Sentences with phrase «in solar system»

NASA's New Horizons» close approach to the last of the original set of nine planets in our solar system is yielding a bounty of surprising planetary science

In April the company announced a plan to mine asteroids for water and minerals that could be used to supply orbiting stations or permanent outposts in the solar system.

Kepler found that the most common type of planet in the galaxy is something between the size of Earth and Neptune — a «super-Earth,» which has no parallel in our solar system and was thought to be almost impossible to make.

If life could arise in two different places in our solar system, it could presumably do so a million times, or a billion, on planets throughout our galaxy — because, again, life misses no opportunity.

The first natural satellite in the solar system to be discovered since artificial satellites were launched has been found circling Saturn.

NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA — The rings of Saturn seem like permanent fixtures in the solar system, firing the imagination of poets and scientists alike.

Craters like this one are typically found on planetary bodies in the Solar System that don't have atmospheres and therefore no weather systems to erode them.

Experiments are under way to mimic possible life - forming processes at alkaline vents on the sea floor, and perhaps elsewhere in the solar system

Whereas Pluto's putative ocean could in principle support life, it is probably locked beneath perhaps 200 kilometers of ice and very far from Earth, making it a much less appealing target for astrobiological studies than other, closer subsurface oceans known to exist in the solar system, such as those within the icy moons circling Jupiter and Saturn.

It might not be measurable on local scales, like here in the solar system, or in any matter - strewn environs, such as galaxy clusters.

Because such chemistry provides energy for microbial life on Earth, the discovery makes Enceladus the top candidate for hosting life elsewhere in the solar system — besting even Jupiter's Europa, another icy moon with an ocean.

It's the best example in the solar system of a cryovolcano, a mountain made of ice that spews water instead of magma.

The moon appears to be a tranquil place, but modeling done by University of New Hampshire and NASA scientists suggests that, over the eons, periodic storms of solar energetic particles may have significantly altered the properties of the soil in the moon's coldest craters through the process of sparking — a finding that could change our understanding of the evolution of planetary surfaces in the solar system.

MESSENGER — which stands for Mercury surface, space environment, geochemistry, and ranging — also determined that Mercury's giant Caloris basin, among the biggest impact craters in the solar system, spans 1,500 kilometers — nearly one third of the planet's diameter and 200 kilometers more than previous estimates.

Dust of this kind is also the origin of the zodiacal light in the Solar System.

With each pass, Cassini reveals a little more about the only body in the solar system besides the Earth known to have liquid on its surface.

In the past year scientists have been forced to reconsider how they identify life in the most ancient rocks on earth — and elsewhere in the solar system

Microscopic analyses of chondrites, the oldest rocks in the solar system, are filling in details of what our neighborhood in space was like shortly before the planets formed

Titan is the only place in the solar system other than Earth known to host long - lived liquid lakes and streams.

«If breakdown weathering occurs on the moon, then it has important implications for our understanding of the evolution of planetary surfaces in the solar system, especially in extremely cold regions that are exposed to harsh radiation from space,» says coauthor Timothy Stubbs of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

Ceres, also designated 1 Ceres or (1) Ceres, is the smallest dwarf planet in the Solar System and the only one located in the main asteroid belt.

But that is enough to have sculptured one of the most dramatic landscapes in the solar system, University of Texas geophysicist Jack Holt reported in May.

Earth's atmosphere differs from the atmospheres of most other rocky planets and moons in our solar system in that it is rich in nitrogen gas, or N2; Earth's atmosphere is 78 percent nitrogen gas.

The largest planet in our solar system is truly unique.

Likewise, nearly every planet in the solar system has moons.

Reaching the necessary level of precision requires correcting the data for small perturbations in Earth's orbit owing to the other planets in our solar system.

Meanwhile, on hazy Titan, Huygens and Cassini found an Earth - like landscape of rivers and lakes filled with liquid methane — the only liquid bodies found on the surface of moon or planet in the solar system, except Earth.

«Gravitational interaction of planets in our solar system is central to our understanding of its formation and evolution, yet this interaction had been elusive in exoplanet systems,» Nesvorny says.

Enceladus, which Kite calls «an opportunity for the best astrobiology experiment in the solar system,» serves as a leading candidate for extraterrestrial life.

«Jupiter's north pole unlike anything encountered in solar system.»

Saturn, which is the second largest planet in our solar system, is known to have multiple rings and satellites.

These emissions are the strongest in the solar system.

In our solar system and in the first dozen exoplanets that we measured, that's what happens.

«Unique type of object discovered in our solar system.»

Measuring the water abundance of that gas could tell researchers where the planet formed and what the environment was like in the solar system's early days.

These are large gas giants that look a little like the planet Jupiter in our solar system, although they are much hotter as they circle their star in a very tight orbit: about a hundred times closer than our Jupiter is to the sun.

What's more, interplanetary dust in our solar system — and in others — contains organic carbon.

«This is a giant leap forward in developing our next bold mission of science discovery,» said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C. «These are tantalizing investigations that seek to answer some of the biggest questions in our solar system today.»

But it «might have happened in our solar system», says Lai.

The find should help astronomers determine how much dust in the solar system originates in asteroid collisions; such impacts may also create fragments that reach Earth as small meteorites.

When Voyager 2 passed by Neptune's moon Triton in 1989, it recorded the lowest known temperature in our solar system: — 391 degrees F.

«We're going into a very hazardous region,» Bolton says, «probably the most hazardous region in the solar system outside of doing a dive bomb into the sun.»

«The IAU's planet definition resolution is an example of science at its worst — it's sloppy internally inconsistent, and designed backwards, that is, to produce a desired result that only eight planets are in our solar system.

The bubble, called the heliosphere, is inflated by particles streaming from the sun and envelops all of the material in the solar system.

At first it looked as though everything was aligned, like in our solar system.

Much rarer — and more expensive — are meteorites from the moon, Mars, and other special bodies in the solar system, such as the asteroid Vesta.

Titan, the largest of Saturn's more than 60 moons, is the other body in our solar system with a nitrogen - rich atmosphere that resembles ours.

This new image from the largest planet in the Solar System, Jupiter, was made during the Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) programme.

Science News Writer Eric Hand joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the potential for a ninth planet in the solar system that circles the sun just once every 15,000 years.

Astronomers have always assumed that everything in our solar system formed around the sun some 4.5 billion years ago.