Mercury News

May 16, 2025 — The Ultraviolet Spectrograph (UVS) aboard NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft has successfully completed its initial commissioning following the October 14, 2024, launch. Scheduled to arrive in the Jovian system in 2030, the spacecraft will orbit ...

Oct. 14, 2024 — NASA's Europa Clipper has embarked on its long voyage to Jupiter, where it will investigate Europa, a moon with an enormous subsurface ocean that may have conditions to support life. The largest spacecraft NASA ever built for a mission headed to ...

Oct. 3, 2024 — Deposits of ice in lunar dust and rock (regolith) are more extensive than previously thought, according to a new analysis of data from NASA's LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) mission. Ice would be a valuable resource for future lunar expeditions. ...

June 10, 2024 — An international team of planetary scientists has detected patches of water frost sitting atop the Tharsis volcanoes on Mars, which are not only the tallest volcanic mountains on the Red Planet but ...

May 29, 2024 — A new study may help redefine how scientists map the surface of the Moon, making the process more streamlined and precise than ever ...

May 28, 2024 — Scientists have come a step closer to identifying the mysterious origins of the 'slow' solar wind, using data collected during the Solar Orbiter spacecraft's first close journey to the ...

Mar. 13, 2024 — A deeply eroded giant volcano, active from ancient through recent times and with possible remnants of glacier ice near its base, had been hiding near Mars' equator in plain sight. Its discovery points to an exciting new place to search for life, and ...

Oct. 13, 2023 — Observations during two flybys by the Mio spacecraft as part of the BepiColombo International Mercury Exploration Project have revealed that chorus waves occur quite locally in the dawn sector of ...

Oct. 27, 2022 — NASA's InSight lander recorded a magnitude 4 marsquake last Dec. 24, but scientists learned only later the cause of that quake: a meteoroid strike estimated to be one of the biggest seen on Mars since NASA began exploring the cosmos. What's more, ...

Oct. 11, 2022 — Analysis of data obtained over the past two weeks by NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) investigation team shows the spacecraft's kinetic impact with its target asteroid, Dimorphos, successfully altered the asteroid's orbit. This marks ...

Sep. 27, 2022 — After 10 months flying in space, NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) -- the world's first planetary defense technology demonstration -- successfully impacted its asteroid target on Monday, the agency's first attempt to move an asteroid in ...

July 26, 2022 — A team led by planetary scientists has discovered shady locations within pits on the moon that always hover around a comfortable 63 degrees Fahrenheit. The pits, and caves to which they may lead, would make safer, more thermally stable base camps ...