NASA is building a roadmap for robots that could visit ocean worlds through future space missions and crack the worlds’ thick, icy shells to explore subsurface seas in search of life. Recently, the space agency revealed results from a NASA-sponsored workshop held in Feb. 2023 at which scientists and engineers […]
Jupiter
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The moon will meet up with Jupiter, the solar system’s largest planet, for the last time in 2023 on Friday (Dec. 22) when the two celestial bodies make a close approach in the sky. Around the same time, the two celestial bodies will share the same right ascension, an arrangement […]
An illustration of an Earth-like planet being watched over by a Jupiter-like giant planet with a small sun in the distance. Scientists have created a first-of-its-kind catalog of planets outside the solar system that exhibit similar sizes to Earth and are watched over by a “big sibling,” Jupiter-like world. Known […]
This may be the first impact crater spotted on Io NASA/JPL-Caltech/Kevin M. Gill, CC BY 2.0 An amateur astronomer may have found the first crater ever spotted on Jupiter’s moon Io. Io is so volcanically active that eruptions tend to wipe away any impact craters, so we have never seen […]
While watching the atmosphere of seven “hot Jupiters” blow away, a suitcase-sized cubesat has found some surprising variations in how quickly the giant, bloated worlds are evaporating. CUTE, which stands for the Colorado Ultraviolet Transit Experiment, was launched in September 2021 and orbits the Earth at an altitude of 525 […]
SAN FRANCISCO – EchoStar’s Jupiter-3, the world’s heaviest commercial communications satellite, is performing as expected after deploying solar arrays and antennas in geostationary orbit. Maxar Technologies built the nine metric ton Ka-band satellite and supplied its solar panels. L3Harris Technologies manufactured antennas for Jupiter-3. That satellite that traveled to geostationary […]
The icy moons of Jupiter and Saturn may hold the key to the survival of alien life, according to scientists at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa. Scientists have released a research paper suggesting that the so-called “strike-slip faults” on the moons of Ganymede (which rotates around Jupiter) and Titan […]
Ahead of Halloween, NASA has released a photo of a ghoulish face spotted on the planet Jupiter. The photo was taken by one of its probes orbiting the planet during its 54th close fly-by last month. The snap shows Jupiter’s clouds forming into an unusual pattern that resembles eyes, nose […]