The planet’s extreme daytime heat combined with the super-cold (minus 200-degree Celsius) temperatures in the permanently shadowed craters might be acting like an “ice-making chemistry lab.”
The molecules were extracted by the Curiosity rover from a mudstone section of the Gale Crater. Scientists have concluded that we can't rule out those molecules actually have a biological origin.
NASA has selected four possible planetary science missions for further evaluation, two focused on Venus, one on Jupiter's volcanic moon Io and one on Neptune's icy moon Triton. Final selections will be made next year.
During the day, a thin layer of nitrogen ice warms and turns into vapor. At night, the vapor condenses and once again forms ice. Each sequence is like a heartbeat, pumping nitrogen winds around the dwarf planet.
Hygiea is located in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and is the fourth largest object in the main asteroid belt. Now, a new telescopic survey suggests Hygiea is a dwarf planet, due to its surprisingly spherical shape.
According to an international team of scientists, the lake that was present in Gale Crater over 3 billion years ago underwent a drying episode, potentially linked to the global drying of Mars.
A team of German scientists recently examined data gathered by the Cassini orbiter around Enceladus’ southern polar region and found was evidence of organic signatures that could be the building blocks for amino acids.
According to new study by a team of NASA scientists, Venus would have been able to maintain stable temperatures – from a low of 20 °C (68 °F) to a high of 50 °C (122 °F) – for about three billion years.
Scientists now propose using an insulating material called silica aerogel to make parts of the Martian surface friendlier to photosynthetic life. Perhaps an aerogel blanket could more easily melt the water on the Martian ice caps to make a small section of the planet habitable.
Two telescopes have measured the faint heat from the main, or epsilon ring, of Uranus, enabling astronomers for the first time to determine its temperature: a cool 77 Kelvin.
NASA's Curiosity rover discovered "startlingly high amounts of methane in the Martian air" on Wednesday in what could potentially be a sign of life on the Red Planet, the New York Times reported on Saturday.
Clay often forms in the presence of water – a key ingredient for the evolution of life as it is known on Earth – and Curiosity’s latest findings add more evidence that a significant amount of water once pooled and flowed in Gale Crater on Mars.
Scientists detected a massive reservoir of frozen water sandwiched by layers of sand beneath the northern polar ice cap on Mars. This reservoir contains so much ice that, if melted and brought to the surface, it would submerge the entire planet.
The signal appears to have been generated inside the planet and not by any surface-level phenomenon. Three other seismic events were detected on 14 March, 10 and 11 April, but they were much smaller and their origins more ambiguous.
Mercury is now the second rocky planet—after Earth—for which we have evidence of a solid inner core. It’s not an exact value, but the mere presence of a solid inner core helps to understand how the planet generates its magnetic field.
