New observations from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter indicate that the crust and upper mantle of Mars are stiffer and colder than previously thought.
The findings suggest any liquid water that might exist below the planet's surface, and any possible organisms living in that water, would be located deeper than scientists had suspected.
ESA's Venus Express has detected the molecule hydroxyl on another planet for the first time. This detection gives scientists an important new tool to unlock the workings of Venus's dense atmosphere.
Hydroxyl, an important but difficult-to-detect molecule, is made up of a hydrogen and oxygen atom each. It has been found in the upper reaches of the Venusian atmosphere, some 100 km above the surface, by Venus Express's Visible and Infrared Thermal Imaging Spectrometer, VIRTIS.
Mawrth Vallis is located to the south of Acidalia Planitia and to the east of Tiu Valles. One of the oldest channels on Mars, Mawrth Vallis cuts through the ancient cratered terrain of western Arabia Terra and is part of the Chryse Planitia basin.
Mawrth Vallis holds special interest to scientist studying Mars. In 2005 the OMEGA spectrometer on board the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter discovered phyllosilicates in Mawrth Vallis.
Cassini captures a view showing two of Saturn's moons and their gravitational effects on nearby rings.
At top, Daphnis streaks through the Keeler Gap, with its ever-present edge waves. At center, Prometheus pulls away from a recent encounter with the F ring.
Cassini completed a successful flyby of Titan on May 12. Cassini's radar instrument mapped the bright region of Xanadu, which was only partly imaged previously. This overlap in coverage may yield stereo views of the region. The radar team targeted Hotei Arcus, as well as a possible cryovolcanic feature, Tortola Facula (informally known as the "Snail"), which was visible in infrared images.
(The National Academies) In a new collaboration, the Marian Koshland Science Museum of the National Academy of Sciences is licensing several components of its global warming and infectious diseases exhibits to the Science Center Singapore. The partnership marks an expansion of the Koshland Science Museum's efforts to bring its work to international audiences by teaming up with other museums and science centers around the world.
(DOE/Oak Ridge National Laboratory) Upgrades to Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Jaguar supercomputer have more than doubled its performance, increasing the system's ability to deliver far-reaching advances in climate studies, energy research and a wide range of sciences.
(University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science) The University of Miami's Center for Southeastern Tropical Advanced Remote Sensing announced that it will house a library of data collected via spaceborne C-Band Synthetic Aperture Radar. The initiative, led by the Canadian Space Agency, in cooperation with UM/CSTARS, NOAA and NASA will provide qualified scientists with free access to more than 150 images that will help them to better understand the dynamics of hurricane and typhoon genesis, morphology and movement.
New research on the Antennae Galaxies using the Advanced Camera for Surveys onboard the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows that this proto-typical pair of interacting galaxies is in fact much closer to us than previously thought - at 45 million light-years instead of 65 million light-years.
Sebastien Bouquillon (SYRTE/Obs. de Paris), Ricky Smart (INAF/OATo, Torino) and Alexandre Andrei (Observatorio Nacional, Rio de Janeiro) have used the 2.2m telescope of the European Southern Observatory at La Silla, Chile, to take several photographs of NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) satellite in its orbit, which is about 1.5 million kilometres from Earth. Perhaps surprisingly, they did so as part of the preparations for ESA's Gaia mission, which scientifically is totally unrelated to WMAP.
Using the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer onboard of the Hubble NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have made observations of young, surprisingly compact galaxies, each only 5000 light-years across, but weighing 200 thousand million times the mass of the Sun.
Physicists have provided a mechanism by which information can be recovered from black holes -- and the first plausible mechanism for how information might escape from black holes, those regions of space where gravity is so strong that, according to Einstein's theory of general relativity, not even light can escape. The team's findings pave the way toward ending a decades-long debate sparked by renowned physicist Steven Hawking.
Curved features on Jupiter's moon Europa may indicate that its poles have wandered by almost 90 degrees, report scientists. Such an extreme shift suggests the existence of an internal liquid ocean beneath the icy crust, which could help build the case for Europa as possible habitat for extraterrestrial life.
NASA's Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope, or GLAST, is receiving finishing touches at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, near the beaches of eastern central Florida for its launch. The spacecraft is set for launch aboard a Delta II rocket no earlier than June 3. The launch window runs from 11:45 a.m. to 1:40 p.m. EDT.
New observations from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter indicate that the crust and upper mantle of Mars are stiffer and colder than previously thought.
ESA's Venus Express has detected the molecule hydroxyl on another planet for the first time. This detection gives scientists an important new tool to unlock the workings of Venus's dense atmosphere.
Mawrth Vallis is located to the south of Acidalia Planitia and to the east of Tiu Valles. One of the oldest channels on Mars, Mawrth Vallis cuts through the ancient cratered terrain of western Arabia Terra and is part of the Chryse Planitia basin.