Data from the Juno spacecraft also suggest that Jupiter’s moon has a relatively smooth, low-density surface.
planetary surfaces
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What Winds Whip Up Otherworldly Waves?
New research goes back to the basics to explain how atmospheric conditions affect the creation of wind-driven waves on other worlds.
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New Evidence Points to Venusian Lava Tubes, and They’re Really Big
Researchers bring new life to 30-year-old Magellan data to unearth the first direct evidence of the long-hypothesized structures.
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Oozing Gas Could Be Making Stripes in Mercury’s Craters
Scientists are using new computational tools to analyze troves of old spacecraft data to better understand one of Mercury’s unsolved mysteries.
Posted inFeatures
Discovering Venus on Iceland
Scientists trekked across Icelandic lava flows that served as stand-ins for Venus’s volcanic landscapes, testing tools and methods the upcoming VERITAS mission will use when it reaches the planet.
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Could Future Mars Habitats Be Made of Ice?
Models suggest that clear ice, sourced and distilled on Mars, could offer a feasible alternative for building stable off-world structures.
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Fungi, Fertilizer, and Feces Could Help Astronauts Grow Plants on the Moon
A new study offers tantalizing evidence that filamentous fungi extending from roots, along with treated astronaut waste, could provide sufficient scaffolding to help plants grow in planetary regolith.
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Uranus’s Small Moons Are Dark, Red, and Water-Poor
…Except for Mab, which is even weirder than expected.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
Maybe That’s Not Liquid Water on Mars After All
A “very large roll” of a radar instrument offers new insight into a highly reflective area near the Martian south pole.
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Tiny Uranian Moon Likely Had a Massive Subsurface Ocean
Ariel’s tempestuous subsurface ocean may have once composed more than half its total volume.