Latest Planetary science Stories

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online Analysis of data collected by NASA’s Wind spacecraft as it traveled through the front of the Earth’s magnetosphere from 1998 through 2002 has revealed a special type of magnetic pulsations, scientists from the US space agency revealed on Tuesday. The magnetosphere, a giant area of space created by the Earth’s magnetic fields as it travels around the sun, produces a standing bow wave or bow shock as is travels through space....

NASA Within NASA’s new FY2014 budget proposal lies a project known as the Asteroid Retrieval and Utilization Mission. This project would be the first to capture a small near-Earth asteroid and safely redirect it to a lunar orbit so that astronauts can visit and explore it. Such a mission would expand scientific knowledge of the origins of both humanity and the universe. The goal of asteroid retrieval is not a new endeavor for NASA. In fact, the idea dates to the earliest days of the...

Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Part of the surface of Saturn’s moon Titan has been actively tracked by NASA’s Cassini mission for the past several years. During that time, the mission has found a remarkable presence of hydrocarbon methane lakes and seas dotting the surface of the moon. But a model developed by mission leaders at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, suggests the supply of these methane lakes will soon come to end. Of...

April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online An international team of researchers, in collaboration with University of Leicester planetary scientists, has organized the largest ever observational campaign of Saturn's auroras. To expand our knowledge of the planet's northern lights, a host of space and ground-based telescopes will focus on the ringed gas giant for the month-long project. Scientists from the University's Department of Physics and Astronomy have worked with NASA...

NASA On April 16, 2008, a suite of NASA instruments was launched into space to study a unique region of Earth’s upper atmosphere: the electrically charged region called the ionosphere. The instruments, known collectively as CINDI (Coupled Ion-Neutral Dynamics Investigation), fly aboard an Air Force Research Laboratory satellite called C/NOFS (Communications/Navigation Outage Forecasting System) to study this region that hovers some 60 to 400 miles above Earth. The ionosphere is...

ESA These colorful displays are produced when electrically charged particles traveling from the Sun in the solar wind are channeled along Earth’s magnetic field lines and strike atoms high in the atmosphere. Collisions with oxygen atoms typically generate green aurora, as seen here. The link between auroras and solar activity has been apparent for centuries, but only with the aid of satellites can scientists begin to decipher the physical mechanisms causing this spectacular...

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online A few months ago, a new space website opened up its doors for the public to start selecting the names of other planets. Now, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) has stepped up and pointed out this isn't exactly the protocol for the scientific process of naming cosmic bodies. Over 800 planets have been detected outside the Solar System so far, and thousands more are still waiting to be confirmed. Recently, the website Uwingu...

April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online The latest sign that the change of seasons has started a cascade of radical changes in the atmosphere on Titan is an ice cloud taking shape over the south pole. This type of cloud, made from unknown ice, has long hung over the north pole. According to observations by the composite infrared spectrometer (CIRS) on NASA's Cassini spacecraft, the northern cloud is now fading. "We associate this particular kind of ice cloud with winter...

John P. Millis, Ph.D. for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online It seemed that that we had everything worked out. Astronomers modeled the creation and evolution as the collapse of a giant solar nebula. As the central star formed, the radiation then influenced the formation of the planets – rocky planets dominating the inner sanctum, while the larger gas giants naturally populated the orbits further out. All of this was then encased in a spherical swarm of icy bodies known as comets....

NASA The M6.5 flare on the morning of April 11, 2013, was also associated with an Earth-directed coronal mass ejection (CME), another solar phenomenon that can send billions of tons of solar particles into space and can reach Earth one to three days later. CMEs can affect electronic systems in satellites and on the ground. Experimental NASA research models show that the CME began at 3:36 a.m. EDT on April 11, leaving the sun at over 600 miles per second. Earth-directed CMEs can cause a...