A study suggests Mars had a cold, subarctic climate similar to Newfoundland, based on soil analyses of Gale Crater. The finding offers new insights into the preservation of amorphous materials and Mars’ potential to support life. (Artist’s concept.) Credit: SciTechDaily.com A new study has found important clues in the Red Planet’s soil. Recent research examining … Read more
An exoplanet in its star’s habitable Goldilocks zone is now suspected of having a liquid water ocean and an atmosphere. The planet, called LHS 1140 b, is about 1.7 times the size of Earth and is located about 48 light-years away. This distant world, first discovered in 2017, now turns out to be a rocky … Read more
The crew of a NASA mission to Mars left the spacecraft after a year-long journey, never leaving Earth. The four volunteer crew members spent more than 12 months in NASA’s first simulated Mars environment at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. They left the artificial alien environment around 5 p.m. Saturday. Kelly Haston, Anca Selariu, … Read more
Four volunteer crew members who spent more than 12 months in NASA’s first simulated Mars environment at the Johnson Space Center in Houston have emerged from the artificial alien environment By means of BRIAN PD HANNON Associated Press July 7, 2024, 6:55 AM ET • 3 min read The crew of a NASA mission to … Read more
New observations of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot have revealed that the planet’s atmosphere above and around the infamous storm is surprisingly interesting and active. This image shows the region Webb observed – first the location on a NIRCam image of the entire planet (left), and then the region itself (right), imaged by Webb’s Near-InfraRed Spectrograph … Read more
This image from ESA’s Mars Express shows Aganippe Fossa, a fascinating groove at the base of Mars’s colossal Arsia Mons volcano. Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin A fascinating feature takes centre stage in this new image from ESA’s Mars Express: a dark, uneven scar cutting through the marble ground at the base of a gigantic volcano. This … Read more
Newly released images from the European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter show a breathtaking view of a huge ‘scar’ on the surface of Mars known as Aganippe Fossa. This remarkable geologic formation is a graben, a steep-sided, trench-like gorge that extends for about 370 miles (600 kilometers), longer than the Grand Canyon. These images provide … Read more
Plate tectonics, oceans and continents may be the secret ingredients for complex life on Earth. And if these geological features are rare elsewhere in the universe, that may explain why we haven’t yet discovered intelligent alien life. New research from American and Swiss geoscientists suggests that these ingredients represent missing variables in the famous Drake … Read more
silhouette of a person on top of a mountain staring at the galactic center of the Milky Way getty Every Monday I pick the celestial highlights for North America for the coming week (which also apply to the mid-northern latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere. Be sure to check View my main feed for more in-depth … Read more
A future civilization on Mars could be accompanied by a very special and resilient plant. A type of moss found in the desert – called Syntrichia caninervis—may be able to survive and thrive in the harsh conditions of Mars, according to a new paper in the journal Mars The innovation. This moss can grow in … Read more