captivated scientists for decades. But it's enclosed by an icy shell that could be miles to tens of miles thick, making sampling it ...
Astrobiology
Apr 19, 2022
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1547
In 2006, the Cassini spacecraft recorded geyser curtains shooting forth from "tiger stripe" fissures near the south pole of Saturn's moon Enceladus—sometimes as much as 200 kilograms of water per second. A new study suggests ...
Astronomy
Mar 22, 2022
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1615
The first of the gas-giant orbiter's back-to-back flybys will provide a close encounter with the massive moon after over 20 years.
Space Exploration
Jun 4, 2021
5
562
Buried beneath 20 kilometers of ice, the subsurface ocean of Enceladus—one of Saturn's moons—appears to be churning with currents akin to those on Earth.
Planetary Sciences
Mar 25, 2021
0
2537
On Jupiter's icy moon Europa, powerful eruptions may spew into space, raising questions among hopeful astrobiologists on Earth: What would blast out from miles-high plumes? Could they contain signs of extraterrestrial life? ...
Space Exploration
Nov 10, 2020
0
2401
Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is a hotbed of organic molecules, harboring a soup of complex hydrocarbons similar to that thought to have existed over four billion years ago on the primordial Earth. Titan's surface, however, ...
Space Exploration
Jul 15, 2019
0
834
