Study shows the Earth formed from dry, rocky building blocks

Billions of years ago, in the giant disk of dust, gas, and rocky material that orbited our young sun, larger and larger bodies coalesced to eventually give rise to the planets, moons, and asteroids we see today.

Rising silicon-rich snow in the Earth's outer core

Deep below the Earth's surface lies the outer core, which is made up 2000-km thick liquid iron alloy layer. Despite being located 3000-km deep from the surface, it still affects our surface habitability as it is the region ...

Image: Testing InSight

Testing continued on NASA's Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, or InSight, spacecraft on inside the Astrotech processing facility at Vandenberg Air Force Base in early March 2018.

Magnetic memories of a metal world

4.5 billion years ago in the violent, high-speed environment of the early solar system, a protoplanet roughly the size of Mars was involved in a series of fierce collisions with other large planetary bodies.

Vesta—Ceres' little sister

Only around 60 million kilometres closer to the Sun than Ceres, another large rock is orbiting in the remote asteroid belt: Vesta. Although its diameter of approximately 530 kilometres makes it a bit too small to be counted ...

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