Topic: Craters

NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter records new impact Craters on Mars

May 17, 2013 |

Written by Guy Webster
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Pasadena, CA – Scientists using images from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have estimated that the planet is bombarded by more than 200 small asteroids or bits of comets per year forming craters at least 12.8 feet (3.9 meters) across.

Researchers have identified 248 new impact sites on parts of the Martian surface in the past decade, using images from the spacecraft to determine when the craters appeared. The 200-per-year planetwide estimate is a calculation based on the number found in a systematic survey of a portion of the planet.

This set of images from cameras on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter documents the appearance of a new cluster of impact craters on Mars. The orbiter has imaged at least 248 fresh craters, or crater clusters, on Mars. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Univ. of Arizona)

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NASA studies the movement of Moon Dust

March 25, 2013 |

Written by Nancy Neal-Jones / Bill Steigerwald
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Greenbelt, MD – Electrically charged lunar dust near shadowed craters can get lofted above the surface and jump over the shadowed region, bouncing back and forth between sunlit areas on opposite sides, according to new calculations by NASA scientists.

The research is being led by Michael Collier at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, as part of the Dynamic Response of the Environment At the Moon (DREAM) team in partnership with the NASA Lunar Science Institute (NLSI), managed at NASA’s Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA.

This is a view from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft across the north rim of Cabeus crater. The leaping dust behavior may be observed on the moon in places like this where sunlit areas are close to shaded regions. (Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University)

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NASA’s Cassini spacecraft observations show the craters on Saturn’s Moon Titan disappearing

January 18, 2013 |

Written by Jia-Rui Cook
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Pasadena, CA – Titan’s siblings must be jealous. While most of Saturn’s moons display their ancient faces pockmarked by thousands of craters, Titan – Saturn’s largest moon – may look much younger than it really is because its craters are getting erased.

Dunes of exotic, hydrocarbon sand are slowly but steadily filling in its craters, according to new research using observations from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft.

This set of images from the radar instrument on NASA’s Cassini spacecraft shows a relatively “fresh” crater called Sinlap (left) and an extremely degraded crater called Soi (right). Sinlap has a depth-to-diameter ratio close to what we see on Jupiter’s moon Ganymede. Soi has a shallow depth compared to similar craters on Ganymede. These craters are both about 50 miles (80 kilometers) in diameter. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASI/GSFC)

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NASA says Jupiter and the Moon to present a Sky Show for Christmas

December 24, 2012 |

Written by Dr. Tony Phillips
Science at NASA

Washington, D.C. – Just when you thought Christmas was over: At the end of the day on December 25th, a pair of holiday lights will pop out of the deepening twilight. Jupiter and the Moon are having a Christmas conjunction.

It’s a beautiful apparition, visible all around the globe. Even city dwellers, who often miss astronomical events because of light pollution, can see the show. Separated by less than 2 degrees, the bright pair will beam right through urban lights.

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NASA’s GRAIL mission spacecrafts crash site on the Moon dedicated to Astronaut Sally Ride

December 18, 2012 |

Written by D.C. Agle
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Pasadena, CA – NASA has named the site where twin agency spacecraft impacted the moon Monday in honor of the late astronaut Sally K. Ride, who was America’s first woman in space and a member of the probes’ mission team.

Last Friday, Ebb and Flow, the two spacecraft comprising NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission, were commanded to descend into a lower orbit that would result in an impact Monday on a mountain near the moon’s north pole.

The final flight path for NASA’s twin GRAIL mission spacecraft to impact the moon on December 17th. GRAIL’s MoonKAM is the signature education and public outreach program led by Sally Ride Science-founded by Dr. Sally Ride, America’s first woman in space.

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NASA’s Dawn mission images show Sinuous Gullies on the asteroid Vesta

December 9, 2012 |

Written by Jia-Rui C. Cook and D.C. Agle
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Pasadena, CA – In a preliminary analysis of images from NASA’s Dawn mission, scientists have spotted intriguing gullies that sculpt the walls of geologically young craters on the giant asteroid Vesta.

Led by Jennifer Scully, a Dawn team member at the University of California, Los Angeles, these scientists have found narrow channels of two types in images from Dawn’s framing camera – some that look like straight chutes and others that carve more sinuous trails and end in lobe-shaped deposits. The mystery, however, is what is creating them?

This image shows examples of long, narrow, sinuous gullies that scientists on NASA’s Dawn mission have found on the giant asteroid Vesta. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA)

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NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft data confirms Ice at Mercury’s poles, some covered in Dark Material

November 30, 2012 |

Written by Dr. Tony Phillips
Science at NASA

Washington, D.C. – Observations by NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft provide compelling support for the long-held hypothesis that Mercury harbors abundant water ice and other frozen materials in permanently shadowed polar craters.

“The new data indicate the water ice in Mercury’s polar regions, if spread over an area the size of Washington, D.C., would be more than 2 miles thick,” said David Lawrence, a MESSENGER participating scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, MD, and lead author of one of three papers describing the findings in the online edition of Science Express.

Mercury’s north pole. Red denotes areas that are in shadow in all images acquired by MESSENGER to date. (The mapping of shadows is still incomplete near the pole.) Yellow shows the locations of bright polar deposits imaged by Earth-based radar. Updated from N. L. Chabot et al., Journal of Geophysical Research, 117. (Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington/National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center, Arecibo Observatory)

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NASA’s Dawn Spacecraft reveals the giant asteroid Vesta’s Surface Composition in Many Colors

June 7, 2012 |

Written by Priscilla Vega and Jia-Rui Cook
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Pasadena, CA – A new video from NASA’s Dawn mission reveals the dappled, variegated surface of the giant asteroid Vesta.The animation drapes high-resolution false color images over a 3-D model of the Vesta terrain constructed from Dawn’s observations.

This visualization enables a detailed view of the variation in the material properties of Vesta in the context of its topography.

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NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission to land near Mount Sharp to link Mars Geology’s Past and Future

March 31, 2012 |

Written by D.C. Agle
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Pasadena, CA – One particular mountain on Mars, bigger than Colorado’s grandest, has been beckoning would-be explorers since it was first sighted from orbit in the 1970s. Scientists have ideas about how it took shape in the middle of ancient Gale Crater and hopes for what evidence it could yield about whether conditions on Mars have favored life.

No mission to Mars dared approach it, though, until NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission, which this August will attempt to place its one-ton rover, Curiosity, at the foot of the mountain. The moat of flatter ground between the mountain and the crater rim encircling it makes too small a touchdown target to have been considered safe without precision-landing innovations used by this mission.

Curiosity, the big rover of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission, will land in August 2012 near the foot of a mountain inside Gale Crater. (Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESA/DLR/FU Berlin/MSSS)

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NASA’s Cassini Spacecraft Detects Hint of Fresh Air at Saturn’s moon Dione

March 4, 2012 |

Written by Jia-Rui C. Cook
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Pasadena, CA – NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has “sniffed” molecular oxygen ions around Saturn’s icy moon Dione for the first time, confirming the presence of a very tenuous atmosphere.

The oxygen ions are quite sparse – one for every 0.67 cubic inches of space (one for every 11 cubic centimeters of space) or about 2,550 per cubic foot (90,000 per cubic meter) – show that Dione has an extremely thin neutral atmosphere.

This view highlights tectonic faults and craters on Dione, an icy world that has undoubtedly experienced geologic activity since its formation. (Image credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)

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