Huge escarpments of quite pure water ice have been found in the Southern Highlands of Mars -- accessible enough that astronauts might some day be able to turn the ice into water, hydrogen and oxygen. Some of these deposits are more than 100 meters thick and begin only a meter or two below the …
Continue reading "The Mars Water Story Gets Ever More Interesting"
Huge escarpments of quite pure water ice have been found in the Southern Highlands of Mars -- accessible enough that astronauts might some day be able to turn the ice into water, hydrogen and oxygen. Some of these deposits are more than 100 meters thick and begin only a meter or two below the surface. …
Continue reading "The Mars Water Story Gets Ever More Interesting"
Unmanned missions to planets and moons and asteroids in our solar system have been some of NASA's most successful efforts in recent years, with completed or on-going ventures to Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, the asteroid Bennu, our moon, Pluto, Mercury and bodies around them all. On deck are a funded mission to Europa, another to Mars …
Continue reading "Two Tempting Reprise Missions: Explore Titan or Bring Back a Piece of A Comet"
Unmanned missions to planets and moons and asteroids in our solar system have been some of NASA's most successful efforts in recent years, with completed or on-going ventures to Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, the asteroid Bennu, our moon, Pluto, Mercury and bodies around them all. On deck are a funded mission to Europa, another to Mars …
Continue reading "Two Tempting Reprise Missions: Explore Titan or Bring Back a Piece of A Comet"
The media was abuzz last week with the latest NASA news conference. A neural network -- a form of artificial intelligence or machine learning -- developed at Google had found two planets in data previously collected by NASA’s prolific Kepler Space Telescope. It’s a technique that could ultimately track-down our most Earth-like planets. The new …
By Elizabeth Tasker The media was abuzz last week with the latest NASA news conference. A neural network -- a form of artificial intelligence or machine learning -- developed at Google had found two planets in data previously collected by NASA’s prolific Kepler Space Telescope. It’s a technique that could ultimately track-down our most Earth-like …
The search for biosignatures in the atmospheres of distant exoplanets is extremely difficult and time-consuming work. The telescopes that can potentially take the measurements required are few and more will come only slowly. And for the current and next generation of observatories, staring at a single exoplanet long enough to get a measurement of the …
Continue reading "A New Way to Find Signals of Habitable Exoplanets?"
The search for biosignatures in the atmospheres of distant exoplanets is extremely difficult and time-consuming work. The telescopes that can potentially take the measurements required are few and more will come only slowly. And for the current and next generation of observatories, staring at a single exoplanet long enough to get a measurement of the …
Continue reading "A New Way to Find Signals of Habitable Exoplanets?"
Water worlds, especially if they have no land on them, are unlikely to be home to life, or at least life we can detect. Some of the basic atmospheric and mineral cycles that make a planet habitable will be absent. Cool animation of such a world. (NASA) Wherever we find water on Earth, we find …
https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/system/video_items/107_WaterWorldHiH264.mp4 Water worlds, especially if they have no land on them, are unlikely to be home to life, or at least lifewe can detect. Some of the basic atmospheric and mineral cycles that make a planet habitable will be absent. Cool animation of such a world. (NASA) By guest columnist Elizabeth Tasker Wherever we …
Many Worlds 