Space Missions News

November 20, 2024

Top Headlines

New Research Explores Volcanic Caves, Advancing the Search for Life on Mars

Nov. 18, 2024 — Through the intricate study of lava tubes -- caves formed following volcanic eruptions when lava cools down -- an international team of researchers has uncovered clues about Earth's ancient environments that could be significant in the search for ...

Meteorite Contains Evidence of Liquid Water on Mars 742 Million Years Ago

Nov. 13, 2024 — An asteroid struck Mars 11 million years ago and sent pieces of the red planet hurtling through space. One of these chunks of Mars eventually crashed into the Earth and is one of the few meteorites that can be traced directly to Mars. This meteorite ...

Swirling Polar Vortices Likely Exist on the Sun

Nov. 11, 2024 — Like the Earth, the Sun likely has swirling polar vortices, according to new research. But unlike on Earth, the formation and evolution of these vortices are driven by magnetic ...

Off-the-Shelf Thermoelectric Generators Can Upgrade CO2 Into Chemicals: The Combination Could Help Us Colonize Mars

Nov. 7, 2024 — Readily available thermoelectric generators operating under modest temperature differences can power CO2 conversion, according to a proof-of-concept study by chemists. The findings open up the ...

Latest Headlines

updated 11:06pm EST

The Origin of Most Meteorites Finally Revealed

Oct. 16, 2024 — An international team has successfully demonstrated that 70% of all known meteorite falls originate from just three young asteroid families. These families were produced by three recent collisions ...

Out-of-This-World Simulation Key to Collecting Moon Dust

Oct. 16, 2024 — Teleoperated robots for gathering moon dust are a step closer, according to new ...

Simulated Mission to Mars: Survey of Lichen Species

Oct. 11, 2024 — A collection-based survey of lichen species at the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah, USA and Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station in Nunavut, Canada was conducted as part of the Mars-160 ...

Liftoff! NASA's Europa Clipper Sails Toward Ocean Moon of Jupiter

Oct. 14, 2024 — NASA's Europa Clipper has embarked on its long voyage to Jupiter, where it will investigate Europa, a moon with an enormous subsurface ocean that may have conditions to support life. The largest ...

NASA's Hubble, New Horizons Team Up for a Simultaneous Look at Uranus

Oct. 11, 2024 — NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and New Horizons spacecraft simultaneously set their sights on Uranus recently, allowing scientists to make a direct comparison of the planet from two very different ...

New Insights Into How Mars Became Uninhabitable

Oct. 7, 2024 — NASA's Curiosity rover, currently exploring Gale crater on Mars, is providing new details about how the ancient Martian climate went from potentially suitable for life -- with evidence for widespread ...

Widespread Ice Deposits on the Moon

Oct. 3, 2024 — Deposits of ice in lunar dust and rock (regolith) are more extensive than previously thought, according to a new analysis of data from NASA's LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) mission. Ice would be ...

Mars' Missing Atmosphere Could Be Hiding in Plain Sight

Sep. 25, 2024 — New research suggests Mars' missing atmosphere -- which dramatically diminished 3.5 billion years ago -- could be locked in the planet's clay-covered crust. Water on Mars could have set off a chain ...

Organic Matter on Mars Was Formed from Atmospheric Formaldehyde

Sep. 19, 2024 — Researchers have developed a Martian atmospheric evolution model to propose a new theory about Mars's ...

How Bright Is the Universe's Glow? Study Offers Best Measurement Yet

Sep. 3, 2024 — Over billions of years, the universe's stars and galaxies shined their light into space, leaving behind an imperceptibly faint night light known as the cosmic optical background. NASA's New Horizons ...

NASA Reveals Prototype Telescope for Gravitational Wave Observatory

Oct. 22, 2024 — NASA has revealed the first look at a full-scale prototype for six telescopes that will enable, in the next decade, the space-based detection of gravitational ...

Hidden Magmatism Discovered at the Chang'e-6 Lunar Landing Site

Aug. 27, 2024 — Lunar igneous activities including intrusive and extrusive magmatism, and their products contain significant information about the lunar interior and its thermal state. Their distribution is ...

Rocks Collected on Mars Hold Key to Water and Perhaps Life on the Planet: Bring Them Back to Earth

Aug. 14, 2024 — Between July and November of 2022, NASA's Perseverance rover collected seven samples of sediment from an ancient alluvial fan in Jezero crater. While onboard analysis gave researchers some ...

Engineers Conduct First in-Orbit Test of 'Swarm' Satellite Autonomous Navigation

Aug. 14, 2024 — With 2D cameras and space robotics algorithms, astronautics engineers have created a navigation system able to manage multiple satellites using visual data only. They just tested it in space for the ...

SwRI-Led Team Finds Evidence of Hydration on Asteroid Psyche

Aug. 13, 2024 — Using data from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have confirmed hydroxyl molecules on the surface of the metallic asteroid Psyche. The presence of hydrated minerals suggests a ...

Measuring Martian Winds With Sound

Aug. 13, 2024 — Martian landers have been able capture measurements of wind speeds -- some gauging the cooling rate of heated materials when winds blow over them, others using cameras to image 'tell-tales' ...

Scientists Find Oceans of Water on Mars: It's Just Too Deep to Tap

Aug. 12, 2024 — Quakes and meteor impacts on Mars generate seismic waves that can help map the interior. A new study analyzed seismic waves detected by the Insight lander and concludes that 11-20 kilometers beneath ...

Scientists Pin Down the Origins of the Moon's Tenuous Atmosphere

Aug. 2, 2024 — Scientists say they have identified the main process that formed the moon's atmosphere and continues to sustain it today. The team reports that the lunar atmosphere is primarily a product of ...

Expiring Medications Could Pose Challenge on Long Space Missions

July 23, 2024 — A new study shows that over half of the medicines stocked in space -- staples such as pain relievers, antibiotics, allergy medicines, and sleep aids -- would expire before astronauts could return to ...

Moon 'Swirls' Could Be Magnetized by Unseen Magmas

July 3, 2024 — Mysterious, light-colored swirls on Moon's surface could be rocks magnetized by magma activity underground, laboratory experiments ...

This Desert Moss Has the Potential to Grow on Mars

June 30, 2024 — The desert moss Syntrichia caninervis is a promising candidate for Mars colonization thanks to its extreme ability to tolerate harsh conditions lethal to most life forms. The moss is well known for ...

New Class of Mars Quakes Reveals Daily Meteorite Strikes

June 28, 2024 — An international team of researchers combine orbital imagery with seismological data from NASA's Mars InSight lander to derive a new impact rate for meteorite strikes on Mars. Seismology also ...

Marsquakes May Help Reveal Whether Liquid Water Exists Underground on Red Planet

June 25, 2024 — If liquid water exists today on Mars, it may be too deep underground to detect with traditional methods used on Earth. But listening to earthquakes that occur on Mars -- or marsquakes -- could offer ...

Geologists Expect Chang'e-6 Lunar Surface Samples to Contain Volcanic Rock and Impact Ejecta

June 24, 2024 — On June 25, China's Chang'e-6 (CE-6) lunar probe is set to return to Earth, carrying the first surface samples collected from the farside of the Moon. In anticipation of this historic ...

New Biomarker Database Designed to Improve Astronaut Health May Also Be Useful to Earthlings

June 11, 2024 — As space travel becomes more frequent, a new biomarker tool was developed by an international team of researchers to help improve the growing field of aerospace medicine and the health of ...

Would Astronauts' Kidneys Survive a Roundtrip to Mars?

June 11, 2024 — The structure and function of the kidneys is altered by space flight, with galactic radiation causing permanent damage that would jeopardise any mission to Mars, according to a new study led by ...

In a Significant First, Researchers Detect Water Frost on Solar System's Tallest Volcanoes

June 10, 2024 — An international team of planetary scientists has detected patches of water frost sitting atop the Tharsis volcanoes on Mars, which are not only the tallest volcanic mountains on the Red Planet but ...

In New Experiment, Scientists Record Earth's Radio Waves from the Moon

June 10, 2024 — Odysseus, a tenacious lander built by the company Intuitive Machines, almost didn't make it to the moon. But an experiment aboard the spacecraft managed to capture an image of Earth as it might ...

Lake Under Mars Ice Cap Unlikely

June 7, 2024 — Researchers have provided a simple and comprehensive -- if less dramatic -- explanation for bright radar reflections initially interpreted as liquid water beneath the ice cap on Mars' south ...

Olivine Unlocks the Secrets of the Moon's Interior

June 5, 2024 — New partitioning coefficients of first-transition row elements, Ga and Ge between olivine and silicate melt have been reported. New high-temperature experiments have investigated the effects of ...