News by Subject Space & Planetary

NASA's asteroid sample return spacecraft successfully used Earth's gravity on Friday to slingshot itself on a path toward the asteroid Bennu, for a rendezvous next August.

A new paper in the journal Astrobiology suggests NASA and others hunting for proof of Martian biology in the form of 'microfossils' could use the element vanadium in combination with Raman spectroscopy to confirm traces of extraterrestrial life.

NASA looked into Hurricane Maria and found that powerful convective storms within the hurricane were dropping heavy rainfall.

Could the flapping of a butterfly's wings in Costa Rica set off a hurricane in California? For most people, this hypothetical scenario may be difficult to imagine on Earth -- particularly when a real disaster strikes. Yet, in space, similarly small fluctuations in the solar wind as it streams toward the Earth's magnetic shield actually can affect the speed and strength of 'space hurricanes,' researcher Katariina Nykyri of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University has reported in in the Journal of Geophysical Research - Space Physics.

NASA scientists have found evidence that Mars' crust is not as dense as previously thought, a clue that could help researchers better understand the Red Planet's interior structure and evolution.

A new study maps the trace concentrations of water implanted in the lunar soil by the solar wind, a water source that could be used as resource in future lunar exploration.

Research at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering has revealed new evidence for the occurrence of ground ice on the protoplanet Vesta.

The sun emitted a significant, X8.2-class solar flare, peaking at 12:06 p.m. EDT on Sept. 10, 2017. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, which watches the sun constantly, captured an image of the event.