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What can flying a kite over the Hawaiian islands tell us about past events that helped shape the landscape of Mars?

Quite a lot, apparently, according to scientist from the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory (LPL) at the University of Arizona.

Principal investigator Christopher Hamilton and his colleagues have used kites equipped with a suite of off-the-shelf instruments (including a camera and a GPS) and used them to study the lava that covers the Hawaiian landscape. Using parallel computing and powerful software algorithms, they then turn the images they collect into detailed 3D digital models of the terrain.

[STORY: Mars once had more water than Arctic Ocean]

By comparing those models of Hawaii’s volcanic landscape to images of Mars captured using the HiRISE camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) spacecraft, the LPL team is hoping to find never-before seen details of the Red Planet’s surface. They will present their findings this week at the 46th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas.

Stephen Scheidt flying a kite over the December 1974 flow in Hawaii. (Credit: Laura Kerber)

“The idea is to understand places we can’t go by analyzing places we can go,” Hamilton, who joined the lab last year to form a terrestrial analog research group, said in a statement. “We can use geologically young and vegetation-free surface features here on Earth… as terrestrial analogs that can provide us with insights into processes that shape other planets.”

Studying the chemical desert

Hamilton studies volcanic surfaces on Mars to understand the thermal history of the Red Planet, in other words, how the planet’s internal processes manifest on the surface. Analyzing the lava flows of Hawaii enables the LPL team to “develop diagnostics that help us recognize the actual processes that led to the formation of a certain feature” on the Red Planet.

He and his colleagues selected Kilauea Volcano on the main island as their research target. The volcano is described as a “chemical desert” with several lava flows that are extremely young in a geological sense. When models of Kilauea are compared to images of the Martian surfaces taken using the HiRISE instrument, Hamilton explained that they found striking similarities.

[STORY: Mars rover discovers odd rocks]

“We think this is how the big lava flows formed on Mars, which strongly suggests they may not be what they seem,” he explained. For instance, many of the features believed to be channels that were cut by running water in the past are more likely caused by volcanic processes.

More specifically, they were the result of a process known Hamilton refers to as fill-and-spill lava emplacement, during which lava accumulates like water in large perched ponds. Ultimately, the ponds are beached like a dam, causing in ‘catastrophic’ lava floods that create the channels.

“It is easy to draw conclusions based on our intuition of how water flows, so it is tempting to interpret similar features on Mars in the same way. But in fact these features formed by flowing lava, not water,” Hamilton explained, comparing the model to a 1974 lava flow at Kilauea.

[VIDEO: Man roasts marshmallow over volcano]

“We see that in certain areas, the surface is broken up into plates and what superficially looks like channels carved by running water. However, these turn out to be not carved at all, but rather are the result of a complex pattern of lava movements within the flow,” he said.

A volcanic bathtub ring

During the December 2014 event, liquid lava filled the area between cliffs like a giant bathtub, and when the perched lava pond breached, the lava began surging forward. This caused pieces of cooled surface lava to break apart, and fresh lava to well up from underneath. As the cool plates continued flowing towards the drain, the crumpled and left behind a “bathtub ring.”

Perspective view of the December 1974 lava flow in Hawaii. This image is not a photograph, but rather it was constructed by draping kite-based aerial photography over a digital terrain model. (Credit: Stephen Scheidt and Christopher Hamilton)

“The question that drives us is, ‘How can we assemble this kind of data for Mars landscapes and decide whether a feature is volcanic or fluvial – shaped by water – and allow us to develop a story?’ ” said Hamilton. “A single surface texture doesn’t tell you anything if you can’t see the way in which the building blocks combine, such as the tiles that make up the pattern of a mosaic. The relationships between textures allow you where to look and what to look for.”

Modern day Ben Franklin

So he turned to Stephen Scheidt, a postdoctoral fellow at LPL who specializes in dune-building processes, to design and create the terrain-mapping kite system used in the study. The system featured a delta-wing kite outfitted with a camera. The kite was carefully flown over the region to produce images similar to aerial photographs taken from a airplane.

[STORY: Drones used to create 3D model of active volcano]

The kite collected one of these images, which are actually mosaics projected onto digital terrain models, every two seconds. Tens of thousands of images were captured at each location the kite flew over, and those pictures were then fed through computer software that removed distortions and stitched them together to create a virtual terrain model, Scheidt explained.

The process is known as orthorectification, and it requires both massive processing power and several weeks to render a terrain model. The result is a high-resolution model that Hamilton said can be used to “help us to decipher the geologic history of Earth and Mars.”

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It might look like a moon-shaped bouncy house, but a large, shiny, silver inflatable sphere scheduled to be transported to the International Space Station (ISS) later this year is actually a new expandable habitat co-developed by NASA and Bigelow Aerospace.

BEAM us up, Scotty!

Known as the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM), the habitat is scheduled to be carried to the orbiting laboratory on a SpaceX flight this September, according to a Washington Post report published on Friday. Upon its arrival, it will be attached to the ISS and will undergo extensive tests over the next two years to see if it can handle the rigors of space.

[STORY: Inflatable bouncer injuries on the rise]

BEAM recently passed the US space agency’s rigorous certification requirements, the newspaper added, but only time will tell if the habitat can withstand the radiation of space, the movement of the ISS itself, and potential collisions with the countless fragments of debris in orbit.

On its official website, Las Vegas-based Bigelow Aerospace noted that it had been awarded a $17.8 million contract for the development of expandable space habitat technology. The module will be berthed to the station’s Tranquility node, and a pressurization system will be activated by the ISS crew in order to expand the structure to its full size.

During the trial period, astronauts will periodically enter the module to gather performance data and inspect the unit, and at the conclusion of the two-year test, the BEAM module is slated to be jettisoned from the space station, where it will fall back towards Earth and burn up in the atmosphere.

[STORY: Aerospace inflatable space pod to be tested in 2015]

The BEAM habitat “will advance important long-duration human spaceflight goals,” NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver noted. “NASA’s partnership with Bigelow opens a new chapter in our continuing work to bring the innovation of industry to space, heralding cutting-edge technology that can allow humans to thrive in space safely and affordably.”

Bigelow’s George Zamka, a retired US astronaut who has logged over 3,500 total flight hours, told the Washington Post that the company ultimately plans to send larger inflatable habitats to space, to either augment or even replace the ISS, and hopes to create ones for use on the moon. In fact, it’s proposed B330 module would have 330 cubic meters of internal space, with the modules connecting to each other to create research centers or even living quarters.

[STORY: Future space habitats could have robotic gardeners]

Zamka said that the recent announcement was only “the first step, but it’s a big step,” and William Gerstenmaier, the associate administrator for human exploration and operations for NASA, told the newspaper that he was anxious to see how BEAM performs. He added that he was pleased “to see how the private sector can step up and help us meet our requirements.”

The project was originally announced last October, and at the time, Space.com reported that NASA planned to use it to evaluate radiation levels inside the module in comparison to those on other areas of the station. The mission, the website added, is part of the agency’s ongoing initiative to encourage commercial firms to become more involved in low-Earth orbit projects.

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Earlier this week, NASA successfully tested the largest and most powerful booster ever created, the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket that will ultimately help the US space agency travel into deep space, reach and capture an asteroid, and eventually send astronauts to Mars.

In case you missed it, here’s video of the test-firing:

NASA travelled to the Promontory, Utah home of Orbital ATK on Wednesday to fire-up their shiny new booster for a period of two minutes, roughly the same amount of time it will take the rocket to lift the SLS off the launch pad and into space. It produced 3.6 million pounds of thrust during the ground test, one of two planned to verify its performance.

Pioneering far into the solar system

In a statement, the agency explained that it took months to heat the 1.6 million pound booster to the 90 degree Fahrenheit temperature required to confirm its ability to function at the high end of its accepted propellant temperature range. A second test fire, at the lower end of the temperature range (40 degrees Fahrenheit), is currently scheduled to take place early next year.

During the test, temperatures inside the rocket reached temperatures of over 5,600 degrees, and more than 531 instrumentation channels on the booster were measured to assess over 100 design objectives, NASA officials explained. They added that the test demonstrated that the SLS rocket meets applicable ballistic performance requirements, including thrust and pressure.

[STORY: Subterranean ocean discovered on Ganymede]

“The work being done around the country today to build SLS is laying a solid foundation for future exploration missions, and these missions will enable us to pioneer far into the solar system,” said William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for human exploration and operations at NASA. “The teams are doing tremendous work to develop what will be a national asset for human exploration and potential science missions.”

“This test is a significant milestone for SLS and follows years of development,” added SLS program manager Todd May. “Our partnership with Orbital ATK and more than 500 suppliers across the country is keeping us on the path to building the most powerful rocket in the world.”

The largest feat since the Apollo era

According to CNET, the first flight of the SLS will be a test mission carrying an unmanned Orion spacecraft beyond low-Earth orbit. When completed, SLS configuration will include a pair of five-segment boosters and four RS-25 main engines, which the website added will be capable of generating a combined 143 tons of thrust for use on deep-space missions.

“The development of NASA’s Space Launch System is the largest engineering feat since the Apollo era. Data collected from today’s test will ensure the program is capable of launching humans to Mars and beyond,” noted The Verge. “Mixed with elements from the space shuttle and Apollo eras… [it] will be the most powerful launcher ever built.”

[STORY: Hubble captures twisted shockwaves of exploded star]

In comments made on NASA TV and reprinted by the Washington Post, Alex Priskos, manager of NASA’s SLS Boosters Office said that he was “very happy” with the outcome of the test-fire, which is officially known as Qualification Motor–1 (QM–1). “Great test,” Priskos added. “Just a fantastic result… This thing was about as perfect… as it could be.”

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New observations made using the Hubble Space Telescope have uncovered the best evidence to date that Jupiter’s largest moon, Ganymede, is home to an underground saltwater ocean.

In fact, the subterranean ocean may have more water than the entirety of Earth’s surface, and according to CNET, it is estimated to be approximately 60 miles thick (or 10 times deeper than the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the Pacific Ocean).

[STORY: Ganymede could be home to ‘club sandwich’ of ice and water]

“This discovery marks a significant milestone, highlighting what only Hubble can accomplish,” John Grunsfeld, assistant administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at the US space agency’s Washington DC headquarters, said in a statement on Thursday.

“In its 25 years in orbit, Hubble has made many scientific discoveries in our own solar system,” he added. “A deep ocean under the icy crust of Ganymede opens up further exciting possibilities for life beyond Earth.”

Joining the line-up

The discovery of liquid water is a crucial step in the search for places beyond our Earth that may be capable of supporting microbial life. Ganymede, the largest moon in the solar system, joins other nearby moons such as Europa, Saturn’s Enceladus and Titan, and the dwarf planet Ceres as destinations that contain ice or liquid water are potentially habitable.

[VIDEO: Geologic map of Ganymede ]

Ganymede is also the only moon in our solar system with its own magnetic field, which causes ribbons of hot, glowing electrified gas known as aurorae to appear in regions circling the moon’s north and south poles. Due to the moon’s proximity to Jupiter, it is also embedded in the planet’s magnetic field, and changes in that field also cause changes in Ganymede’s aurorae.

Monitoring the aurorae

By monitoring the back-and-forth rocking motion of the two aurorae, authors of a new Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics study were able to determine that a tremendous amount of saltwater exists deep beneath its crust, impacting its magnetic field. The scientists believe that the saltwater is buried beneath a 95-mile (150-kilometer) crust comprised mostly of ice.

Lead investigator Joachim Saur of the University of Cologne in Germany and his colleagues came up with the idea of using the Hubble telescope to learn more about the inside of Ganymede. They hypothesized that if a saltwater ocean were present, Jupiter’s magnetic field would create a secondary magnetic field in the ocean that could counter the planet’s field.

[STORY: Aurora dazzles astronauts onboard the space station]

The resulting “magnetic friction” would suppress the rocking of the aurorae, the research team explained. The ocean combats Jupiter’s magnetic field so forcefully that it reduces the rocking of the electrified gas ribbons to two degrees, instead of the six that would occur without the ocean.

“I was always brainstorming how we could use a telescope in other ways,” Saur explained. “Is there a way you could use a telescope to look inside a planetary body? Then I thought, the aurorae! Because aurorae are controlled by the magnetic field, if you observe the aurorae in an appropriate way, you learn something about the magnetic field. If you know the magnetic field, then you know something about the moon’s interior.”

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The Milky Way appears to have some new next-door neighbors, as astronomers from the University of Cambridge have found a “treasure trove” of nine previously undetected dwarf satellites (including three small galaxies) in orbit around the galaxy we call home.

According to the researchers, the findings come from newly released imaging data taken from the Dark Energy Survey and represent the largest number of dwarf satellites ever discovered at one time. The discovery could help scientists learn more about dark matter, the mysterious and invisible substance that comprises much of the universe and holds the Milky Way together.

[STORY: Dark matter dwarf galaxy discovered in far side of Milky Way]

The satellites are located in the southern hemisphere in the area around the Large and Small Magellanic Cloud, the largest dwarf galaxies orbiting the Milky Way, and are detailed in a new study published by The Astrophysical Journal.

In addition to the three confirmed dwarf galaxies, the Cambridge-led team found six objects that could be either dwarf galaxies or globular clusters, according to CNET. Globular clusters are not held together by dark matter, but dwarf galaxies are believed to be up to 99 percent comprised of the mysterious substance, making them ideal for testing dark matter models, the website noted.

[STORY: Cluster of stars found forming at edge of Milky Way]

Dwarf galaxies are the also smallest galaxy structures observed, and the faintest one contains a mere 5,000 stars. In comparison, the Milky Way contains hundreds of billions of stars. Standard cosmological models of the universe predict that there are hundreds of these dwarf galaxies in orbit around the Milky Way, but since they are so dim and small, they are extremely hard to find.

“The discovery of so many satellites in such a small area of the sky was completely unexpected,” said lead author Dr. Sergey Koposov of Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy. “I could not believe my eyes.”

The final frontier

“Dwarf satellites are the final frontier for testing our theories of dark matter,” added co-author Dr. Vasily Belokurov, also from the Institute of Astronomy. “We need to find them to determine whether our cosmological picture makes sense. Finding such a large group of satellites near the Magellanic Clouds was surprising, though, as earlier surveys of the southern sky found very little, so we were not expecting to stumble on such treasure.”

[STORY: The Milky Way is smaller than previously estimated]

The closest of the newly discovered objects is located approximately 97,000 light years away in the constellation Reticulum, about halfway to the Magellanic Clouds. Due to the massive tidal forces exerted by the Milky Way, it is currently in the process of being ripped apart.

The most distant one is located right on the outer fringe of the Milky Way, 1.2 million light years away in the constellation of Eridanus, and the study authors report that it may be home to a small globular cluster of stars. If so, it would be the faintest galaxy ever found to contain one.

[STORY: Astronomers discover hundreds of new hill regions in Milky Way]

“These results are very puzzling,” noted co-author Wyn Evans, also from the Institute of Astronomy. “Perhaps they were once satellites that orbited the Magellanic Clouds and have been thrown out by the interaction of the Small and Large Magellanic Cloud. Perhaps they were once part of a gigantic group of galaxies that – along with the Magellanic Clouds – are falling into our Milky Way galaxy.”

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Add Enceladus to the growing list of candidates that may be capable of supporting life, as an international team of researchers has discovered evidence of an active hydrothermal system on the icy Saturn moon that could be capable of supporting microbial life.

[STORY: Scientists pinpoint Saturn with insane accuracy]

Hsiang-Wen Hsu, a planetary scientist at the University of Colorado-Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP), and his colleagues reported Wednesday in the journal Nature that they had discovered tiny grains of silicon-rich dust in orbit around Saturn.

Mysterious, tiny grains

While those grains, which were using the Cassini spacecraft’s Cosmic Dust Analyzer, are no larger than a strand of human DNA, they are similar to sand and quartz found that are found on Earth and are typically formed by processes that require the presence of heated water.

“It’s a peculiar thing to find particles enriched with silicon,” Hsu told the Los Angeles Times. Since water ice is dominant in Saturn’s rings and its moons, the discovery of the unusual grains caught his attention, and he and his colleagues traced their origins to the E-ring of Saturn, which contains ice particles that originate from Enceladus.

They analyzed the particles, which tended to be uniformly small instead of ranging in size, and their work revealed that the grains were made of silicon dioxide (silica), a material which is not common in space. Silica is a product of water interacting with rock, and since its properties were well known, it allowed the scientists to work backwards to determine what type of environment is responsible for creating these unusual particles, the newspaper explained.

[STORY: Could NASA’s Europa mission search for alien life?]

Next, they ran a series of experiments to figure out how those particles came to be. Given that they had a specific makeup and a set size distribution, very specific conditions would have been required for them to form, the authors found. The silica particles would had to have formed in water that had less than four percent salinity, was slightly alkaline in nature (a pH of between 8.5 and 10.5) and temperatures of at least 190 degrees Fahrenheit (90 degrees Celsius).

Hsu’s team reasoned that the heat was likely being generated in part by the effect of Saturn’s tidal forces on Enceladus. Those forces also likely created the surface cracks that allowed the water vapor to escape into space, indicating that somewhere within the icy moon, there had to be some form of hydrothermal activity – salty warm water interacting with rocks. This is similar to the conditions found here on Earth, and is extremely conducive to microbial life.

Hydrothermal processes at work on the seafloor

Thus, as the ESA explained in a statement, they believe that the silicon-rich grains originate on the seafloor of Enceladus, where hydrothermal processes are at work. On the seafloor, hot water dissolves minerals from the rocky interior of the minerals. While the origins of this energy are not fully understood, the researchers believe that it is some combination of tidal heating taking place as the moon orbits Saturn, chemical reactions, and radioactive decay in the core.

As the hot water moves upwards, it comes into contact with cooler H2O, causing minerals to become condensed and form into nano-scale grains of silica floating in the ocean. They have to spend at least a few months rising from the seafloor to avoid growing too large. Eventually, they become part of larger ice grains in the vents connecting the ocean to Enceladus’ surface, and once they are ejected into space, the ice grains erode and the silica particles are freed.

[STORY: Extreme oasis of life on Earth provides clues to alien life]

“It’s very exciting that we can use these tiny grains of rock, spewed into space by geysers, to tell us about conditions on – and beneath – the ocean floor of an icy moon,” said Hsu.

“This moon has all the ingredients – water, heat, and minerals – to support habitability in the outer Solar System, confirming the astrobiological potential of Enceladus,” added ESA Cassini project scientist Nicolas Altobelli. “Enceladus may even represent a very common habitat in the Galaxy: icy moons around giant gas planets, located well beyond the ‘habitable zone’ of a star, but still able to maintain liquid water below their icy surface.”

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A dwarf galaxy recently discovered orbiting the Milky Way appears to be radiating gamma rays, and leading researchers from Brown and Carnegie Mellon universities hypothesize that it could be filled with particles of the mysterious substance known as dark matter.

The galaxy in question in named Reticulum 2, and it was discovered as part of the ongoing Dark Energy Survey. Reticulum 2 is located just 98,000 light-years away, making it one of the closest dwarf galaxies ever located and a prime candidate to search for dark matter – invisible particles believed to account for as much as 85 percent of the mass in the known universe.

As Discovery News explains, by observing the spin of galaxies and the interactions that take place within galactic clusters, astronomers have noticed that there is an invisible type of matter that exerts a powerful gravitational pull on the space around it. However, since it does not interact with normal matter in this way, it cannot be directly seen, and little is known about it.

[STORY: Unravelling the mystery of gamma ray bursts]

A wimpy source of dark matter

One hypothesis suggests that weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPS) are the source of dark matter, the website noted. When they collide, it is believed that they will annihilate, leaving energy in the form of gamma rays as one of their byproducts. WIMPS have yet to be discovered, though, and scanning the universe for gamma rays generated by these particles has proven to be extremely difficult, as many other phenomena in the universe also emit this radiation.

While black holes and pulsars are among the known sources of gamma rays, those entities are typically not abundant in dwarf galaxies, making them excellent places to conduct searches for these dark matter-related signals. They have detected radiation originating from the vicinity of Reticulum 2, and the presence of a potential source of WIMP annihilation so close to Earth has the scientists cautiously optimistic.

“Something in the direction of this dwarf galaxy is emitting gamma rays,” lead author Alex Geringer-Sameth, a postdoctoral research associate at Carnegie Mellon’s Department of Physics, said in a statement Tuesday. “There’s no conventional reason this galaxy should be giving off gamma rays, so it’s potentially a signal for dark matter.”

[STORY: Did dark matter kill the dinosaurs?]

“The gravitational detection of dark matter tells you very little about the particle behavior of the dark matter,” added Matthew Walker, assistant professor of physics and a member of CMU’s McWilliams Center for Cosmology. “But now we may have a non-gravitational detection that shows dark matter behaving like a particle, which is a holy grail of sorts.”

Astronomers have been studying dwarf galaxies for several years, using NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope to hunt for signals of the radiation. Recently, Geringer-Sameth, Walker, and their colleagues have been developing a technique that searches for weak signals in the gamma ray data that could be attributed to dark matter annihilation.

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A new image captured earlier this year by the Cassini mission show how one of Saturn’s moons is like the force, the ubiquitous metaphysical power featured in the Star Wars movies, in that it also possesses both a light side and a dark side.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California on Monday, the new photo (which was taken in green light using Cassini’s narrow-angle camera on January 4) shows that Iapetus possesses dark/light asymmetry that scientists believe was created by material migrating away from the dark side of the moon.

Dark side of the moon

This asymmetry formed, they explain, due to what they refer to as the Thermal Runaway Model. Using a computer model, they demonstrate how Iapetus was originally uniformly covered in ice with some dark material mixed in. Additional dark material is then slowly added to the leading hemisphere, which is centered at 90 degrees west longitude.

[VIDEO: Parakeet trained to sound like R2-D2]

After a period of roughly 260 million years, the leading side has darkened and become slightly warmer, causing the ice to begin evaporating near the equator, where the temperatures are at their highest. As the ice continued to evaporate, additional dark material was left behind, and thus the surface area became increasingly darker.

By the time 1,200 million years had passed, a large dark region that is completely ice-free had formed on the leading side of Iapetus. After 2,400 million years, the dark region had grown to resemble the size and shape of the dark region depicted on an actual global mosaic map of the moon made from Cassini images captured back in December 2009.

Iapetus has a diameter of 941 miles (1,471 kilometers) and a density of just 1.2 times that of liquid water, leading some experts to suggest that it is only 25 percent rock and 75 percent ice. It orbits Saturn as a distance of over 2.2 million miles (3.5 million kilometers), and because of the distance, it is likely not affected by the tidal forces of Saturn or its other moons.

The face never changes

Despite the great distance, however, Iapetus has been tidally locked by Saturn, meaning that it always presents the same face towards its host planet. The moon also features an equatorial ridge or a chain of six-mile (10 kilometer) high mountains along its equator.

[STORY: Private firms exploring moon-mining]

The mountains were originally discovered by Voyager I and Voyager II, and are thus unofficially known as the Voyager Mountains. There are two theories as to how the ridge may have formed: they may have been formed at a far earlier time when Iapetus rotated faster than it currently does, or the mountains may be made up of remnant material from the collapse of a ring.

Iapetus was discovered by Italian astronomer, engineer, and mathematician Giovanni Cassini on October 25, 1671, but only appeared as a dark, bright dot until the Voyager missions of 1980 and 1981. It was named in honor of the Greek titan Iapetus by John Herschel, who wanted the moons of Saturn to be named after the mythical brothers and sisters of Kronus.

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The clouds obscuring the surface of Venus can be easily penetrated by spacecraft radar, but now scientists from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) have used powerful ground-based radar technology located here on Earth to create surface maps of the planet.

Building upon research conducted by the Pioneer and Soviet Venera spacecraft in the 1980s and the Magellan spacecraft in the 1990s, the NRAO-affiliated astronomers transmitted radar waves from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, bounced them off of the surface of Venus and then received their echoes at the 100-meter Green Bank Telescope (GBT) in West Virginia.

Ain’t their first rodeo

According to Discovery News, the technique was used in 1988, 1999, 2001 and most recently in 2012, allowing scientists to compare the data to search for clues of surface activity on the planet. Their findings are now available online and will be published in the April edition of Icarus.

The signals passed through the atmospheres of both Earth and Venus, where they hit the surface and rebounded to be received by the GBT through a process known as bistatic radar, the NRAO explained. This technique allows experts to study the surface as it currently appears, as well as to compare images taken at different times for sings of active volcanism or other dynamic processes that could provide new insight into the planet’s geologic history and subsurface conditions.

[STORY: Venus may have had seas of carbon dioxide]

“It is painstaking to compare radar images to search for evidence of change, but the work is ongoing,” explained lead author Bruce Campbell, a senior scientist at the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC.

“In the meantime, combining images from this and an earlier observing period is yielding a wealth of insight about other processes that alter the surface of Venus,” added Campbell, who was assisted on the research by astronomers from Cornell University, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, the Arecibo Observatory and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory.

In the Icarus study, the authors combined the Earth-based radar maps of Venus from both the 1988 and 2012 observations, which featured “inferior conjunctions” that had “similar viewing geometries.” By processing both dataset in order to improve feature detection, they found that the radar images provided “evidence of tessera mantling by impact ejecta,” and that the data can “characterize highlands for remote studies and lander site selection.”

Venus: the baby-faced planet

As Discovery News explained, Venus appears to have a relatively young surface that is covered in both volcanoes and terrain that is ridged and folded. However, the planet appears to have little if any tectonic activity, and it is currently not known if there are any active geological processes at work on the Earth-sized world, which is the second planet from the sun.

[STORY: Zodiacal light visible in Northern Hemisphere this month]

A new image released by the Smithsonian and the NRAO shows the volcanoes and ridges, as well as a unique black diagonal band that led one Gizmodo user to quip that “someone should close that exhaust port, otherwise some pesky X-wing will come along… and blow the whole thing up.” In reality, the band “represents areas too close to the Doppler ‘equator’ to obtain well-resolved image data,” the NRAO explained.

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NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft, which is responsible for discovering more than half of all known planets located beyond our solar system, celebrated its sixth birthday on Saturday, and we thought it would be a good time to take a look back its greatest achievements.

[ALL OF OUR STORIES RELATED TO THE KEPLER MISSION]

Kepler, which was named in honor of Renaissance astronomer Johannes Kepler (the man behind the laws of planetary motion), was launched on March 7, 2009. Its primary mission, which was originally supposed to last just 3 1/2 years, was to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy in search of Earth-sized planets and smaller worlds located in or near the habitable zone.

Johnnes Kepler Gesammelte Werke, C. H. Beck, 1937

According to Space.com, the $600 million mission searches for extrasolar planets by looking for tiny dips in brightness caused by such worlds when they cross the face of the host star. Using this technique, it has discovered more than 1,000 confirmed planets, with 3,100 additional candidates currently awaiting confirmation. Mission scientists anticipate that nearly 90 percent of them will wind up being verified through follow-up analysis or observations, the website added.

Kepler 186f

The artist's concept depicts Kepler-186f , the first validated Earth-size planet to orbit a distant star in the habitable zone. (Credit: NASA Ames/SETI Institute/JPL-Caltech)

On April 17, 2014, astronomers using Kepler discovered the first Earth-size planet orbiting a star in the habitable zone of another star. That planet, Kepler-186f, proved that worlds approximately the same size as our planet orbit their stars in the range of distance within which it is possible for liquid water to form on the surface, officials from the US space agency explained.

“The discovery of Kepler-186f is a significant step toward finding worlds like our planet Earth,” said Paul Hertz, NASA’s Astrophysics Division director at the agency’s Washington DC-based headquarters. He added that future missions such as the James Webb Space Telescope will study nearby rocky exoplanets in order to “determine their composition and atmospheric conditions.”

HIP 116454b

Following the failure of its reaction wheel failed, it appeared as though Kepler would no longer be able to collect important scientific data. However, NASA and Ball Aerospace came up with a way to repurpose the spacecraft while allowing it to look for exoplanet candidates. In December 2014, it discovered the first exoplanet during the second phase of its mission, K2.

[OUR COVERAGE: NASA’s Kepler finds new exoplanet]

The planet, HIP 116454b, was discovered by Andrew Vanderburg, a graduate student at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts, and his colleagues located the new planet in data collected during the K2 phase of the mission 10 months earlier.

)”]The planet is located some 180 light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Pieces. HIP 116454b is 2.5 times the diameter of our planet and follows a close, nine-day orbit around a star that is both cooler and smaller than our sun, making it too hot to support life, NASA said.

“The Kepler mission showed us that planets larger in size than Earth and smaller than Neptune are common in the galaxy, yet they are absent in our solar system,” Steve Howell, Kepler/K2 project scientist at the Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California said. “K2 is uniquely positioned to dramatically refine our understanding of these alien worlds and further define the boundary between rocky worlds like Earth and ice giants like Neptune.”

Still going strong

In January, scientists confirmed the 1,000th planet discovered by Kepler, one of eight candidates spotted by the planet-hunting telescope that included three worlds located in their sun’s habitable zones. Of those three, two of them are believed to be made of rock, the space agency noted.

[OUR COVERAGE: Kepler discovers 8 new Earth-like exoplanets]

“Each result from the planet-hunting Kepler mission’s treasure trove of data takes us another step closer to answering the question of whether we are alone in the Universe,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator at NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington DC. “The Kepler team and its science community continue to produce impressive results with the data from this venerable explorer.”

NASA Kepler's Hall of Fame: Of the more than 1,000 verified planets found by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, eight are less than twice Earth-size and in their stars' habitable zone. All eight orbit stars cooler and smaller than our sun. The search continues for Earth-size habitable zone worlds around sun-like stars. (Credit: NASA)

Two of those newly validated planets, Kepler-438b and Kepler-442b, were said to be under 1.5 times the diameter of Earth. Kepler-438b, located 475 light-years away, is 12 percent larger than Earth and orbits its star once every 35.2 days. Kepler-442b,on the other hand, is 1,100 light-years away, 33 percent bigger than Earth, and orbits its star once every 112 days.

“With each new discovery of these small, possibly rocky worlds, our confidence strengthens in the determination of the true frequency of planets like Earth,” said Doug Caldwell, a SETI Institute Kepler scientist at Ames and one of the researchers that identified those planets. “The day is on the horizon when we’ll know how common temperate, rocky planets like Earth are.”

Since then, the now six-year-old telescope has discovered the first multi-planet system from the K2 phase of its mission, and followed that up by finding a planetary system of five small planets dating back to when the Milky Way galaxy was a just two billion years old. Stay tuned – only time will tell what discoveries Kepler will make between now and its seventh birthday!

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