Planets
- Planets
Pluto’s heart has dunes of methane ice
Pluto’s heart-shaped plains are striped with sand dunes. The sand is made of methane ice.
- Chemistry
Diamonds and more suggest unusual origins for asteroids
Inside a meteorite, scientists found sulfur and iron wrapped in tiny diamonds. Those gems hint the rock formed inside a long-lost planet.
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- Planets
Asteroids may have delivered water to early Earth
Scientists shot mineral pellets at a simulated planet. It showed an impact wouldn’t have boiled off all of an asteroid’s water.
- Planets
Flared! How a planetary ‘neighbor’ may have been fried
Hoping for life on the planet our stellar neighbor Proxima Centauri? Don’t hold your breath. Its star may have sterilized its Earthlike exoplanet.
- Planets
Here’s why Venus is so unwelcoming
Venus is hard to study. Scientists also find it hard to get money to send spacecraft there. But researchers have ideas about how to tackle both challenges.
- Space
Preparing for that trip to Mars
These scientists are working to make a human mission to Mars a reality.
- Planets
Saturn’s rings might be shredded moons
Final data from the Cassini spacecraft put a mass and a date of birth on the gas giant’s iconic rings.
- Earth
Hot on the trail of Antarctic meteorites
For intrepid scientists, spotting meteorites against Antarctica’s dazzling whiteness is easy. Then what?
- Planets
Space toilet may teach scientists how to scout for life on distant icy moons
Lessons learned from flushing space toilets may help plan life-hunting missions on distant icy moons.
- Space
Cassini spacecraft takes its final bow
Twenty years after it left Earth, NASA’s Cassini mission is about to end — with a crash into Saturn.
- Planets
Early Earth may have been a hot doughnut
Synestia is the name some scientists are giving to the smooshed shape Earth might have developed after undergoing a violent cosmic smashup early in its infancy.
