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Mars landing live blog
Follow the action as NASA's Curiosity rover heads for its rendezvous with the red planet.
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News |
Crater mound a prize and puzzle for Mars rover
Curiosity scientists seek to solve the mystery of Mount Sharp.
- Eric Hand
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News |
Crater mound a prize and puzzle for Mars rover
Curiosity scientists seek to solve the mystery of Mount Sharp.
- Eric Hand
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Comment |
Let academia lead space science
NASA must put more of its money into thrifty missions led by principal investigators, says Daniel N. Baker.
- Daniel N. Baker
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News & Views |
Planets on the spot
The three planets of the Kepler-30 system align closely with a starspot, indicating their common birth in a gaseous disk. Similar alignments could inform us about the origin of planets orbiting our stellar neighbours. See Letter p.449
- Drake Deming
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News Feature |
Planetary science: The time machine
Dating features on the Moon and Mars is guesswork. Scott Anderson is building a tool to change that.
- Eric Hand
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Letter |
Alignment of the stellar spin with the orbits of a three-planet system
An analysis of transits of planets over starspots on the Sun-like star Kepler-30 shows that the orbits of the three planets are aligned with the stellar equator; this configuration is similar to that of our Solar System, and suggests that high obliquities are confined to systems that experienced disruptive dynamical interactions.
- Roberto Sanchis-Ojeda
- , Daniel C. Fabrycky
- & Susan E. Thompson
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News |
Hubble telescope spots a 5th Plutonian satellite
The newfound moon and its kin may be remnants of an ancient smashup.
- John Matson
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News |
Tides turn on Titan
Flexing of crust on Saturn's largest moon provides strong evidence for a subsurface ocean.
- Sid Perkins
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Research Highlights |
Carbon dioxide snow on Mars
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Letter |
The signature of orbital motion from the dayside of the planet τ Boötis b
The detection of carbon monoxide absorption in the spectrum of the extrasolar planet τ Boötis b, and its tracing of the change in the radial velocity of the planet, demonstrates that atmospheric characterization is possible for non-transiting planets.
- Matteo Brogi
- , Ignas A. G. Snellen
- & Ernst J. W. de Mooij
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Letter |
Constraints on the volatile distribution within Shackleton crater at the lunar south pole
Observations from the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter reveal the Moon’s Shackleton crater to be an ancient, unusually well-preserved simple crater whose interior walls are younger than its floor and rim; the relative brightness of the floor at 1,064 nanometres is most readily explained by minimal volatile accumulation since crater formation and decreased space weathering due to permanent shadow.
- Maria T. Zuber
- , James W. Head
- & H. Jay Melosh
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News & Views |
Early start for rocky planets
The chemical composition of stars that host small planets seems to be more varied than that of large planets. This finding may push back the clock for the start of rocky planets and of life around stars other than the Sun. See Letter p.375
- Debra Fischer
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News |
Tropical lakes on Saturn moon could expand options for life
Subsurface source of liquid methane may be replenishing equatorial lakes on Titan.
- Maggie McKee
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Letter |
Possible tropical lakes on Titan from observations of dark terrain
Low-latitude near-infrared spectral images of Titan reveal what are probably dark liquid lakes of methane.
- Caitlin A. Griffith
- , Juan M. Lora
- & Charles See
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Letter |
Ultraviolet-radiation-induced methane emissions from meteorites and the Martian atmosphere
Exposure of the Murchison meteorite to ultraviolet radiation is found to produce methane, suggesting a possible explanation for a substantial fraction of recently estimated Martian atmospheric methane.
- Frank Keppler
- , Ivan Vigano
- & Thomas Röckmann
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Research Highlights |
Planet-like asteroid
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News |
Vesta confirmed as a venerable planet progenitor
Data from spacecraft solidify asteroid's place in planetary evolution.
- Ron Cowen
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Editorial |
Price of freedom
The latest mission to Jupiter highlights the benefits and pitfalls of collaboration.
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News & Views |
Martian sand blowing in the wind
High-resolution spacecraft images show surprisingly large rates of sand transport on Mars. This finding suggests that the planet's surface is a more active environment than previously thought. See Letter p.339
- Jasper Kok
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Letter |
Earth-like sand fluxes on Mars
Satellite images of a Martian dune field reveal unexpectedly high sand fluxes, suggesting rates of landscape modification similar to those on Earth.
- N. T. Bridges
- , F. Ayoub
- & S. Mattson
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News & Views |
Mercury's mysteries start to unfold
The origin of the planet Mercury has been a continuing puzzle. Data from NASA's MESSENGER space probe, combined with ground-based observations, are delivering information on the planet's structure and evolution.
- David J. Stevenson
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Letter |
A perovskitic lower mantle inferred from high-pressure, high-temperature sound velocity data
Determination of the shear-wave velocities for silicate perovskite and ferropericlase under the pressure and temperature conditions of the deep lower mantle indicates that perovskite constitutes much more of the lower mantle than predicted by the conventional mantle model and is consistent with the chondritic Earth model.
- Motohiko Murakami
- , Yasuo Ohishi
- & Kei Hirose
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News & Views |
Focus on ancient bombardment
The latest studies of asteroid impacts on Earth and the Moon beginning about 450 million years after the formation of the Solar System provide insight into the duration, number and size of these events.
- Frank T. Kyte
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News |
Ancient asteroids kept on coming
Two-billion-year barrage hit Earth when life was beginning.
- Helen Thompson
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Letter |
Impact spherules as a record of an ancient heavy bombardment of Earth
The fossilized remnants of vaporized asteroids, called spherules, can be used to infer that the flux of asteroid impacts on Earth 3.5 billion years ago was much greater than it is now.
- B. C. Johnson
- & H. J. Melosh
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Letter |
An Archaean heavy bombardment from a destabilized extension of the asteroid belt
The Late Heavy Bombardment lasted much longer than previously thought, up to 1.7 billion years ago on Earth, with impacts on the Moon and Earth coming mostly from the E-belt-survivor Hungaria asteroids.
- William F. Bottke
- , David Vokrouhlický
- & Harold F. Levison
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News |
Europe loses sight of Earth
Envisat crisis rekindles row over funding for its successors.
- Geoff Brumfiel
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News |
Space miners seek riches in nearby asteroids
Company says its harvest will be a boon for space exploration.
- Richard A. Lovett
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News |
Dreams of water on Mars evaporate
Climate models reveal the red planet was mostly cold and dry.
- Eric Hand
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News |
Magnetic storms spotted on Venus
Planet emits bursts of energy despite having no magnetized field of its own.
- Ron Cowen
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Books & Arts |
Books in brief
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Research Highlights |
What lies beneath Mercury's surface
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News & Views |
Fossil raindrops and ancient air
An analysis of fossil imprints of ancient raindrops suggests that the density of the atmosphere 2.7 billion years ago was much the same as that today. This result casts fresh light on a long-standing palaeoclimate paradox. See Letter p.359
- William S. Cassata
- & Paul R. Renne
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Letter |
Air density 2.7 billion years ago limited to less than twice modern levels by fossil raindrop imprints
Experiments dropping raindrops onto ash combined with raindrop fossil imprints yield an upper limit for air density in the Archaean.
- Sanjoy M. Som
- , David C. Catling
- & Roger Buick
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Perspective |
Evidence against a chondritic Earth
The hidden-reservoir explanation for the non-chondritic composition of the accessible Earth is inconsistent with the heat carried by mantle plumes, which suggests that the whole Earth is not chondritic, perhaps due to preferential loss of crusts from precursor bodies by collisional erosion during accretion.
- Ian H. Campbell
- & Hugh St C. O’Neill
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News |
North set for mass analysis of planets
Spectrograph will review results from Kepler telescope.
- Eric Hand
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News |
Question over theory of lunar formation
Titanium signature poses puzzle for popular theory of Moon’s origin.
- Ron Cowen
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News |
NASA probe spurs fresh view of Mercury's interior
A sulphur-rich shell could encase tiny planet's massive core.
- Eric Hand
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News |
Mystery of slick Martian slopes gets less slippery
Streaks observed on the surface of Mars could be caused by melting ice.
- Eric Hand
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Research Highlights |
Venusian hot flow anomalies
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News |
Mars scientists propose landing sites for future rovers
Planetary researchers rush to gather surface data before an ageing satellite stops working.
- Eric Hand
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Research Highlights |
Stretch marks on the Moon
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News & Views Forum |
In search of biosignatures
An analysis of the intensity and polarization of sunlight reflected by Earth reveals signatures of life on our planet. What prospects are there for using similar measurements to find life on planets outside the Solar System? Planetary scientists offer some answers. See Letter p.64
- Christoph U. Keller
- & Daphne M. Stam
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Seeing ourselves in the Moon's mirror
Earthshine illuminates a way to detect life on exoplanets.
- Sid Perkins
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News |
US Mars scientists look to possible 2018 mission
NASA mulls a $700-million mission to the red planet despite news of massive potential budget cuts.
- Eric Hand
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News & Views |
An Earth-sized duo
The first Earth-sized planets orbiting a Sun-like star outside the Solar System have at last been detected. The discovery paves the way to finding Earth-like worlds. See Letter p.195
- Didier Queloz
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Letter |
Transiting circumbinary planets Kepler-34 b and Kepler-35 b
Two double-sun exoplanets have been discovered by the Kepler spacecraft, establishing a new class of ‘circumbinary’ exoplanets and suggesting that at least several million such systems exist in our Galaxy.
- William F. Welsh
- , Jerome A. Orosz
- & William J. Borucki
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