The Solar System’s smallest planet has contracted by nearly 19 km (12 miles) across, as crater debris masked telltale wrinkles on its surface, according to new research led by the German Aerospace Center’s Institute of Space Research.
The post Mercury Has Shrunk Even More than Planetary Scientists Thought appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has captured the clearest images yet of a newly formed impact site on the Moon.
The 60-foot-wide crater was formed on August 5, 2026, as the upper stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket slammed into the lunar surface, prompting amateur and professional astronomers around the world to watch for signs of the spacecraft’s impact.
Although no obvious evidence of the lunar crash landing was observed, six days later, NASA trained the powerful eye of the LRO onto the suspected crash site, eventually gathering several close-up views that reveal the best images of where the rocket made impact that have been captured to date.
The rocket that collided with the Moon was a leftover from Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1, which originally launched in January 2025.
Although the upper stage of the rocket was never intended to collide with the Moon at the time of its launch, after carrying the Firefly Aerospace mission to space, it entered a highly elliptical orbit that, over the course of about 18 months, subjected it to intense solar radiation and repeated gravitational tugs from both the Earth and the Moon. The resulting deviations altered its trajectory enough that the rocket was placed on an unavoidable lunar collision course.
Capturing images of the new crater was no small task and required precision spacecraft pointing. The LRO travels approximately one mile per second in its orbit around the Moon, which means it completes a pole-to-pole orbit roughly every two hours.
Tilting the spacecraft to point its Narrow-Angle Camera toward the impact site during successive passes, the images had to be timed to within a window of less than ten seconds to prevent the newly formed lunar feature from being shifted several miles beyond the field of view of the LRO’s camera.
Fortunately, the LRO team has a good bit of experience when it comes to spotting and photographing high-resolution images of features on the Moon. The photos they captured between August 11 and 12 reveal the new 60-foot-wide crater, along with patterns evident in the surrounding landscape as lunar regolith was propelled outward from the impact site.
In the new before-and-after images, darker material can be seen, which has weathered over time due to surface exposure to cosmic rays, solar irradiation, and countless micrometeorite impacts. Contrasting with this darker surface area are brighter areas, visible in “rays” near the newly formed crater, where subsurface material that has retained lighter coloration was blasted outward.
Before locating the impact site, NASA scientists coordinated with professional and amateur astronomers, as well as several space agencies from around the world, to reconstruct the rocket stage’s trajectory based on publicly available data.
Much of that data came from NASA’s own Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), which helped to refine predictions about where the strike was believed to have occurred. Although normally part of the American space agency’s planetary defense efforts that track asteroids and comets that could potentially threaten Earth, the recent lunar impact served as a rare opportunity to test their prediction tools.
Once coordinates for the expected location of the impact were determined, NASA and its partners supplied these to the South Korean Space Agency (KASA), whose Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter, or Danuri, and its high-resolution LUTI camera, were first to capture images of the crater.
At that time, it was determined that the crash site and resulting lunar impact feature were within about 0.6 miles of NASA’s original predicted location. Based on the KASA observations, NASA was able to supply the new information to its LRO team in advance of the successful capture of the new NASA imagery.
The resulting images offer one of the clearest views of a new crater on the lunar surface, and one produced by an object originating from Earth. Additional details about the photos and the technologies used to capture them can be found at NASA’s website.
Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.
More than 140 million miles away from Earth, a rare event recently occurred in the twilight skies above Mars, and it was all captured on camera by NASA’s Perseverance rover.
Imagery of a celestial alignment, featuring Earth as it briefly vanished behind the Martian moon Phobos, was revealed in composite photos captured by Perseverance’s Mastcam-Z instrument in early July as the intrepid rover embarked on its 1,907th Martian day, or sol, on the Red Planet.
The rover’s Mastcam-Z camera system, developed by Arizona State University in collaboration with Malin Space Science Systems, was built for capturing high-resolution panoramic zoom imagery of the Martian landscape. Although its main objectives involve its investigations of Jezero Crater and ancient geological features preserved there for eons, which may even include evidence of past microbial life, cases like the recent celestial alignment showcase how the rover’s cameras can also provide unique insights into astronomical events.
Captured against fading twilight, our Earthly home appears as little more than a tiny, bright speck of light as it slowly passes behind the irregularly shaped Martian moon, in what astronomers refer to as an occultation.
NASA applied processing to the rare images, which helped to filter out some of the background light, revealing the brief celestial pairing in greater detail. The resulting imagery offers a glimpse of a dark backdrop that now better highlights the motion of Earth and Phobos in their treks through the Martian sky.
The image was obtained roughly 40 minutes after the Martian sunset, as the natural orbital path Phobos follows causes it to appear to drift upward in the new sequence of images, while Earth moves diagonally downward, then slips out of view behind the oddly shaped Martian companion.
In an annotated version released by NASA, timestamps spanning just 40 seconds illustrate the progression of the event in single frames, offering a look at a sunset unlike any ever seen on Earth.
That isn’t to say that the same effect can’t be seen from our planet, but in reverse: a lunar occultation where Mars passes behind the Moon can also be observed here, under the right conditions.
Occultations are frequently used by astronomers to help study the positions and motions of various celestial bodies in this way. However, seeing one from the surface of another planet is a rare treat, offering a view of Earth as a distant point of light.
In the past, Perseverance has also captured images of a lunar eclipse from its position on the Martian surface, as Phobos was seen passing in front of the Sun. Past imagery collected by NASA’s robotic explorer has also documented appearances of the Martian moon Deimos in the Red Planet’s early morning skies.
Although Mars’ characteristic rusty hues are ever-present, the recent imagery also offers a glimpse of other subtle colors seen in the Martian environment, particularly at twilight. With subtle bluish grays that gradually transition to redder tones, the new images offer a more nuanced and colorful look at the Red Planet.
Perseverance has now spent more than five years exploring Mars, and its ongoing discoveries have added a wealth of new information to the growing body of knowledge scientists have collected about our nearby planetary neighbor.
As for the recent imagery the rover captured, such a unique view requires careful timing, along with a bit of good fortune, according to Mark Lemmon, a Mastcam-Z co-investigator at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
“Phobos crosses the Martian sky three times a day, and Earth is visible for months at a stretch,” Lemmon said in a statement, adding that “catching one directly behind the other takes planning and a little luck.”
Additional details provided by NASA about the new imagery can be found here and here.
Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.
NASA’s Curiosity rover has stumbled on the largest patch of polygon-shaped ground fractures it has ever seen on Mars, a discovery that could reveal more about the planet’s watery past.
The post Curiosity Finds Massive Field of Honeycomb-Shaped Fractures on Mars appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
A new look at more than two decades’ worth of archival data from NASA’s Spirit mission suggests that the Martian soil may hold iron-bearing minerals -- hematite and altered magnetite -- that were too faint for scientists to detect in real time during the mission.
The post Hidden Clues in Spirit Rover Data Suggest Mars Once Had Far More Water than Scientists Realized appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
The Hoba meteorite smashed into the Earth, but look around it, and you won't see any crater.
A ring in Quebec’s wilderness turned out to be a rare cosmic scar.
New NASA imagery has revealed a growing Martian “crescent” and surface details on the Red Planet as the agency’s Psyche spacecraft recently completed a flyby of Earth’s nearby planetary neighbor.
Launched on October 13, 2023, Psyche is currently on its way toward a rendezvous with a metal-rich asteroid after which the space probe was named. Now, in a series of composite images captured as the spacecraft flew past Mars during a gravity assist in early May, the growing crescent shape of the Red Planet is shown in successive views of Earth’s nearby planetary neighbor.
“After these views were captured by the spacecraft’s multispectral imager instrument, Mars began to overfill the field of view as Psyche made close approach with the planet and captured a series of high-resolution images of the surface,” read a NASA statement accompanying the imagery.
In several of the images, Mars appears as a thin sliver due to the high phase angle of approach as Psyche made its way toward the planet. In the days that followed, the crescent is shown as it appears to “grow” as more sunlight illuminates its surface.
The recent crescent features weren’t all that Psyche captured during its recent near approach to Mars. In additional images released by the American space agency, the Martian surface appeared in colorful views obtained by the spacecraft’s multispectral imager instrument.
The resulting “mosaic” was created from four separate images acquired near the end of Psyche’s recent visit, shown in enhanced color that highlights several details visible on the Martian surface.
Traveling along a southwesterly path with relation to the Martian poles, the mosaic imagery appears slightly blurry, as it represents close to six minutes of travel above the planet. According to NASA, pixel scale resolution in the imagery “varies from 381 meters per pixel on the right to 440 meters per pixel on the left.”
Color enhancements to the imagery, collected with the imager’s green, blue, and near-infrared filters, reveal additional details about the various features of the volcanic region of Mars that Psyche flew over on May 15, 2026, known as the Iapygia region.
This area comprises part of the Martian southern highlands, and in the recent imagery, Fournier crater—the largest shown in the new imagery—can be seen, alongside hills, cliffs, and other features, including the irregular Oenotria Scopuli cliff system, forming one side of the boundary of a massive ancient impact feature on the Red Planet.
Additional details about the new imagery, as well as information about Psyche’s mission, can be found on NASA’s official mission page.
Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.
A tiny green dot appearing in an image taken by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) captures a historic tale of Red Planet exploration by one of its first Earthling visitors.
That visitor—a robotic rover named Perseverance—has been conducting investigations on Mars since February 18, 2021, and the new aerial images reveal its current location in an area that mission specialists have dubbed “Arbot.”
While Perseverance’s latest appearance reveals little more than a greenish spec on the planet’s rust-colored surface, also visible in the new images are the long path its formidable tires have left in the Martian soil as the robotic explorer has trekked west of its initial landing site.
The new images, captured on June 13, 2026, were taken just one day before Perseverance broke the previous distance record held by a robotic explorer on Mars: NASA’s Opportunity rover.
However, Perseverance completed this phase of its journey in record time compared to its predecessor, which took more than 11 years to traverse a similar distance. Perseverance, by contrast, covered the same distance in less than half that time, with just five years and four months of travel now behind it.
The images were made possible by the MROs’ High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera, which also captured surface features in the Arbot area that include ridges and windswept areas along Mars’ rugged exterior.
Built and operated by the University of Arizona, HiRISE captures images with resolutions as fine as about 25 centimeters (10 inches) per pixel, allowing researchers to distinguish features roughly the size of a kitchen table from orbit. The camera has returned hundreds of thousands of detailed images since the MRO arrived at Mars two decades ago, contributing to a growing data set that has transformed scientists’ understanding of the Red Planet.
Documenting everything from active dust avalanches and shifting dunes to fresh impact craters, the unprecedented resolution its imagery provides has made HiRISE one of the most powerful planetary imaging instruments ever deployed.
Last year, the MRO’s HiRISE camera also successfully captured images of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS as it made its way past Mars during its trip through our Solar System. Although the HiRISE images weren’t the clearest images of the interstellar visitor obtained during its visit, they did help demonstrate just how formidable NASA’s MRO and its suite of instruments are.
Additional details about Perseverance and its mission can be found at NASA’s official web page, and information about the MRO can be found here.
Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.
Scientists from the Southwest Research Institute’s Center for Lunar Origin and Evolution (CLOE) have revealed new models of the Moon’s oldest and largest impact crater, the South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin, providing fresh insights into the event and resulting material deposition on the lunar surface.
The SwRI team behind the new models, which is part of NASA’s Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute, said such details will help prepare future Artemis astronauts for what they could encounter during their upcoming missions.
In a statement announcing the new models, Dr. William Bottke, director of CLOE and executive director of SwRI’s Science Directorate in Boulder, Colorado, said that the basin is an attractive potential target for future Artemis missions since it offers a “rare opportunity” to study an earlier era in the Moon’s history.
“The collision struck the lunar surface with such force that it may have excavated material from deep inside the Moon, including portions of the lunar mantle,” explained the co-author of the impact study detailing the new research.
Although previous studies have modeled impacts that may have caused the Moon’s oldest and largest crater, the team’s new effort has revealed new evidence about the composition of the impacting object and its likely direction and angle.
“Our simulation produces the right shape and nature of the impact basin,” explained the impact study’s lead author, Dr. Shigeru Wakita of Purdue University. “It also tells us about the projectile that created it and the direction of the impact.”
For example, the new model suggests that the object was not a single, uniform object. Instead, the team found that the impactor was likely a “differentiated” object, such as a protoplanet or asteroid, composed of rock and surrounded by an iron core. The models also found that the object approached from the north “at a low angle” before impacting the Moon’s surface on a southward trajectory.
According to the impact study authors, the impact excavated a deep, “asymmetric” cavity and generated enough energy to melt the rock within the crater’s central basin, resulting in the SPA basin’s elongated, tapered shape. Their models also indicated that the object’s lunar collision “lofted” large amounts of material into the air. Critically, their models also revealed that material from both the lunar crust and mantle was likely ejected before ultimately settling back onto the basin floor.
To help potential future lunar astronauts, including members of NASA’s Artemis mission, target the most scientifically valuable lunar samples, a second companion study explored the effects of gravity on ejecta distribution beneath and around the impact basin. According to the team behind that effort, their effort involved direct comparisons of high-resolution gravity data with models. Specifically, they wanted to determine if pieces of the Moon’s crust and mantle were included in the ejection.
After comparing the two, the authors of the second study determined that the SPA basin “likely contains substantial amounts of mantle-derived rocks” both within its interior and mixed into the wider ejecta blanket surrounding the basin. Also critical for future missions, the analysis revealed that this material was not all scattered during the initial impact.
Instead, the new models showed that subsequent, smaller impacts appear to have “excavated” these underlying mantle deposits. As a result, the team suggests that there is likely enough material on the surface of the Moon’s oldest and largest crater “where it could be readily sampled by robotic rovers or astronauts during future missions.”
When discussing the significance of the gravity study’s findings, lead author Dr. Gabriel Gowman of the University of Arizona said that before now, the “precise distribution” of lunar mantle material on the Moon’s surface “has been a big unknown.” For example, some previous theories suggested that the deepest ejecta might be found only in parts of the basin that are not currently included in planned Artemis missions.
Now, the team’s new models suggest that the impact that formed the SPA basin “ejected enough deep material to form a significant deposit that should still be accessible today.” More importantly, Dr. Gowman added, some of that scientifically valuable mantle material “at a trace level” may exist in regions currently under consideration for upcoming Artemis landings. Taken together, Bottke said, the two studies can provide a “powerful roadmap” for future lunar scientific missions to the Moon’s oldest and largest crater.
“It tells us not just how SPA formed, but where to look for the rocks that can answer some of our biggest questions about the Moon’s origin and evolution,” the researcher explained.
The Impact study “A southward differentiated impactor forms the tapered shape of the South Pole-Aitken impact basin on the Moon” was published in Science Advances.
The gravity study “Gravity Mapping of Lunar Mantle Material in South Pole-Aitken Basin Ejecta” was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.
Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him directly at christopher@thedebrief.org.
Planetary scientists analyzing a lunar meteorite known as Northwest Africa (NWA) 12593 have uncovered evidence of an asteroid impact that occurred 3.5 billion years ago on the Moon, helping to reconstruct a period of intense bombardment that left lasting marks across the inner Solar System.
The post Lunar Meteorite Preserves Evidence of Colossal Asteroid Strike appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
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