Neptune's moon and ring system stand out among the giant planets because of the strange imbalance between its one very large moon and its many tiny moons. Its largest moon, Triton, makes up more than 99% of the mass of all satellites orbiting the planet while orbiting retrograde compared with Neptune's rotation. The predominant theory is that Triton is a captured Kuiper Belt object that caused a major disruption in Neptune's early moon system. Now, a new study published in Science Advances provides spectroscopic evidence to support this theory.
Boston College scientists have determined that a newly discovered meteorite from Mars is 1.27 billion years old and derived from a previously unsampled, pristine source on the Red Planet. The study is published in the journal Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta.
Boston College scientists have determined that a newly discovered meteorite from Mars is 1.27 billion years old and derived from a previously unsampled, pristine source on the Red Planet. The study is published in the journal Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta.
Our sun constantly releases a stream of high-speed charged particles, known as the solar wind. Unlike Earth, Mars does not have a strong global magnetic field to shield its atmosphere from this flow. As a result, the solar wind can interact directly with Mars' upper atmosphere and gradually strip atmospheric particles into space.
Ancient samples from the moon's far side are helping scientists uncover how asteroid impacts shaped the early solar system. The findings challenge decades of thinking about when those impacts occurred and offer new insights into the conditions that influenced Earth's evolution.
The spacecraft aced its encounter with Mars. Now, mission scientists are studying a trove of data from the flyby in preparation for its arrival at asteroid Psyche in 2029.
A Southwest Research Institute-led study has proposed a connection between a specific collision in the main asteroid belt and an inner-solar-system-wide bombardment episode that may have had measurable biological and geological consequences on Earth. The research suggests that the catastrophic breakup of the Eulalia parent body could be linked to an impact shower that struck the terrestrial planets about 800 million years ago. The work is published on the arXiv preprint server.
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