MESSENGER atranda didelį kraterį Merkurijuje

Šaltinis – EurekAlert.com – MESSENGER discovers an unusual impact basin on Mercury
Didelis krateris buvo atrastas MESSENGER erdvėlaivio darytoje nuotraukoje antrojo priartėjimo prie Merkurijaus metu 2008 metų spalį. Krateris yra daugiau nei 700 km skersmens. Jis pavadintas Rembranto (Rembrandt) vardu.
Dideli krateriai yra svarbūs paviršiaus elementai, atsirandantys susiduriant asteroidui su planeta. Rembranto krateris susidarė prieš 3,9 mln. [...]

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Electrical Activity on Titan Confirmed (UT)

Research has just been published proving Saturn’s moon is sparkling with electrical activity. Scientists are in general agreement that organic molecules, the precursors to life on Earth, are a consequence of lightning in the atmosphere. Now, using data from the Huygens probe that descended through Titan’s atmosphere in 2005 and continued transmitting for 90 minutes [...]

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Liquid Lake on Titan Confirmed (UT)

NASA’s Cassini mission has detected liquid hydrocarbons on Saturn’s moon Titan, in a large, glassy lake near the moon’s south pole. Before the Cassini mission began, scientists thought Titan would have global oceans of methane, ethane and other light hydrocarbons. But after more than 40 close flybys of Titan by Cassini, data showed no global [...]

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MESSENGER Provides New Insights on Mercury (UT)

Data from the MESSENGER spacecraft’s first flyby of Mercury in January of 2008 are now turning into science results. Several scientists discussed their findings at a press conference today highlighting the MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging mission, the first spacecraft to visit Mercury since NASA’s Mariner 10 made three flyby passes in 1974 [...]

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Solar Sail To Launch This Summer (UT)

NASA’s Marshall and Ames Research Centers will team up with the commercial space company SpaceX to launch and deploy a solar sail this summer. A bread-box sized payload called NanoSail-D will travel to space onboard a SpaceX Falcon 1 Rocket and if all goes well, it will be the first fully deployed solar sail in [...]

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Phoenix: Mars Soil Can Support Life (UT)

Another groundbreaking discovery from Mars: Phoenix has analysed martian regolith containing minerals more commonly found in soil here on Earth, and the acidity is not a hindrance for life to thrive. These new and very exciting results come after preliminary analyses of a scoop of regolith by the landers “wet lab” known as the Microscopy, [...]

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New Details on Venus’ Clouds from Venus Express (UT)

Mysterious clouds blanket Venus, obscuring our sister planet from view. These clouds billow up between 45 and 70 km above the surface, and in the upper part of the atmosphere, clouds swirl by at a rate of 300 km/h, driven by fierce winds. Composed mainly of sulfuric acid along with chlorine and fluorine, these clouds [...]

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Moonlets Cause Constant Changes in Saturn’s F Ring (UT)

Scientists from the Cassini mission are finding Saturn’s rings to be very dynamic; constantly changing and evolving. This is especially true for one of Saturn’s outermost rings, the F ring. This ring can change rapidly, sometimes on a timescale of hours, and astronomers believe it’s probably the only location in the solar system where large [...]

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Mars Gullies Produced by Dry Granular Debris and Not by Recent Water Flow (UT)

The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) on board NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) observed what appeared to be fresh gullies formed by a rapid release of water on the Martian surface in 2006. However, new computer models simulating the creation of gullies on the surface of Mars suggest that they are in fact created [...]

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Cassini Finds Patterns and Rhythm in Saturn’s Rings (UT)

Cassini has been orbiting around Saturn for almost four years, and amazingly, the spacecraft keeps discovering new and unexpected features about this world and its system of rings and moons. Recently, in two of Saturn’s rings, Cassini found orderly lines of densely grouped, boulder-size icy particles that extend outward across the rings like ripples from [...]

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