A new model shows how the migration of Titan could have destroyed another moon, creating Saturn’s rings and the moon Hyperion. And, the model suggests, this all happened in the past billion years.
solar system
Posted inFeatures
Small, Faint, or Fast, Rubin Will Find It
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory is set to redraw the map of the solar system by discovering millions of small, fast-moving objects hidden all around us.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
ALMA’s New View of the Solar System
High-resolution radio observations link the chemistry of local moons and comets to the birth environments of distant exoplanets.
Posted inNews
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.
Posted inNews
What Tumbling Asteroids Tell Us About Their Innards
Data from the Gaia space observatory reveal that many slowly spinning asteroids rotate chaotically. A new theory links that chaos to their inner structure and history.
Posted inNews
A Survey of the Kuiper Belt Hints at an Unseen Planet
An analysis of more than 150 objects in the far reaches of the solar system suggests that a planet more massive than Mercury could be lurking beyond the orbit of Pluto.
Posted inResearch & Developments
Rubin Observatory Stuns and Awes With Sprawling First Look Images
Wow. Just wow.
Posted inNews
The Late, Great Gaia Helps Reveal Asteroid Masses
Astronomers are using data from the recently decommissioned star-mapping satellite to help determine masses and more accurate orbits of celestial bodies closer to home.
Posted inNews
A Geologic Map of the Asteroid Belt
Scientists leveraged a global camera network and doorbell cameras to track dozens of meteorites to their asteroid families.
Posted inNews
Distant Icy Twins Might Actually Be Triplets
The trans-Neptunian object Altjira, 44 times farther from the Sun than Earth is, could be the second known trinary, confirming a theory about the formation of our solar system.