Turns out the Moon is even older than we thought—if just by a few dozen million years. Using samples of lunar material collected by Apollo 14 astronauts Alan Shepard and Ed Mitchell in February 1971, a team of researchers from UCLA, the University of Chicago, and Princeton have determined that the Moon must have formed within the first…
Tag: space
Revisit Our First (and Only) Landing on Titan
When you think of spacecraft landings on other worlds, you probably first think of Mars, the Moon, Venus, and comet 67P (if you’ve been following along over the past couple of years.) But—in addition to the asteroid Eros and hard impacts on a comet and Mercury—Saturn’s moon Titan was also visited by an alien (i.e.,…
“Alien Megastructure” May Actually Be Scraps of an Ingested Planet
For the past couple of years the astronomy world has been abuzz with news of the strange and randomly-occurring dimming of the star KIC 8462852—aka Tabby’s Star—located 1,276 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus and recently observed by NASA’s Kepler spacecraft. Hypotheses about the cause range from conservative (a transiting cloud of comets) to quite speculative (an “alien megastructure” constructed around the…
Could This Asteroid Hit Earth? Astronomers Go “Back in Time” to Find the Answer
Astronomers are always watching the skies for observations of near-Earth asteroids—”space rocks” that have orbits close to Earth’s and, in the case of potentially hazardous asteroids (aka PHAs), those whose orbits could actually cross Earth’s and are larger than 150 meters (500 ft) across. When a new one of these is discovered—no small feat considering that…
Asteroid 16 Psyche Could Truly Be a Psychedelic Little World—AND Worth Quadrillions
NASA recently announced the go-ahead for a new Discovery-level mission that would send a spacecraft to explore 16 Psyche, a 130-mile-wide asteroid in the Solar System’s main belt between Mars and Jupiter. 16 Psyche is a relatively small world but is made almost entirely of metals—some of them what we’d consider precious on Earth, like nickel, gold, and…
Light and Dark: the Two Faces of Dione
Saturn’s moon Dione (pronounced DEE-oh-nee) is a heavily-cratered, 700-mile-wide world of ice and rock, its surface slashed by signature “wispy lines” that mark the bright faces of sheer ice cliffs. But Dione has some strange colorations too, evident here in a global map created in 2014 from Cassini images. Its leading half—the side that faces “forward” as…
Hubble Detects Dusty Shadows Hinting at a Hidden Exoplanet
When searching nearby stars for exoplanets, astronomers typically either look for the dimming of the stars’ light as planets pass in front of them or try to see if the stars themselves exhibit a slight wobble due to the gravitational tug of orbiting worlds. But recently scientists using the Hubble Space Telescope have found a curious…
Eppur Si Muove: Galileo’s Big Night, 407 Years Ago Today
407 years ago tonight, on January 7, 1610, the Pisan astronomer Galileo Galilei looked up at a brilliantly-shining Jupiter through his own handmade telescope and saw three bright little “stars” next to it, stirring his natural scientific curiosity. Further observations over the next several nights showed that the planet wasn’t moving relative to the little “stars” as it…
After 15 Years NASA’s TIMED Spacecraft Keeps On Ticking
It may not be the first (or even second or third) satellite mission that comes to mind but NASA and JHUAPL’s TIMED mission continues to deliver invaluable data about Earth’s upper atmosphere over 15 years after its launch on Dec. 7, 2001. In fact its extended long-duration stay in orbit has allowed TIMED (Thermosphere Ionosphere Mesosphere Energetics and Dynamics)…
Bright Clouds Make a Comeback on Titan’s North Pole
Floating high above Titan’s hydrocarbon lakes, wispy clouds have finally started to return to the moon’s northern latitudes…but in much less numbers than expected. Models of Titan’s climate have predicted more cloud activity during early northern summer than what Cassini has observed so far, suggesting that the current understanding of the giant moon’s changing seasons is…
Pluto Has Giant Versions of Ice Formations Found on Earth
Using a model similar to what meteorologists use to forecast weather and a computer simulation of the physics of evaporating ices, scientists have found evidence of snow and ice features on Pluto that, until now, had only been seen on Earth. Read the rest of this story here: Scientists Offer Sharper Insight into Pluto’s Bladed Terrain
Solar Storms Set Off Tiny Explosions In Shadowed Lunar Soil
Powerful solar storms can charge up the soil in frigid, permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles, and may possibly produce “sparks” that could vaporize and melt the soil—perhaps as much as meteoroid impacts, according to new NASA-funded research. Read the rest of this article from NASA here: Solar Storms Could Spark Lunar Soil
Lights in the Dark 