Planetary Science

Recent Articles

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  Written in Rock

  By Mark Thompson - June 11, 2026

  A small rock found in the African desert has just handed scientists an extraordinary window into one of the most violent and consequential periods in the history of the Solar System. Inside this lunar meteorite, a chunk of the Moon knocked to Earth by an ancient collision, researchers have found evidence of a massive impact event 3.5 billion years ago, one that matches the timing of known impacts on Earth and in the asteroid belt. Three worlds but one shared bombardment and a story that may have everything to do with the origins of life.

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  Titan's Hidden Blanket

  By Mark Thompson - June 11, 2026

  Saturn's moon Titan has long fascinated scientists, it’s a world with rivers, lakes, and a thick atmosphere, all made not of water but of methane. Now, a new study suggests Titan is stranger than first imagined since beneath its surface lies a 9 km thick crust of methane laced ice that acts like a giant thermal blanket, warming the interior in ways nobody expected.

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  Did Life Start When Impacts Created Vast Hydrothermal Systems in Earth's Crust?

  By Evan Gough - June 11, 2026

  Earth was bombarded by impactors in its first couple billion years. These impacts created a vast network of hydrothermal systems in the crust that could've spawned life. New research examines their extent.

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  Reading the Moon in X-rays

  By Mark Thompson - June 10, 2026

  We've walked on the Moon, driven rovers across its surface, and analysed every gram of rock the Apollo astronauts brought home, yet we still don't have a complete picture of what the Moon is actually made of. Now a team of researchers in Japan think they've found the answer, a compact X-ray telescope, small enough to sit on a single satellite, that could map the entire lunar surface in just two years. It's an elegant solution to one of planetary science's most stubborn problems and the implications for understanding where the Moon came from could be revolutionary.

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  A Rare Meteorite Just Revealed a Lost, Mars-Sized Planet from the Dawn of the Solar System

  By Andy Tomaswick - June 09, 2026

  Meteorites are (usually) gifts from the heavens. They provide unique insights to parts of the solar system that we couldn’t access otherwise - either because it's too expensive, or because the solar system itself has evolved since it was formed. A new paper from researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder details how one particularly famous meteorite offers a window into just such a bygone age of the solar system - and the failed planet that was a part of it.

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  Neptune’s Weirdest Moon Nereid Might Be the Lone Survivor of an Ancient "Moonpocalypse"

  By Andy Tomaswick - June 09, 2026

  Neptune is definitely the odd one out of the gas giants. It’s tilted at a strange angle, and its moons are completely different from any other gas giant we know of. A new paper, published in Science Advances from researchers at CalTech, posits that might be because Triton, by far Neptune’s largest moon, absolutely obliterated the regular moon system it previously had, except for one particular exception - Nereid.

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  Even Without A Magnetosphere, Mars Can Still Deflect Some Solar Wind

  By Evan Gough - June 04, 2026

  New research shows how unmagnetized worlds like Mars can still deflect some of the Sun's solar wind. Unlike magnetospheres that form around planet's like Earth, this effect takes place in Mars' ionosphere. It's called the Zwan-Wolf effect, and it's not clear how deep into the atmosphere it operates.

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  Asteroid Dirt is "Fluffier" Than We Thought

  By Andy Tomaswick - June 03, 2026

  The strength of gravity is different on every body in the solar system. Whether it's the crushing weight of Jupiter or the miniscule pull of a small asteroid, this fundamental force of physics still has a major impact on the material those bodies are made up of. A new paper from researchers at the University of Duisburg-Essen and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) showcases just how different it can be by letting planetary simulants freefall inside a giant drop tower and measuring how “fluffy” the space dirt got.

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  Flash-Melted Glass from Chang'e-5 Reveals a High Levels of Iron on the Moon

  By Andy Tomaswick - June 02, 2026

  It might not seem like it, but the Moon is constantly being both sandblasted and baked. Its lack of a thick atmosphere allows micrometeorites to impact the surface at speed, and the solar wind isn’t held back either, baking the regolith with a constant flow of high-energy particles. These processes drive what is called “space weathering”, and it can drastically alter the physical and chemical properties of the lunar dirt over the course of billions of years. And we’re finally getting a better sense of what that means in practice thanks to two new papers from researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Peking University, which used advanced electron tomography and spectroscopic techniques to analyze samples returned from the Chang’e-5 mission to the near side of the Moon.

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  How Early Earth's Unlikely Chemical Hero Appeared

  By Evan Gough - June 02, 2026

  Though it's a toxic chemical, hydrogen cyanide (HCN) is also important for the development of life. It's a precursor to things like amino acids and nucleic acids and plays a central role in theories of the origin of life on Earth. Recently, difficult questions have been asked about how it could have formed on the early Earth. But the authors of new research in PNAS seemed to have figured it out.

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  Mars Hid its Warm, Wet Crystals Underground

  By Andy Tomaswick - June 02, 2026

  The search for any sign of life on Mars continues. In the latest update, a new data release from Curiosity’s Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) - essentially the rover’s portable X-ray diffraction lab - and published in a paper in Science, analyzes 20 different rock samples from various elevations of Mount Sharp, the mountain in the center of Gale Crater that Curiosity has been slowly climbing. In the paper, the researchers describe how the size of the crystals in those samples could help scientists determine where to look for evidence that life might have evolved on the Red Planet.

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  Ceres’ Surface Is Much More Complex Than Previously Thought

  By Bruce Dorminey - June 01, 2026

  The dwarf planet Ceres has a surface that seems to get more perplexing with each new study. A recent paper presented at EGU26 in Vienna only adds to its mystery.

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  Jupiter Created the Birthplace of Rocky Bodies in the Early Solar System

  By Evan Gough - June 01, 2026

  Jupiter helped create the different rocky bodies in the Solar System. The massive gas giant created a planet-induced pressure bump in the gas in the disk surrounding the young Sun. This pressure bump filtered different types of dust at different times, leading to the formation of planetesimals with different compositions at different times.

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  How a Giant Moon and a Steam Atmosphere Built the Recipe for Life

  By Andy Tomaswick - June 01, 2026

  4.5 billion years ago was an interesting time for the Earth. The atmosphere was thick and what we would now think of as toxic. The Moon, which was freshly formed, looks much more massive than it does today and faintly glows with the residual heat from its own creation. And the floor was literally lava. Everywhere. If there were any children alive at the time, they would have no chance of winning that game. But for a long time, scientists had thought this molten phase of the Earth didn’t last long. But according to a new paper, available in preprint on arXiv by researchers at the Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, it might have lasted for upwards of half a billion years.

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  MAVEN Spacecraft Finds New Plasma Squeezing at Mars

  By Laurence Tognetti, MSc - May 30, 2026

  A cloaked alien invasion force is approaching Earth and coming up on Mars. The first officer looks through a viewfinder and says, “Captain, the fourth planet’s atmosphere is behaving strangely. As though it were trying to block incoming energy.” The captain takes a moment, then his (already big) eyes get wide and he exclaims, “It’s a defense shield! The Earthlings are hiding on the fourth planet and are prepared to attack us! Abort the invasion!” The first officer responds, “Aye aye, Captain!”

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  ESA Selects Two New Scout-Class Missions

  By David Dickinson - May 29, 2026

  When it comes to understanding Earth and our changing environment, space is the place. Not only does it give us an overall holistic view of the planet below, but satellite-based imagery can transcend national boundaries and give us an understanding of key changes that often go unseen at ground level. Now, the European Space Agency (ESA) has chosen two new missions to address key questions in Earth environmental science: Hibidis and SOVA-S.

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  An Orbiting Satellite Triad Reveals Motions Inside Earth

  By Carolyn Collins Petersen - May 28, 2026

  Our planet's liquid iron outer core is slowly giving up its secrets to a trio of satellites launched by ESA in 2013. Called Swarm, the three probes have been studying Earth's magnetic field at the source. In the process, they've revealed startling changes in a molten layer region 2,200 kilometers beneath the Pacific Ocean. In 2010, material in that area of Earth's outer core changed direction. Insteading of moving slowly westward, it's now headed east and picking up speed. Scientists are working to figure out why by using the European Space Agency's (ESA) Swarm data and additional information from ESA's CryoSat mission and ground-based instruments.

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  How Mars Can Help Us Understand 'Marginal' Exoplanets

  By Evan Gough - May 25, 2026

  We've discovered large numbers of small rocky exoplanets, but they're at such great distances that habitability is extremely difficult to determine. New research suggests than since Mars is on the edge of being habitable, studying it in detail can shed light on rocky exoplanets. If we can understand things like tectonic activity and atmospheric escape on Mars, we can understand how they may play out on rocky exoplanets.

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  Early Life on Earth May Have Thrived in Impact Craters

  By Evan Gough - May 25, 2026

  A team of South Korean scientists has uncovered new evidence that could help explain how Earth’s atmosphere became rich in oxygen, one of the most transformative events in the planet’s history. Researchers from the Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources (KIGAM) report the finding of stromatolites, layered structures formed by microbial communities, within the Hapcheon impact crater on the Korean Peninsula. While the Hapcheon crater is only about 40,000 years old, it shows how stromatolites got a boost from the heat in impact crater hydrothermal systems.

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  NASA’S Juno Makes Closest Ever Approach To Jupiter’s Moon Of Thebe

  By Bruce Dorminey - May 22, 2026

  NASA’S Juno spacecraft images Jupiter’s tiny moon of Thebe in a recent close approach.