Astronomers watch Io’s atmosphere collapse during a Jupiter eclipse
A team of scientists has documented atmospheric changes on Io, Jupiter’s volcanically active satellite, as the giant planet casts its shadow over the moon’s surface during daily eclipses. A new study concludes that Io’s thin atmosphere, which consists primarily of sulphur dioxide gas emitted from volcanoes, collapses as the sulphur ...
Why hasn’t gravity rounded off Miranda’s jagged surface?
Uranus’ moon, Miranda, is too small for gravity to have rounded off the jagged surface. It is believed that Miranda is an ice moon, with 1,000 times less mass than the Earth’s Moon. In its past, tidal heating due to the extremes of its orbit allowed the interior ice to melt, and behave in a similar geological way to the crust and mantle on ...
Jupiter moon’s ‘radiation shower’ could help in hunt for life
2018年7月23日 · The ‘scratched’ surface of the icy moon Europa. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech New comprehensive mapping of the radiation pummelling Jupiter’s icy moon Europa reveals where scientists should look – and how deep they’ll have to go – when searching for signs of habitability and biosignatures.
The Martian moon Phobos reveals its colourful layers while in a full ...
2019年5月13日 · This full moon view is better for studying material composition, whereas half-moon views are better for looking at surface textures. “With the half-moon views, we could see how rough or smooth the surface is and how it’s layered,” says Joshua Bandfield, a THEMIS co-investigator and senior research scientist at the Space Sciences Institute ...
Water on the Moon shifts around during the day
2019年3月11日 · The change in surface temperature throughout the dayside on the lunar surface can cause water on the surface to move location comments Data from the SwRI-led LAMP instrument aboard NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter indicate that water molecules scattered on the surface of the Moon are more common at higher latitudes and tend to hop around ...
More evidence arises for existence of Europa’s subsurface ocean
2017年12月5日 · Jupiter’s moon, Europa, has signs of plate tectonics visible on its surface with the presence of a series of cracks. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute A study conducted by Brown University in the United States has provided more evidence that the icy surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa experiences similar plate tectonics to what we ...
Barton: “The Moon is a continent-sized area begging to be explored”
The Moon is a continent-sized area begging to be explored and once reliable and cost-effective transportation systems exist to access its surface, there will be countless people wanting to go and see what they can see and do there.
Here’s where India’s Chandrayaan-2 will land near the Moon’s …
2019年8月20日 · On a grid of the Moon’s surface, it would fall at 70.9 degrees south latitude and 22.7 degrees east longitude. It’s about 600 kilometres (375 miles) from the south pole. And it’s the preferred landing site for India’s Moon mission, Chandrayaan-2, which is scheduled to touch down on 6 September 2019, between 4:00p.m. and 5:00p.m.
Enceladus’ ‘fountains’ power up farther from Saturn - All About …
Scores of narrow jets burst from the surface along great fractures known as “tiger stripes” and contribute to the plume. The activity is understood to originate from the moon’s subsurface ocean of salty liquid water, which is venting into space. Cassini has shown that more than 90 per cent of the material in the plume is water vapour.
‘Dragonfly’ drones could explore Titan’s surface
Titan has been the subject of much intense research for decades, as it is the only moon in the Solar System with an atmosphere. So in 2004, the Huygens probe detached from the Cassini spacecraft, plummeted through the moon’s thick, orange atmosphere and analysed the surface.