planetary-science

NASA’s Hubble and Webb telescopes have revealed that tiny objects beyond Neptune may preserve the earliest history of planet formation.

Nature Astronomy, Published online: 08 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41550-026-02914-6 BepiColombo’s flyby at just 165 km from Mercury observed sustained precipitation of energetic solar protons and electrons onto the planet’s surface, with potentially long-term impact on its weathering and mineralogy.

Nature Astronomy, Published online: 08 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41550-026-02952-0 Images reveal where planetary surfaces change, whereas seismic and ground-motion records can show when and why. Treating seismometers as environmental sensors, alongside cameras, meteorological packages and orbital repeat imaging, would make active surfaces a central target of future missions.

The Earth and the Moon have nearly identical isotopic compositions, and the Giant Impact Hypothesis strives to explain this. New research into the ancient impact shows how the temperature of both worlds, and how it affects the strength of the materials involved in the collision, shaped the outcome, including the isotopic compositions.

An analysis of 75 meteorite falls identified seven distinct processes that occur as space rocks melt, break apart, and slow down before reaching the ground. A space rock entering Earth’s atmosphere does far more than simply “burn up.” By examining 75 meteorite falls recorded in videos and photographs, researchers identified seven distinct stages that shape [...]

Scientists have discovered an enormous 10-sided wave pattern in the icy ammonia clouds over Saturn's south pole

For the first time, scientists used the joint power of NASA’s Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes to study some of the most far-flung bodies in our solar system, Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs). Some of these are the smallest and faintest ever directly seen. The researchers unexpectedly found fewer small TNOs than they expected, and that […] The post NASA’s Hubble, Webb Find Far-out Solar Syste…

Countries around the world are planning missions to Mars, including rovers and a sample return from the moon Phobos....

A Luxembourg-led European rover mission will explore the Moon’s south pole in search of water ice and scientific discoveries.

Scientists sent a robot into the freezing waters beneath a Greenland glacier to study a hidden environment few humans have ever seen. What the camera captured beneath the ice revealed a side of glaciers that remained largely unseen.

One day in history about 4.5 billion years ago was a dramatic one for Earth, potentially giving our planet an instant moon and an almighty headache all in one go.

This panel of two images was taken by Mars Perseverance rover at Jezero crater on Sol 1965 using its Left Navigation Camera (Navcam) The camera is located high on the […] The post A Martian Horizon Last Monday Afternoon appeared first on Astrobiology .

[astro-ph.EP] The Near InfraRed Spectrometer (NIRS3) onboard Hayabusa2 observed asteroid (162173) Ryugu, searching especially for signatures of water-bearing minerals. However, during the mission, absolute reflectance measured by the Telescopic Optical […] The post Updated in-flight Calibration Of The Hayabusa2/NIRS3 Spectrometer: New Global Near-infrared Photometric Properties Of Asteroid (16217…

But the BepiColombo twin orbiters aren’t the first spacecraft to visit our system’s smallest planet. Here’s what we’ve seen already The post After an 8-Year Journey, Orbiters Are About to Give Us a Fresh Look at Mercury appeared first on Nautilus .

After nearly eight years and billions of kilometers of travel, BepiColombo -- a science mission led by ESA in close collaboration with JAXA -- has begun its long-awaited arrival at the smallest and innermost planet in our Solar System. The post BepiColombo Begins Final Approach to Mercury appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News .

[astro-ph.EP] We present mass constraints of two short-period, terrestrial-sized planets transiting K2-223, based on high-precision radial velocity measurements from HARPS-N and ESPRESSO, as well as a tentative indication of an […] The post Mass Constraints For The K2-223 System Planets: An Ultra-short-period sub-Earth, A Short-period Super-Earth, And A Tentative Long-period Giant Planet appeared…

[astro-ph.EP] We present the results of a survey of previously uncharacterized near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) conducted between the second half of 2024 and the first months of 2026 using broadband BVRcIc […] The post Photometric Characterization Of Near-Earth Asteroids: Rotation, Taxonomy, And Candidate Evidence For Internal Cohesion appeared first on Astrobiology .

If you’ve ever spent time with an 11-year-old during their dinosaur phase, you know the feeling of having everything you thought you knew upturned by a pitiless pedant. Science moves on and leaves whatever we learned in school hopelessly out of date. The dinosaurs I grew up with were slow thinking and cold-blooded monsters. They came in muted shades of ugly brown and green, like Subarus. I was ta…

Looking for a sky event this week? Check out our full Sky This Week column.  September 5: Titan near Saturn The waning crescent Moon lies in Gemini today, not far from the 3rd-magnitude star Epsilon (ε) Geminorum, roughly around where western twin Castor’s knee would be. Mars is also in Gemini, closer to the midsection of the Continue reading "The Sky Today on Sunday, September 6: The Moon and Ma…

A strange honeycomb landscape on Mars may preserve the scars of ancient cycles of rain, drought, and cracking mud. The surface of Mars is home to some of the most breathtaking and awe-inspiring landscapes in the solar system. This is primarily due to the Red Planet lacking several resurfacing processes that Earth possesses, including plate [...]