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Awesome Blue Skies and Red Surface Ice Found at Pluto – The Other Red Planet
Much to the amazement and delight of scientists, the latest findings about Pluto reveal it possesses hazy blue skies and numerous red colored patches of water ice exposed on the surface of a world also...
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Surveying the “Fossils of Planet Formation”: The Lucy Mission
In February of 2014, NASA's Discovery Program put out the call for mission proposals, one or two of which will have the honor of taking part in Discovery Mission Thirteen. Hoping to focus the next...
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Io, Jupiter’s Volcanic Moon
Exploring the Solar System is like peeling an onion. With every layer removed, one finds fresh mysteries to ponder over, each one more confounding than the last. And this is certainly the case when it...
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New Horizons Maneuvers Toward Potential Kuiper Belt Target
Even though the New Horizons spacecraft hasn’t officially been approved to do a flyby of a distant Kuiper Belt Object in about 3 years, the engineering team has now performed two maneuvers in a series...
View ArticleWeekly Space Hangout – Nov. 6, 2015: Astronaut Mike Massimino
Host: Fraser Cain (@fcain)Special Guest: Mike Massimino, Former Astronaut; Senior Advisor for Space Programs at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum; Full-time instructor at Columbia University;...
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Who was Gerard Kuiper?
In the outer reaches of the Solar System, beyond the orbit of Neptune, lies a region permeated by celestial objects and minor planets. This region is known as the "Kuiper Belt", and is named in honor...
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10 Interesting Facts About Neptune
Neptune is a truly fascinating world. But as it is, there is much that people don't know about it. Perhaps it is because Neptune is the most distant planet from our Sun, or because so few exploratory...
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How Many Moons Does Mercury Have?
Virtually every planet in the Solar System has moons. Earth has The Moon, Mars has Phobos and Deimos, and Jupiter and Saturn have 67 and 62 officially named moons, respectively. Heck, even the...
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“X” Marks the Spot of Convective Churning on Hot Pluto
“X” marks the spot that’s illustrative of “convective churning” resulting from subsurface planetary heating, as seen in a fascinating new super high resolution image received from NASA’s New Horizons...
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Astronomers Find Theoretical Evidence for Distant Gas Giant Planet in Our...
The astronomer known worldwide for vigorously promoting the demotion of Pluto from its decades long perch as the 9th Planet, has now found theoretical evidence for a new and very distant gas giant...
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Search Narrows For Planet Nine
Last month, planetary scientists Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin of the California Institute of Technology found evidence of a giant planet tracing a bizarre, highly elongated orbit in the outer...
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How Do We Terraform The Moon?
Welcome back to our ongoing series, "The Definitive Guide To Terraforming"! We continue with a look at the Moon, discussing how it could one day be made suitable for human habitation.Ever since the...
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Is Planet X Linked to Mass Extinctions?
Planet Nine, the massive orb proposed to explain the clustered orbits of a half dozen remote Kuiper Belt asteroids, may have a darker side. Periodic mass extinctions on Earth, as indicated in the...
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New Horizons Snaps Amazing 3-D View of Pluto’s Mysterious ‘Bladed’ Terrain
It’s time to whip out your 3-D glasses to enjoy and scrutinize the remarkable detail of spectacular terrain revealed in a new high resolution stereo image of Pluto - King of the Kuiper Belt! - taken by...
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How Do We Know There’s a Planet 9?
At this point, I think the astronomy textbook publishers should just give up. They’d like to tell you how many planets there are in the Solar System, they really would. But astronomers just can’t stop...
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How Do We Terraform Jupiter’s Moons?
Continuing with our “Definitive Guide to Terraforming“, Universe Today is happy to present to our guide to terraforming Jupiter's Moons. Much like terraforming the inner Solar System, it might be...
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Will Earth Survive When the Sun Becomes a Red Giant?
Since the beginning of human history, people have understood that the Sun is a central part of life as we know it. It's importance to countless mythological and cosmological systems across the globe...
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New Horizons Sends Back First Science On Distant Kuiper Belt Object
Even the most curmudgeonly anti-space troll has to admit that the New Horizons mission to Pluto has been an overwhelming success. It's not like New Horizons discovered life or anything, but it did...
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A New Dwarf Planet Joins The Solar System Family
The Kuiper Belt has been an endless source of discoveries over the course of the past decade. Starting with the dwarf planet Eris, which was first observed by a Palomar Observatory survey led by Mike...
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Astronomers Think They Know Where Rosetta’s Comet Came From
In the distant past, the orbit of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko extended far beyond Neptune into the refrigerated Kuiper Belt. Interactions with the gravitational giant Jupiter altered the comet’s orbit...
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