Source:
Image Credit:
NASA/Lora Bleacher (left)
NASA/JPL (right)
Published:
June 9, 2021
Shield volcanoes like Sif Mons, the low mountain near the right-hand horizon in this computer-generated image of Venus, are common on planets and moons throughout our solar system. Planetary volcanologists test scientific hypotheses about how volcanoes form at sites like Aden Crater, a shield volcano in New Mexico.
The two prominent Venusian mountains shown here are about 750 kilometers, or 453 miles, apart.
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Image Credit:
NASA/Cherie Achilles (left)
NASA (right)
Published:
June 9, 2021
Scientists use ground-penetrating radar to find buried ice near Askja volcano in Iceland. The same technology will help future lunar explorers to detect water ice beneath the lunar surface in permanently shadowed regions near the lunar South Pole. Humans have not yet set foot on this part of the Moon, and even if there were astronauts in this view, they would be much too small to see. The large crater near the center of this image is about 100 kilometers (62 miles) wide.
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Image Credit:
NASA/Marco Castillo (left)
NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS (right)
Published:
June 9, 2021
Chile’s Atacama Desert, one of the driest places on Earth, helps us to understand how the building blocks of life might respond to Martian conditions over time. The science instruments in this truck can detect very small amounts of target molecules in the sun-baked soil. Robotic explorers like NASA’s Perseverance Rover, shown here with rotorcraft Ingenuity in the background, use their own portable lab instruments to search for biosignatures on Mars.
Perseverance is slightly taller than the human researchers, and Ingenuity is just nineteen inches tall.
autoevolution 6 Jun 2021, 7:29 UTC ·
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In November 2021, the American space agency will launch the Double Asteroid Redirection Test mission. Known as DART, it is a spacecraft whose single goal is to smash itself into a small piece of space rock and see if it can alter its course. 1 photo
There seem to be increasing efforts in coming up with ways of removing potential space threats to our planet. According to NASA, there are 25,000 near-Earth asteroids that we know of roaming about (and 15,000 others we know nothing about), so the hazard is not negligible.
In the most recent impact exercise conducted by the greatest minds in the space industry, we as a species were unable to stop an asteroid from slamming into Europe. The goal of the drill was to see whether a six-month warning would be enough for us to be able to mount some kind of defense, and the sad answer is that no, six months are not nearly enough given our current technological level.