Sentences with phrase «polar craters»

New Maps of Mercury Show Icy Looking Craters on the Solar System's Innermost Planet A NASA spacecraft bolsters the case that ice lines the inside of polar craters on Mercury

But some places on Mercury are slightly more stable.Inside polar craters on the diminutive planet are regions that never see the light of day, shaded as they are by the craters» rims.

MESSENGER's maps of polar craters match up nicely with earlier imagery of the poles, taken by Earth - based radars, which showed anomalously bright features — patches that reflected radio waves much better than the surrounding terrain, just as ice does.

Among them: How do the materials trapped in polar craters arrive on the moon?

The researchers discovered that the reflective features on the map match polar craters seen by Mariner 10 if the positions deduced from the spacecraft are about 1.5 degrees in error.

Now Harmon has carried out a new radar survey of Mercury, which shows that the areas which strongly reflect radio waves match closely the positions of polar craters photographed by Mariner 10, the American spacecraft which flew past Mercury in 1974 and 1975.

Because the poles are always at the edge of the sunlit side of Mercury, flat areas receive little solar energy and long shadows keep polar crater floors in perpetual darkness.

On Tuesday, the team successfully executed the last of seven daring orbit correction maneuvers that kept MESSENGER aloft long enough for the spacecraft's instruments to collect critical information on Mercury's crustal magnetic anomalies and ice - filled polar craters, among other features.

The Moon may also have ice hidden in the shadows of its polar craters, says Paige.

A spent rocket stage that NASA sent hurtling into the moon last year in hopes of kicking up water from a polar crater delivered on that mission, revealing that at least a moderate portion of its target was indeed made of ice.

Stone wants to add the missing piece that could support a booming lunar economy: an outpost to mine hydrogen from icy deposits in the moon's polar craters.

And you know Mercury has supposedly got water ice from comets in its permanently shadowed polar craters, too, and this is a world with one half that is constantly baking at 700 degrees F.