Planetary Science
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Planetary ScienceSaturn’s rings: A panoramic perspective
Sailing high above Saturn's equator, NASA's Cassini spacecraft took the most sweeping views of the planet's icy rings ever recorded.
By Ron Cowen -
Planetary ScienceA crack at life
New images of ancient cracks on Mars suggest that liquid may have percolated through underground rock on the Red Planet, providing a possible habitat for primitive life.
By Ron Cowen -
Planetary ScienceStormy Weather in Space: Craft take panoramic view of solar eruptions
Twin spacecraft have for the first time tracked solar storms, known as coronal mass ejections, from their birth in the lower depths of the sun's atmosphere all the way to Earth's orbit.
By Ron Cowen -
Planetary ScienceSolar craft reaches a new low
The Ulysses spacecraft passed directly below the sun on Feb. 7, looking up at its south pole, a feat the craft has done only twice before.
By Ron Cowen -
Planetary ScienceTitan’s organic cloud
The Cassini spacecraft has imaged a huge cloud that engulfs most of the north pole of Saturn's icy moon Titan and could be a source of the moon's hydrocarbon lakes.
By Ron Cowen -
Planetary ScienceSolar craft get into position
With the assist of gravitational boosts from the moon, twin spacecraft have completed a series of maneuvers that will enable them to take three-dimensional images of the sun.
By Ron Cowen -
Planetary ScienceStellar death may spawn solar system
Material shed by a dying star might give birth to planets.
By Ron Cowen -
Planetary ScienceFrom the January 2, 1937, issue
The beauty of snow, a very large number, and a robot brain machine.
By Science News -
Planetary ScienceThe Big Picture: Cassini spies Titan’s tall mountains
A spacecraft has discovered the largest mountains known on Titan, Saturn's smog-shrouded moon.
By Ron Cowen -
Planetary ScienceCraft reveals Martian site of ancient water
The distribution of materials in this composite image of the Nili Fossae region of Mars tells scientists that water resided there no more recently than nearly 4 billion years ago. Green indicates clay minerals that formed in a wet environment. Red depicts the mineral olivine, which formed about 3.8 billion years ago, according to the […]
By Ron Cowen -
Planetary ScienceSigns of recent water on Mars
Pictures showing fresh deposits of bright material on two Martian gullies provide the most compelling evidence yet that water flowed on parts of the Red Planet during the last few years.
By Ron Cowen -
Planetary ScienceSo long, Surveyor
After 8 years of relaying pictures, topographic maps, magnetic field data, and compositional information from above the Red Planet, NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft appears to have called it quits.
By Ron Cowen