China’s Tianwen-1 orbiter caught a rare glimpse of 3I/ATLAS as it swept past Mars, revealing the hazy coma and tail of a comet born beyond our solar system. The interstellar object known as 3I/ATLAS just flew past Mars, and China’s Tianwen-1 mission managed to snap some pics with its high-resolution camera. According to the China [...]

Titan’s resources could one day make Saturn’s largest moon a major outpost for deep space exploration. Titan is one of the few places in the Solar System where the landscape can feel strangely familiar and completely alien at the same time. Saturn’s largest moon has weather, clouds, rain, lakes, and seas, but its cycle is [...]

A new Keck Observatory study indicates that giant planets can spin faster than more massive brown dwarfs, revealing important clues about how planetary systems form and evolve. Astronomers have long suspected that a planet’s mass may be linked to how quickly it spins. In our solar system, Jupiter and Saturn rotate especially fast, each completing [...]

Models suggest that impact-ejected material from Earth could reach Venus’ clouds and potentially survive there briefly. Panspermia is the idea that life, or the ingredients needed for life, can move through space on asteroids, comets, and other objects. If life’s building blocks appear on one planet, a powerful impact could blast material from its surface [...]