Planetary Science

  1. Planetary Science

    An early cosmic wallop for life on Earth?

    New evidence from lunar meteorites suggests that debris bombarded the moon some 3.9 billion years ago, about the same time that life may have formed on Earth.

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  2. Planetary Science

    Mars Rovers: New evidence of past water

    Twin rovers on opposite sides of the Red Planet have found additional evidence that liquid water once flowed there.

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  3. Planetary Science

    Martian water everywhere

    Combining data taken from two craft orbiting Mars with images and spectra collected by one of the Mars rovers, a scientist has found evidence that a body of water greater in area than all the Great Lakes combined once covered the Red Planet.

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  4. Planetary Science

    Tiny scope spies distant planet

    Using a telescope not much bigger than Galileo's, astronomers have discovered a planet orbiting a star 500 light-years from Earth.

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  5. Planetary Science

    Exploring Mars

    Here’s your chance to help NASA explore the surface of Mars. At its Marsoweb site, the agency provides detailed maps, engineering data, and interactive tools for studying the Red Planet’s alien terrain. Visitors are invited to look for and report important geologic features that haven’t yet been catalogued or even viewed by researchers. Go to: […]

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  6. Planetary Science

    A really cool map

    A new infrared image of Saturn's rings provides the most detailed temperature map ever taken of these icy particles.

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  7. Planetary Science

    Martian ice could be sculpting surface patterns

    Images taken by the Mars Global Surveyor suggest that most areas with geological features known as patterned ground appear at high latitudes.

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  8. Planetary Science

    Saturn Watch: Cassini finds two new moons and lightning

    The Cassini spacecraft has detected two moons that may be the smallest ever found around Saturn as well as changes in the character of lightning first detected in Saturn's atmosphere in the early 1980s.

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  9. Planetary Science

    Finding a lunar meteorite’s home

    Scientists have for the first time pinpointed the source of a meteorite that came from the moon.

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  10. Planetary Science

    The sound of rings

    When Cassini reached Saturn on June 30, it twice dashed through a gap in the planet's rings, and onboard science instruments recorded a flurry of ring dust harmlessly striking the spacecraft.

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  11. Planetary Science

    Meteorites quickly reach Earth

    Fragments from collisions between large bodies in the asteroid belt can reach Earth in as little as 100,000 years.

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  12. Planetary Science

    A little bit of Mars on Earth

    Scouring an ice field in Antarctica, scientists have made the latest discovery of a chunk of rock that was blasted from Mars and fell to Earth.

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