NASA-funded lunar research has yielded evidence of water locked in mineral grains on the surface of the Moon from an unknown source deep beneath the surface. The Gibbous Moon (11 days old). Image Credit & Copyright: Robert Gendler Using data from NASA’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) instrument aboard the Indian Space Research Organization’s Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, scientists [continue reading]
For the past 8 years, NASA astronomers have been monitoring the Moon for signs of explosions caused by meteoroids hitting the lunar surface. “Lunar meteor showers” have turned out to be more common than anyone expected, with hundreds of detectable impacts occurring every year. They’ve just seen the biggest explosion in the history of the [continue reading]
Dramatic underground explosions, perhaps involving ice, are responsible for the pits inside two large martian impact craters, here imaged by ESA’s Mars Express on 4 January. High-Resolution Stereo Camera nadir and color channel data taken during orbit 11467 on 4 January 2013 by ESA’s Mars Express have been combined to produce this color view of two craters, both [continue reading]
Comet explosions did not end the prehistoric human culture, known as Clovis, in North America 13,000 years ago, according to research published in the journal Geophysical Monograph Series. Dennis Stanford with Clovis stone points from the collection of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. The Clovis culture is named after the town in [continue reading]
Hydrothermal fractures around Martian impact craters may have been a habitable environment for microbial life The study determined that water temperatures on the Red Planet ranged from 50°C to 150°C. Microbes on Earth can live in similar waters, for example in the volcanic thermal springs at Yellowstone Park, the scientists behind the research point [continue reading]
Small patches of ice could make up at most five to ten percent of material in walls of Shackleton crater. Shackleton is an impact crater at the south pole of the Moon. The crater is more than 12 miles wide and two miles deep (21 km in diameter and 4.2 km deep). Image Credit: [continue reading]