June 2024 – Page 23 – My WordPress Site

New research suggests that Ariel, a moon of Uranus, might have once harbored an ocean over 100 miles (about 170 kilometers) deep. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/PSI/Mikayla Kelley/Peter Buhler

Away Teams & Field Reports, Exploration Gear & Tech, Life Support Systems, Microbiology & Virology, Missions & Hardware, Planetary Protection & Biosafety, Tricorders & Sensors

EVA Swab Tool to Support Planetary Protection and Astrobiology Evaluations

by Keith CowingJune 1, 2024June 1, 2024

a Mars Orbital LASER Altimeter (MOLA) map of equatorial Mars with black boxes indicating locations of the Juventae Plateau and Aram Chaos (red indicates higher elevations and blue lower elevations). b View of the plateau above Juventae Chasma with compositional units from CRISM image FRT00005814 showing pyroxene-bearing basalt in green, polyhydrated sulfates in blue, and the Fe3+SO4OH-bearing phase in red over a High-Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) Digital Terrain Model (DTM). c Same CRISM compositional units over a HiRISE DTM (5x vertical exaggeration) with the basalt units split into basalt-1 in dark cyan and basalt-2 in medium green, scale bar for foreground. d CRISM spectra of unusual units with a band near 2.23 µm (top) and lab spectra of several minerals (bottom). Note that none of these minerals are a good spectral match to the CRISM spectra of the Fe3+SO4OH-bearing outcrop. -- Nature

Away Teams & Field Reports, Exploration Gear & Tech, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Mapping, Geodesy, Cartography, Missions & Hardware, ROVs/Submersibles/Diving, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Water World Exploration: Four New Seamounts Discovered On Earth

by Keith CowingJune 1, 2024June 1, 2024

Artist’s concept of how rocky, potentially habitable worlds elsewhere in our galaxy might appear. Data gathered by telescopes in space and on the ground suggest that small, rocky planets are common. NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Gaia - Planetary Perspectives, Space Weather & Heliophysics, Terraforming & Geoengineering

Terraforming / Geoengineering: Clouds Dissipate Quickly During Solar Eclipses As The Land Surface Cools

by Keith CowingJune 1, 2024

Visualisation of the illuminated surface of a planet (top) and of a circular “disc” starshade (bottom). (Not to scale.) -- astro-ph.EP

Astrogeology, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Ice Giant, Icy Worlds, Neptune, Uranus

Uranus And Neptune As Methane Planets: Producing Icy Giants From Refractory Planetesimals

by Keith CowingJune 1, 2024May 12, 2025