Solar system

The Rosetta spacecraft has unexpectedly detected hydrogen sulphide and ammonia coming from Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Lee Billings reports     

 

Think you know about the Moon? I did, but then I started reading ‘The New Moon: Water, Exploration, and Future Habitation‘ (Cambridge University Press, 2014) and realized that my knowledge amounted to a teensy scrap of lunar dust.

After a ten year journey, NASA’s New Horizons mission is still 420 million kilometers from the Pluto system – but that’s close enough to begin to see the orbital dance of an icy world and its major moon.

Re-creating conditions on the sun’s surface inside a laboratory plasma chamber, scientists find surprising insights into solar outbursts

The Hubble space telescope could increase the chances of success for the New Horizons mission, which is currently nine tenths of the way to Pluto

What might be the effects if a large asteroid collided with Earth?

A scramble is on to find an object in the outer solar system's Kuiper Belt in time for a close-up visit

Planetary geologists are set to narrow down a list of landing sites for a mission set for 2020

Converting the energetic hail of cosmic radiation into audible tracks has produced better understanding of the solar wind and other astrophysical events—along with musical enjoyment

Since the Chelyabinsk event in early 2013, when a brilliant meteor fireball streaked across Russian skies and exploded with the energy of thirty Hiroshima bombs, humans have paid slightly more attention to the potential danger of asteroids than before.

The "Automated Planet Finder" could make astronomers of us all

                    Fatigue, that’s what. As a particularly frigid winter recedes across the north and east of the United States (we’ve become accustomed to milder weather in past years), the abuse suffered by asphalt roads is becoming apparent.