Metal asteroids offer something rare in the solar system -- the core of a planet without all the rock that normally surrounds it. Since it is impossible to directly examine a planetary or lunar core if the parent body remains intact, metal-rich asteroids where the upper mantle and crust layers have been lost to a …
New Discoveries of Water on the Sunlit Side of the Moon. Might the H2O Be Encased in Glass-like Beads?
The search for water on the moon has produced a discovery of tiny molecule-sized perhaps widespread amounts of H20 in a sunlit lunar crater. The water is not in a liquid or ice or gaseous form, but rather apparently contained (and protected) inside glass beads formed when micrometeorites hit the surface. The detection was made …
Mapping the Surfaces of Our Solar System
It was not all that long ago that a "map" of our moon, of Mars, of a large asteroid such as Vesta, of Titan, or of any hard-surfaced object in our solar system would have some very general outlines, some very large features identified, and then the extraterrestrial equivalent of the warning on Earth …
Back to the Future on the Moon
What does NASA's drive to return to the moon have to do with worlds of exoplanets and astrobiology that are generally discussed here? The answer is actually quite a lot. Not so much about the science, although current NASA plans would certainly make possible some very interesting science regarding humans living in deep space, as …
Many Worlds 