The Hubble Space Telescope has captured fresh images of Saturn and Mars as they approach opposition – the point in their orbit when the planets are at their closest to Earth, and fully illuminated by the light of our star.
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Today, the Moon is as dead as you can get, but scientists contend that this might not have been the case billions of years ago. There were two periods shortly after the Moon formed when it could have been possible for life to have existed on the lunar surface.
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Saturn’s moon Titan is one of the most interesting bodies in the solar system – but at a glance it looks like a dull yellow ball, thanks to a soupy atmosphere. Now, using 13 years’ worth of infrared data from Cassini, astronomers have stitched together the clearest images yet of Titan’s surface.
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With dozens of moons whizzing around Jupiter, it makes sense that a few have slipped under the radar, but the latest discovery is still a surprisingly large haul. Astronomers have announced the detection of 12 new moons orbiting Jupiter, including one particularly reckless “oddball.”
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Israel has put in its bid to be the fourth nation to reach the Moon and the first privately-funded mission to do so. Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) and the nonprofit SpaceIL today outlined plans to send up an unmanned spacecraft that will make a lunar landing on February 13, 2019.
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If astronauts are ever going to return to the Moon, they must come to terms with the lunar environment. To combat a major threat to astronaut health and technology, ESA is conducting a major study of moon dust to determine how dangerous it is and how to counter its effects on humans and machines.
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The TESS mission took its first image as it completed a dramatic lunar flyby this week. On May 17, 2018, the next-generation planet hunter passed within 5,000 mi (8,000 km) of the Moon to execute a slingshot maneuver that hurled it towards its final orbit.x
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Prolonged exposure to lunar dust could make staying on the Moon a risky business. In tests, exposure to dust particles of simulated lunar soil resulted in up to 90 percent of human lung cells and mouse neurons being killed, with the potential for increased cancer risk also evident.
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A lot has changed since Galileo first pointed his telescope at some mysterious bright spots around Jupiter in 1610. More powerful telescopes and intrepid spacecraft continue to bring more moons into focus, with around 150 now confirmed to exist in our solar system alone.
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The Martian moons Phobos and Deimos may have been created in the aftermath of a cataclysmic collision between early Mars and an object with a mass somewhere between that of the dwarf planet Ceres, and the asteroid Vesta.
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