Planetary Scientists News Today

Impact craters in Europa's icy crust have been used to measure the thickness of the world's shell, leading scientists closer to learning if this frozen moon could host life as we know it.

​The Physics Department is presenting the planetarium show, "Cosmic Mashups: Gravity, Galaxies, and Supermassive Black Holes," at 12:00 p.m., Friday, February 9, in the Anderson Hancock Planetarium. The show is part of the 2024 Spring Physics Colloquium. 

NASA's Mars Sample Return program is the agency’s highest priority in planetary science, but projected multibillion-dollar overruns have some calling the plan a 'dumpster fire.'

"The Dragonfly team has successfully overcome a number of technical and programmatic challenges in this daring endeavor to gather new science on Titan."

Planetary scientists simulate how haze might be obstructing our view of exoplanet's atmospheres, and potentially alien water.

Astronomers have long been puzzled by dozens of mysterious objects acting in strange and largely unexplained ways past the outer reaches of the solar system, beyond the orbit of Neptune. Observations have shown that these trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) are moving as if they were being pushed by an invisible force, the tugging and pulling of […]

A planet larger than Jupiter with just one percent of Earth's density has just been discovered, and scientists are describing its atmosphere as cloudy with a chance of...cotton candy? In a new not-yet-peer-reviewed paper, a consortium of planetary scientists based on three separate continents describe the newly-discovered exoplanet, which they've fittingly dubbed as "WASP-193b," as […]

The Perseverance rover found organic compounds associated with life — but explanations other than aliens exist

Saturn’s moon Enceladus, known for spewing salty ice into space, has the chemical elements needed for life, a new study using NASA's Cassini mission data shows.

Researchers believe they may be able to suss out whether microscopic aliens exist on one of Saturn's 83 moons without having to land a spaceship there. Enceladus — about 800 million miles away and 25 times smaller than Earth — has captured the imaginations of planetary scientists searching for life beyond the blue marble. The Saturn moon shoots geyser-like plumes containing bits of water and gas from its ocean into space. That constant spray creates a halo, which contributes to one of S...