News by Subject Space & Planetary

Researchers at the University of Warwick have been inspired by the unique movement of trembling aspen leaves, to devise an energy harvesting mechanism that could power weather sensors in hostile environments and could even be a back-up energy supply that could save and extend the life of future Mars rovers.

Three years ago, on March 14 2016, the Bernese Mars camera CaSSIS started its journey to Mars with the 'ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter' spacecraft. The camera system developed at the University of Bern has been observing Mars from its primary science orbit since April 2018 and provides high-resolution, colour images of the surface. On 2 March 2019, CaSSIS also delivered its first image of InSight, NASA's lander on Mars.

OSIRIS-REx finds Bennu's rotation period is speeding up by about 1 second every 100 years, according to a new study the AGU journal Geophysical Research Letters.

UB aerospace engineer James Chen publishes a paper that extends classical kinetic theory into high-speed aerodynamics, including hypersonic speed, which begins at 3,836 mph or roughly five times the speed of sound. The new study and others by Chen in influential academic journals attempt to solve long-standing problems associated with high-speed aerodynamics.

Two recent studies report discoveries of dust rings in the inner solar system: a dust ring at Mercury's orbit, and a group of never-before-detected asteroids co-orbiting with Venus, supplying the dust in Venus' orbit.

Located in the constellation of Hercules, about 230 million light-years away, NGC 6052 is a pair of colliding galaxies first discovered in 1784. A long time ago gravity drew the two galaxies together into the chaotic state we now observe.

Using the Southwest Research Institute-led Lyman Alpha Mapping Project (LAMP) aboard NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), scientists have observed water molecules moving around the dayside of the Moon. A paper published in Geophysical Research Letters describes how LAMP measurements of the atom-thick layer of sparse molecules helped characterize lunar hydration changes over the course of a day.

On March 6, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory watched a lunar transit in space -- one in which the satellite's path made the Moon appear to stand still, then backtrack.