Centaurs are mysterious icy small-bodies that are neither purely comets nor purely inactive asteroids, but they all orbit the Sun between Jupiter and Neptune in unstable orbits. They’re relatively ...

Oct. 28, 2024, TUCSON, Ariz. – The Moon and Mars are pocked with giant impact craters acquired very long ago, while there appears to be a dearth of them on Earth and Venus. Time may have healed many ...

Sept. 16, 2024, Tucson, Ariz. – A new analysis of maps of the near and far sides of the Moon shows that there are multiple sources of water and hydroxyl in the sunlit rocks and soils, including ...

Feb. 14, 2024, Tucson, Ariz. – Stars that pass by our Solar System have altered the long-term orbital evolution of planets, including Earth, and by extension modified our climate. “Perturbations – a ...

A mysterious object discovered in the main asteroid belt in 2021 was determined to be a main-belt comet by Planetary Science Institute Senior Scientist Henry Hsieh, Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie ...

January 15, 2024, Tucson, Ariz. – Using impact craters as a dating tool, Planetary Science Institute Research Scientist Alexander Morgan has determined maximum timescales for the formation of Martian ...

Nov. 1, 2024, TUCSON, Ariz. – On a cold, ancient Mars, rivers flowed and a lake the size of the Mediterranean Sea swelled under the protection of thick ice ceilings, according to new research ...

Detection and mapping of minerals, vegetation species, chemicals, liquids, and solids is being done through the field of imaging spectroscopy. Imaging spectrometers are deployed on aircraft, ...

Secondary craters – you know, the kind that are created by the falling debris that follows an initial impact – are what scientists call… annoying. This is because they can muddy up crater counts, ...

Nov. 18, 2024, TUCSON, Ariz. – Billions of years ago, a giant asteroid struck the Moon with so much energy that it melted rock until it was super-heated and white-hot, or what scientists call impact ...

Planetary Science Institute scientists have converged in the lab, trying to decipher the mineral composition of dust. Not just any dust, but rather a simulated sample of Mercury’s surface, created as ...

Dec. 18, 2024, TUCSON, Ariz. – The Planetary Science Institute has selected University of Arizona graduate student Namya Baijal and Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur doctoral candidate Mishal K T ...