Ever seen the northern lights? You have a magnetic layer in Earth’s atmosphere to thank for those beautiful displays. But the magnetosphere does a lot more than create auroras.
The stark landscape of the Moon as viewed by the Apollo 12 astronauts on their return to Earth.
NASA / The Planetary Society
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.
Wherever you view it from on Earth, it’s the same Moon.
Fernando Astasio Avila / Shutterstock
Studying the sample could help answer how water arrived on Earth and how life started.
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
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission has delivered pieces of asteroid Bennu, which scientists hope will offer a window into the early era of the Solar System billions of years ago.
Chandrayaan-3’s Pragyan rover has traveled 328 feet.
(100 meters) and measured the chemistry of the lunar soil
ISRO
India’s Chandrayaan-3 rover has found sulfur on the Moon’s surface at higher concentrations than previously seen. Sulfur, a useful resource, could pave the way for future Moon bases.
A colour-exaggerated view of Saturn backlit by the sun.
NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
By tracking a meteorite found in Morocco back to its origin in an asteroid crater on Mars millions of years ago, scientists can learn more about how the planets formed.
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
Coordinator Swinburne Astronomy Online | Program Lead of Microgravity Experimentation, Space Technology and Industry Institute, Swinburne University of Technology