OUTERPLANETS

845 articles

Europa Clipper deploys instruments on journey to icy moon of Jupiter
Nov 26, 2024 (SPX)
The spacecraft, launched atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, is speeding through space at 22 miles per second (35 kilometers per second) relative to the Sun. Upo...
Uranus moon Miranda may hold a hidden ocean below its surface
Oct 31, 2024 (SPX)
"To find evidence of an ocean inside a small object like Miranda is incredibly surprising," said Tom Nordheim, a planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins Applied Ph...
NASA launches probe to study if life possible on icy Jupiter moon
Oct 14, 2024 (AFP)
Lift-off aboard a powerful SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket took place shortly after noon (1600 GMT), with the probe set to reach Jupiter's moon Europa in five and a ...
NASA probe Europa Clipper lifts off for Jupiter's icy moon
Oct 14, 2024 (AFP)
Lift-off took place aboard SpaceX's powerful Falcon Heavy rocket. The probe is set to reach Europa, one of Jupiter's many moons, in five and a half years. The m...
Is life possible on a Jupiter moon? NASA goes to investigate
Oct 14, 2024 (AFP)
The Europa Clipper mission will allow the US space agency to uncover new details about the moon, which scientists believe could hold an ocean of liquid water be...
NASA and SpaceX Set for Europa Clipper Launch on October 14
Oct 12, 2024 (SPX)
The Europa Clipper mission is aimed at investigating Jupiter's icy moon, Europa, to determine if its subsurface environment could support life. Europa is believ...
Does a Volcanic Moon Orbit a Distant Exoplanet Like Jupiter's Io?
Oct 11, 2024 (SPX)
Researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory have identified a significant clue - a sodium cloud - that may indicate the existence of a volcanic moon orbitin...
SwRI's UVS Instrument on Jupiter-Bound Spacecraft Passes Critical In-Flight Test
Oct 10, 2024 (SPX)
UVS, one of three NASA-led instruments aboard Juice, collected data during the flyby that matched expectations for Earth's and the Moon's UV emissions. These re...
NASA's Hubble, New Horizons team up for a simultaneous look at Uranus
Oct 10, 2024 (SPX)
Astronomers used Uranus as a proxy for similar planets beyond our solar system, known as exoplanets, comparing high-resolution images from Hubble to the more-di...
Hubble watches Jupiter's Great Red Spot behave like a stress ball
Oct 10, 2024 (SPX)
Hubble's new observations of the famous red storm, collected 90 days between December 2023 to March 2024, reveal that the GRS is not as stable as it might look....
Europa Clipper encapsulated ahead of launch
Oct 04, 2024 (SPX)
On September 30, the team connected the spacecraft and adapter to the payload attach fitting, a crucial step in preparing for the upcoming launch. Further, cove...
SwRI team detects carbon dioxide and hydrogen peroxide on Pluto's moon Charon
Oct 03, 2024 (SPX)
"Charon is the only midsized Kuiper Belt object, between 300 and 1,000 miles in diameter, that has been geologically mapped, thanks to the SwRI-led New Horizons...
The PI's Perspective: The Science Never Sleeps
Oct 03, 2024 (SPX)
This summer, we had three sets of groundbased astronomical observing dates, each three days long, on the giant Japanese Subaru Telescope atop the mountain of Ma...
Webb telescope detects carbon dioxide on Pluto's largest moon
Oct 01, 2024 (AFP)
The discovery of CO2, along with another chemical hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), could shed light on the icy worlds in the mysterious outer reaches of our Solar Syst...
Volcanoes may help reveal interior heat on Jupiter moon
Sep 20, 2024 (SPX)
"Tidal heating plays an important role in the heating and orbital evolution of celestial bodies," said Alex Hayes '03, M.Eng. '04, the Jennifer and Albert Sohn ...
Technicians prep Europa Clipper for propellant loading
Sep 19, 2024 (SPX)
The spacecraft's mission is to explore Jupiter's moon Europa, a celestial body considered one of the most likely places in the solar system to support life. The...
JunoCam identifies new volcanic feature on Io
Sep 15, 2024 (SPX)
This newly spotted volcano is situated south of Io's equator. Though Io is covered with numerous volcanoes, NASA's Galileo mission in 1997 did not observe any v...
Mystery of Trans-Neptunian Orbits Solved by Stellar Flyby
Sep 11, 2024 (SPX)
Pfalzner, along with her student Amith Govind and Simon Portegies Zwart from Leiden University, employed over 3,000 computer simulations to explore whether the ...
Outer Solar System may hold far more objects than previously thought
Sep 06, 2024 (SPX)
The Subaru Telescope has been conducting these observations to assist NASA's New Horizons mission, which was the first spacecraft to fly through and study the K...
Juice trajectory reset with historic Lunar-Earth flyby
Aug 21, 2024 (SPX)
The spacecraft made its closest approach to the Moon at 23:15 CEST (21:15 UTC) on August 19, followed by a near-Earth flyby just over a day later at 23:56 CEST ...
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