The surface of Venus is littered with thousands of volcanoes, some of which may still be active until today. A fresh look at 30-year-old radar images captured by the Magellan spacecraft revealed new lava flows on Venus, suggesting that the planet was volcanically active between 1990 to 1992.
On September 29, 2022, NASA’s Juno spacecraft made its closest flyby of Europa, coming to within 220 miles (355 kilometers) of the Jovian moon’s frozen surface. The closeup view of Europa revealed incredible details of the moon’s chaotic terrain, which suggest that its icy crust is not where it used to be. The images…
Icy moons like Europa and Enceladus are exciting venues for the prospect of life beyond Earth, because they are thought to contain oceans of water beneath their frigid surfaces.
After months of frustration, NASA finally got the Bennu asteroid sample container open in January, revealing the large amounts of asteroid scooped up by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft.
In September, fragments of a near-Earth asteroid were carefully dropped off in the Utah desert. The space rocks hold clues to the origin of the solar system and can possibly answer crucial questions about how our planet came to be—if only we can get to them first.
We’ve all been there: You’re getting some peanut butter, or looking to nosh a nice pickle, when you find your wrist strength is insufficient to get at the jar’s delicious contents.
About a month ago, pristine samples from an asteroid landed on Earth while enclosed within a tight capsule. The sample canister was designed to keep the main chunk of the asteroid safe during its journey through space, but now teams at NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) are struggling to open it to get at the space…
The OSIRIS-REx canister still contains the bulk of the asteroid sample inside, but pieces of the ancient space rock found on the outside have already shown evidence of organic matter embedded within tiny bits of debris.
Scientists working to open up the sample canister containing rock and dust from asteroid Bennu have run into a problem: there’s just too much of it.
