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- Water on the Moon shifts around during the day
Up until the last decade or so, scientists thought the Moon was arid, with any water existing mainly as pockets of ice in permanently shaded craters near the poles More recently, scientists have identified surface water in sparse populations of molecules bound to the lunar soil, or regolith The amount and locations vary based on the time of day
- Jupiter moon’s ‘radiation shower’ could help in hunt for life
The ‘scratched’ surface of the icy moon Europa Image credit: NASA JPL-Caltech New comprehensive mapping of the radiation pummelling Jupiter’s icy moon Europa reveals where scientists should look – and how deep they’ll have to go – when searching for signs of habitability and biosignatures
- Mission to Jupiter moon officially named ‘Europa Clipper’
The prime mission plan includes 40 to 45 flybys, during which the spacecraft would image the moon’s icy surface at high resolution and investigate its composition and the structure of its interior and icy shell Europa has long been a high priority for exploration because it holds a salty liquid water ocean beneath its icy crust
- Shallow craters on Moon and Mercury may hide thick ice slabs
The research focused on both the Moon and Mercury, the tiny innermost planet, and pulled together from two crucial NASA missions: the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) still circling the Moon and the Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging (MESSENGER) mission that ended its time at the planet in 2015 Scientists believe both bodies hide water ice near their poles, where
- lunar temperature
Find out how the twelve men on the Moon kept their body temperature constant Load more posts
- NASA gets closer to solving the mystery of how Phobos was formed
Orbiting a mere 6,000 kilometres (3,700 miles) above the surface of Mars, Phobos is closer to its planet than any other moon in the Solar System Mars’ gravity is drawing in Phobos, the larger of its two moons, by about 2 metres (6 6 feet) every hundred years Scientists expect the moon to be
- SPONSORED: Wear a piece of the universe with The Space Collective’s . . .
Occasionally a meteorite will impact the Moon’s surface (hence all the craters) and due to the low lunar gravity and no atmosphere, debris shoots up into space where it can get caught in the Earths gravitational pull, and after thousands, if not millions of years, is pulled down to Earth (thus the moon rock now becomes a meteorite – oh how
- Apollo 11’s manned lunar landing was almost cancelled, says Buzz Aldrin
The second man on the Moon reveals exclusively to All About Space how Apollo 12, not Apollo 11, could have been the first manned lunar landing
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