4 billion year old Nitrogen containing organic molecules has been discovered in Martian meteorites. This finding suggests a wet and organic-rich early Mars, which could have been habitable and favorable for life to start.
Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun, is one of the last places we think about when considering the potential for life in the solar system. New research suggests the planet's interior once contained the basic ingredients for life.
By going over old data collected by the Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1986, two scientists at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center have made the startling discovery that Uranus’ atmosphere is gradually escaping into space.
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.”
Astronomers have released a catalog of 316 trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) - minor planets located in the far reaches of the Solar System - detected from the first four years of the Dark Energy Survey.
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.
A NASA-supplied Atlas 5 rocket launched the European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter spacecraft 9 February, kicking off an innovative mission to study the Sun in unprecedented detail, complementing close-in observations by NASA’s Parker Solar Probe.
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.
The Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) recently took its first image which reveals an unprecedented level of details. These images provide a close-up view of the turbulent plasma arranged in a pattern of cell-like structures.
A meteorite that crashed into Australia back in 1969 contains interstellar stardust dating back some 7 billion years, predating the formation of Earth by 2.5 billion years. The discovery offers a snapshot of the conditions that existed before our solar system.
A team of astronomers has created the first global map of Titan by using the Cassini probe's over 100 fly-bys to stitch together both imagery and radar measurements.
Astronomers spotted a magnetic explosion on the surface of the sun unlike anything they've ever seen before. Although it was initially theorized about 15 years ago, this was their first direct observation of it thanks to NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory.
Comet 2I/Borisov is only the second interstellar object known to have passed through the solar system. This mysterious visitor from the depths of space is the first identified comet to arrive here from another star.
Since its 2018 launch, NASA's Parker Solar Probe (record-holder for closest-ever spacecraft to the Sun) has finished three of 24 planned passes through never-before-explored parts of the Sun's atmosphere.
