A little over twenty extrasolar planets have now been discovered that orbit entirely within the habitable zone of their star with a size similar to that of the Earth. But does this mean these worlds are indeed similar to our home planet?
This month, the NASA Perseverance rover successfully drilled into the surface of Mars, and retrieved and stored the cores of rock. Our MMX mission members discuss this new era in Mars exploration!
"Marsquakes" detected by NASA's Insight Mission have revealed the internal structure of the red planet. Our researchers talk about this result, and plans for discovering the deep interior on other worlds.
Do you have an idea hotter than Venus for a space mission? In our previous post, Dr Lori Glaze, Director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA, discussed the selection of two new missions to Venus by NASA. But what are a few of the criteria in the selection process that allows a concept to blossom from paper pad to launch pad?
"It was a big and happy surprise, to both me and the whole planetary science community,” describes Dr Lori Glaze, Director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA. “I think many in our field recognised it was well past time for NASA to return to Venus, but to see both the Venus Discovery concepts selected together was pretty amazing.”
On August 10 at 22:48 JST (13:48 UTC), BepiColombo will pass extremely close to Venus at an altitude of just 550 km. The spacecraft is on a seven year journey to Mercury and is using the gravity of our neighbouring world to reduce speed in order to achieve a safe rendezvous with Mercury at the end of 2025.
In June, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced three themes that will guide the selection of their largest class of space mission for launch between 2035 - 2050.
At the start of 2021, Murakami Go was ready for a new challenge. As Project Scientist of Japan’s Mio orbiter that is currently travelling to Mercury as part of the joint BepiColombo mission with ESA, Murakami’s day was not lacking in important tasks. But the project he had planned for the next two months was a little different.
On June 7, the NASA Juno spacecraft captured two amazing close-ups of the surface of Jupiter's moon, Ganymede. The largest moon in the Solar System, Ganymede is a fascinating world due to its rare ability to produce a magnetic field and because it may possess all the requirements for life. Japan is therefore joining with the European Space Agency (ESA) to explore Ganymede and the neighbouring icy moons in the upcoming mission, JUICE.
In 2016, astronomers announced a thrilling discovery. A small planet had been discovered around the nearest star to the Sun, Proxima Centauri. The planet's orbit was just 11.2 days, but the small size and corresponding lower luminosity of Proxima Centauri compared to our Sun meant that this planet was in the habitable zone, receiving similar levels of radiation from its star as the Earth. So could the surface of our nearest neighbour actually be habitable?
