Cassini finds hints of activity at Saturn moon Dione

(Phys.org) —From a distance, most of the Saturnian moon Dione resembles a bland cueball. Thanks to close-up images of a 500-mile-long (800-kilometer-long) mountain on the moon from NASA's Cassini spacecraft, scientists ...

Bacterium from Canadian High Arctic and life on Mars

(Phys.org) —The temperature in the permafrost on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian high Arctic is nearly as cold as that of the surface of Mars. So the recent discovery by a McGill University led team of scientists of a ...

Cassini spies Earth's twin planet from Saturn orbit

(Phys.org) —A distant world gleaming in sunlight, Earth's twin planet, Venus, shines like a bright beacon in images taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft in orbit around Saturn.

Liquid water near Europa's surface a rarity

(Phys.org)—Europa, the enigmatic moon of Jupiter, is believed to be home to a subsurface ocean of liquid water. However, future missions to explore Europa's ocean may need to dig deep. Research suggests that water does ...

Developing miniaturized spectrometer-on-a-chip

(Phys.org) -- The Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) is big. It's powerful and it discovered, among other things, that Saturn's mysterious moon Enceladus was one of the very few worlds in the solar system that radiated ...

Enceladus plume is a new kind of plasma laboratory

(Phys.org) -- Recent findings from NASA's Cassini mission reveal that Saturn's geyser moon Enceladus provides a special laboratory for watching unusual behavior of plasma, or hot ionized gas. In these recent findings, some ...

Seeking signs of life at the glacier's edge

Microbes living at the edges of Arctic ice sheets could help researchers pinpoint evidence for similar microorganisms that could have evolved on Mars, the Jovian moon Europa, or Saturn's moon Enceladus.

Cassini's last flyby of Enceladus until 2015

On May 2, the Cassini spacecraft will be swooping past the moon we all love to love — Enceladus — and coming within 74 kilometers (46 miles) of its fractured, jet-spewing surface.

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