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Articles on Planetary science

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The stark landscape of the Moon as viewed by the Apollo 12 astronauts on their return to Earth. NASA / The Planetary Society

Scientists suspect there’s ice hiding on the Moon, and a host of missions from the US and beyond are searching for it

Some dark craters on the Moon are never exposed to light − ice could be hiding in these permanently shadowed regions, and India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission marked a big step toward finding it.
Perspective view of a lobate scarp on Mercury named Carnegie Rupes, colour-coded according to surface altitude. The crater near the middle is nearly 40 km across. NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

Mercury: shrinking planet is still getting smaller – new research

Mercury has shrunk by7 km. Most of this happened long ago, but now we have evidence that it continues.
There was little time for water from the Earth’s atmosphere to contaminate the meteorite after it fell. Trustees of the Natural History Museum

A brief history of the UK’s Winchcombe meteorite

In 2021, searchers recovered a meteorite that fell over the UK just hours earlier. Scientists have now reconstructed its story.
Sand blown by wind into ripples within Victoria Crater at Meridiani Planum on Mars, as photographed by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on October 3, 2006. NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Cornell/Ohio State University

What’s it like to be on Venus or Pluto? We studied their sand dunes and found some clues

There are many bodies in the solar system we can’t easily access. But observations of their winds and sediments reveal a surprising amount.

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