The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
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Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld Ontdek de Fascinerende Wereld van UFO's en UAP's: Jouw Bron voor Onthullende Informatie!
Ben jij ook gefascineerd door het onbekende? Wil je meer weten over UFO's en UAP's, niet alleen in België, maar over de hele wereld? Dan ben je op de juiste plek!
België: Het Kloppend Hart van UFO-onderzoek
In België is BUFON (Belgisch UFO-Netwerk) dé autoriteit op het gebied van UFO-onderzoek. Voor betrouwbare en objectieve informatie over deze intrigerende fenomenen, bezoek je zeker onze Facebook-pagina en deze blog. Maar dat is nog niet alles! Ontdek ook het Belgisch UFO-meldpunt en Caelestia, twee organisaties die diepgaand onderzoek verrichten, al zijn ze soms kritisch of sceptisch.
Nederland: Een Schat aan Informatie
Voor onze Nederlandse buren is er de schitterende website www.ufowijzer.nl, beheerd door Paul Harmans. Deze site biedt een schat aan informatie en artikelen die je niet wilt missen!
Internationaal: MUFON - De Wereldwijde Autoriteit
Neem ook een kijkje bij MUFON (Mutual UFO Network Inc.), een gerenommeerde Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in de VS en wereldwijd. MUFON is toegewijd aan de wetenschappelijke en analytische studie van het UFO-fenomeen, en hun maandelijkse tijdschrift, The MUFON UFO-Journal, is een must-read voor elke UFO-enthousiasteling. Bezoek hun website op www.mufon.com voor meer informatie.
Samenwerking en Toekomstvisie
Sinds 1 februari 2020 is Pieter niet alleen ex-president van BUFON, maar ook de voormalige nationale directeur van MUFON in Vlaanderen en Nederland. Dit creëert een sterke samenwerking met de Franse MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP, wat ons in staat stelt om nog meer waardevolle inzichten te delen.
Let op: Nepprofielen en Nieuwe Groeperingen
Pas op voor een nieuwe groepering die zich ook BUFON noemt, maar geen enkele connectie heeft met onze gevestigde organisatie. Hoewel zij de naam geregistreerd hebben, kunnen ze het rijke verleden en de expertise van onze groep niet evenaren. We wensen hen veel succes, maar we blijven de autoriteit in UFO-onderzoek!
Blijf Op De Hoogte!
Wil jij de laatste nieuwtjes over UFO's, ruimtevaart, archeologie, en meer? Volg ons dan en duik samen met ons in de fascinerende wereld van het onbekende! Sluit je aan bij de gemeenschap van nieuwsgierige geesten die net als jij verlangen naar antwoorden en avonturen in de sterren!
Heb je vragen of wil je meer weten? Aarzel dan niet om contact met ons op te nemen! Samen ontrafelen we het mysterie van de lucht en daarbuiten.
11-04-2025
The Small Magellanic Cloud is Being Torn Apart
The Small Magellanic Cloud is Being Torn Apart
By Mark Thompson
The colors of the arrows represent the direction of motion. Relative to the LMC, located at the bottom left of the image, most red arrows show movement towards the LMC, whereas most light blue arrows show movement away from the LMC, suggesting they are being pulled apart. Credit Credit: Satoya Nakano
The Magellanic Clouds are two irregular dwarf galaxies visible from the Southern Hemisphere that orbit our own Milky Way Galaxy. Named after the explorer Ferdinand Magellan who documented them during his voyage in the 16th century, they consist of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) and the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). Located approximately 160,000 and 200,000 light-years away respectively, these satellite galaxies are rich in gas and young stars. The Magellanic Clouds are connected by a stream of gas called the Magellanic Bridge and are slowly being torn apart by tidal forces from our galaxy, with the material forming the trailing Magellanic Stream that extends across much of our southern sky.
The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds
( Credit : ESO/S. Brunier)
A team of researchers at Nagoya University have discovered evidence that the SMC is potentially being torn apart by gravitational forces from its larger companion, the LMC. Led by Satoya Nakano and Kengo Tachihara, the team identified unexpected patterns in the movement of massive stars within the SMC, revealing dynamics that could significantly alter our understanding of how galaxies interact and evolve. The findings, published in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, initially seemed so surprising that the team questioned their analytical methods, but further investigation confirmed the validity of their results.
The team were able to track and study about 7,000 massive stars within the SM. These stars (each over eight times our Sun's mass and markers for hydrogen-rich regions) were observed moving in opposite directions across the galaxy. Some approach the nearby LMC while others recede from it, indicating the SMC is being gravitationally pulled apart by its larger companion. This discovery provides compelling evidence of an ongoing galactic disruption that may eventually lead to the SMC's destruction.
The Smalll Magellanic Cloud
(Credit : ESA Hubble)
Anoter key discovery from the research was the unexpected lack of rotational movement among the SMC's massive stars, contrasting with galaxies like our Milky Way where stars and gas rotate together. Typically, young massive stars move in tandem with their birth gas clouds before decoupling, but the SMC's stars show no rotational pattern, suggesting the gas itself isn't rotating! Nakano noted this may necessitate revising calculations of the SMC's mass and its interactions with the LMC and the Milky Way, potentially transforming our understanding of the complex three-body gravitational relationship among these galaxies.”
The study offers valuable insights into how galaxies interact and evolve, especially in the early epochs of the Universe. The SMC, with its similarities to primordial galaxies, serves as key for understanding galaxy formation. Observing stellar motion in the SMC and LMC, helps researchers connect star formation with galactic dynamics, potentially reshaping our understanding of the Cosmos
The surface of Mars looks like an empty red wasteland. But if you look a bit closer, the remnants of an ancient alien civilization begin to take shape.
At least, that's the conclusion of George J. Haas, the founder and premier investigator of the Mars research group known as The Cydonia Institute.
In his new book, 'The Great Architects of Mars,' Haas analyzed dozens of photos of structures on the Martian surface that he is sure are man-made.
Those include pyramids, a keyhole-shaped formation and even one that looks like a parrot.
According to the author, these formations may be the remnants of once-magnificent cities, towering pyramids, gigantic geoglyphs and more.
Geometry, Haas said, is the marker of civilization. He has spent more than 30 years meticulously studying NASAimages of the Martian surface to look for geometric features and patterns that can't be explained by nature alone.
As a formally trained artist, Haas has an eye for deciphering the subtle differences between a natural formation and an object that was intentionally crafted.
'You don't have to be a geologist to know the difference between a rock and a sculpture — something that's geometric,' he told DailyMail.com.
The 'keyhole' structure on the surface of Mars consists of two main parts: a wedge-shaped formation and an attached circular dome
However, scientists have said Haas' claims are a result of 'pareidolia,' a common brain phenomenon in which a person sees faces in random images or patterns.
'Sometimes we see faces that aren't really there,' explained Robin Kramer, Senior Lecturer in the School of Psychology, at University of Lincoln, in an article for The Conversation.
'You may be looking at the front of a car or a burnt piece of toast when you notice a face-like pattern.
'This is called face pareidolia and is a mistake made by the brain's face detection system.'
Even so, Haas is sure that the structures in the images prove there is life on Mars.
1. The keyhole
In 2011, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) spacecraft snapped a photo of a bizarre formation on the surface of Libya Montes, an area of high-elevation on Mars.
The raised structure consists of two main parts: a wedge-shaped formation and an attached circular dome. Together, they resemble an enormous exclamation mark.
The Mars keyhole structure bears resemblance to the Kofun Tomb in Japan (pictured)
'Traditionally, the basic shape of a conjoined wedge and dome formation are commonly referred to as a keyhole,' Haas wrote.
In 2013, the 'exquisite' geometry of this strange landform captured his attention.
Three years later, Haas and several colleagues published a formal analysis of the keyhole in the Journal of Space Exploration, concluding that its geometry and symmetry suggest it could have been intelligently built.
Without considering that possibility, 'there's no way you can explain that keyhole formation,' Haas said.
'While there are known geological mechanisms that are capable of creating and destroying the individual angles and planes presented in this formation, the natural creation of two opposing geometrically designed formations seems to go well beyond the probability of chance,' the author explained.
Haas also pointed out the keyhole's similarity to monuments constructed by New World, Middle Eastern, and Japanese cultures, such as the Kofun Tomb in Japan.
2. Parrot geoglyph
The parrot geoglyph has 22 points of anatomical correctness, according to Haas
A sketch of the parrot geoglyphs' shape
In 2002, independent researcher Wilmer Faust noticed an odd shape captured in a Mars Global Surveyor image of the large-impact crater known as Argyre Basin.
He showed the image to Haas and his colleagues at The Cydonia Institute, highlighting features throughout the area's topography that looked like a head with an eye and beak, a mound-shaped body, a leg and foot, and an extended wing with feathers.
In his new book, 'The Great Architects of Mars,' George J. Haas analyzed dozens of photos of structures on the Martian surface that appear to be man-made
'After seeing the image, I immediately saw the parrot formation,' Haas noted.
This bizarre structure has since become known as the 'parrot geoglyph,' or 'Parrotopia.'
A geoglyph is a large design or image made on the ground using stones, gravel, mounds of earth or other natural objects.
The human brain tends to look for familiar patterns in abstract shapes, like when you see a face in the clouds. But the parrot geoglyph is different.
'[Cloud shapes] are usually just silhouettes,' Haas explained. 'They don't have a lot of secondary or tertiary detail. There's no eyes, there's no irises, there's no eyelids, there's no eyebrows... That's what we have with the parrot.'
'It's got 22 points of anatomical correctness... It's a sculpture, it's a work of art,' Haas contended. Five different veterinarians, including an avian specialist, confirmed the lifelike anatomy of this Martian structure, the author added.
Geoglyphs can be found in many different locations on Earth, such as Peru, Israel, England, Australia, and even in the US.
However, Haas wrote that there are no geoglyphs anywhere on Earth which match the fine detail of the parrot on Mars.
3. The Sagan pyramids
The Sagan pyramids are three-sided pyramids located on Mars that caught the attention of famed astronomer Carl Sagan in the 1970s
While gathering information about Mars' atmosphere and mapping the planet's surface in 1972, NASA's Mariner 9 spacecraft captured an image of anomalous formations in the Elysium area — the second largest volcanic region on the planet.
These triangular, three-sided pyramids stood out amid steep-sided volcanic cones and impact craters. At an average height of more than 3,200 feet and a width of nearly 10,000 feet, they would dwarf even the largest pyramids on Earth.
George J. Haas is the founder and premier investigator of the Mars research group known as The Cydonia Institute, and the author of 'The Great Architects of Mars'
The pyramids caught the attention of renowned astronomer Carl Sagan, who speculated that they might have been made by high winds and harsh sand blasting large mounds of rock and dirt into pyramid shapes.
But even the late astronomer acknowledged that scientists would need to observe these formations up close to actually determine what they are and how they were made.
While Haas does not rule out Sagan's explanation, he thinks it's possible that these pyramids were built by intelligent beings, and notes that there is some evidence to suggest this region of Mars could have supported ancient life.
'Recent data suggests that volcanic activity may have occurred as recently as 53,000 years ago, creating an environment that was suitable for supporting life,' Haas said. 'Water had also left its mark on the region in the form of riverbeds and canyons.'
What's more, Haas argued that natural pyramid formations tend to be cone-shaped and lack similarly-sized faces.
And while three-sided pyramids are very rare on Earth, they do exist. One of them lies just 65 miles north of Las Vegas, Nevada in the top secret military base known as Area 51. This pyramid is part of the Big Explosives Experimental Facility at the Nevada National Security Site.
'I believe it is fair to say that this triangular formation looks a lot like the three-sided pyramid that Sagan saw in the original Mariner 9 images,' Haas noted.
4. The Martian Atlantis Complex
A detailed view of the Martian Atlantis Complex
The Martian Atlantis Complex resembles the city of Al-Ula in Saudi Arabia (pictured)
The Atlantis Chaos region of Mars, located in the planet's southern hemisphere, is characterized by areas of blocky, steep-sided mesas interspersed with deep valleys.
Scientists generally believe this terrain resulted from the slow erosion of a once-continuous solid plateau, according to the European Space Agency (ESA).
But in 2019, Greg Orme of the Society for Planetary SETI Research pointed out that part of the Atlantis Chaos region captured in a NASA image contained the remains of a 'tightly-knit grid of cellular formations.'
Then, independent researcher Javed Raza took a closer look at the image and began highlighting linear formations that appeared to be part of a 'massive city-like complex.'
'Raza suggested that the arrangements of these evenly spaced foundations with broken walls and towers are typical of the kind of remains one would see in built-up areas on Earth,' Haas wrote.
Further analysis revealed that the entire 'city complex' can be divided into two distinct 'twin' cities, one Eastern and the other Western.
The cubic grid design of the Eastern City resembles the remains of mudbrick and stone adobe houses built throughout the midwestern US and at Al-Ula in Saudi Arabia — a once-bustling city that became largely unoccupied in the 1980s.
The Western City also shares similarities with another terrestrial metropolis: Berlin. Specifically, a small section of this Martian terrain resembles a bombed-out area of the German city during World War II.
5. The starburst structure
The starburst structure on the surface of Mars
The starburst structure is roughly the same shape as Fort Henry in Tennessee (pictured)
While studying ESA images of the Nepenthes Mensae region of Mars, a rugged, flat-topped plateau in the planet's eastern hemisphere, an odd-shaped formation caught Haas' eye.
The raised patch of land resembled an irregular star shape 'with five radiating arms that stretch out like a giant starfish.'
'There is a large mound positioned at its northernmost point and three smaller mounds of various sizes located at its center. The formation projects so much energy in its shape and design that I have titled it Starburst,' Haas said.
The author believes the Starburst bears strong resemblance to a star fort with triangular bastions at each corner, which were commonly found in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries, and in America during colonization and the Civil War period.
'Many of these star-shaped fortifications included interior buildings and had raised platforms within their main structure allowing military fire over the main ramparts,' he explained.
The Starburst looks especially similar to Fort Henry, which was built on the eastern bank of the Tennessee River in 1861 to defend the river and the critical railroad route between Bowling Green, Kentucky, and Memphis, Tennessee.
'When Fort Henry is compared to the Starburst structure found on Mars their common polygonal star design is remarkably similar,' Haas continued.
'Notice the various sizes and shapes of the extending bastions of Fort Henry and its truncated star point at the tip. It is this truncated section of Fort Henry that looks very similar to the blunted star point observed on the Starburst structure on Mars.'
Uncovering a lost alien civilization
Haas' work raises intriguing questions about how certain structures on the Martian surface came to be.
But in order to confirm his theory that these formations are the remnants of an ancient alien civilization, scientists would need to take a much closer look.
Although humans have never stepped foot on the Red Planet before, that could become a reality within the next decade.
'Elon [Musk] wants to go there next year,' Haas said. Indeed, the SpaceX Chief Executive has set an ambitious goal of launching the first uncrewed Starship mission to Mars in 2026, and hopes to send astronauts there by 2029.
Haas hopes that once humanity establishes a presence on the Red Planet, scientists can actually begin investigating some of these unusual structures to learn how they formed — or were built.
'Mars is just going to be a treasure trove of technology and all kinds of information,' he told DailyMail.com.
Although these changes might be small on the planetary scale, scientists warn they could cause havoc for satellite navigation.
As the Earth turns on its axis, changes in the oceans, atmosphere, and deep within the molten mantle cause the planet to wobble like a spinning top.
While most of the planet's wobbles are regular and predictable, scientists from ETH Zurich have found that human-caused changes will soon outweigh the natural shifts.
Since satellites and deep space telescopes work out their position by referring to the Earth's axis of rotation, any change in the North Pole could cause serious issues.
Lead author Dr Mostafa Kiani Shahvandi, now at the University of Vienna, told MailOnline this could cause inaccuracies 'from a few metres to hundreds of metres'.
Earth's North Pole is on the move and could shift by as much as 90 feet (27 metres) by 2100, according to scientists
Like anything spinning on its axis, big changes in the Earth's distribution of mass cause it to shift on its axis.
Most of the time this is a normal and predictable process caused by factors such as regular cycles of ocean currents.
However, as the planet's ice sheets and glaciers melt, this is causing a more rapid redistribution of weight than scientists have observed in the past, which is causing the pole to shift.
Dr Shahvandi and his co-author measured the movement of the poles between 1908 and 2000 and compared this with projections of ice melt to see how far they might move in the future.
In the worst-case scenario, in which greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced, the dramatic melting of the ice sheets will have moved the poles 89 feet between 1900 and 2100.
In a more optimistic scenario in which greenhouse gas emissions are reduced, the North Pole will still move as much as 39 feet (12 metres).
For now, human-caused effects aren't moving the poles as much as natural causes.
As the ice caps melt in the warming climate, Earth's weight is redistributed around the planet. Like a spinning top, this shift alters the axis about which the Earth spins and moves the geographical North Pole
In the worst-case scenario (red) climate change could trigger the pole to move 89 feet between 1900 and 2100. In a more optimistic scenario (green) in which greenhouse gas emissions are reduced, the North Pole will still move as much as 39 feet (12 metres)
During the ice age, the Earth's crust sunk down under the weight of glaciers and has risen up since they melted, redistributing the planet’s weight.
Even though the last ice age ended over 10,000 years ago, the rebound effects can still be seen in the natural shift of the North Pole.
However, in the near future the scientists say that human-caused climate change will overtake the ice age rebound as the biggest contributor.
Dr Shahvandi says: 'Currently, the natural processes dominate polar motion, but if climate change continues and ice sheets melt more and more, then in the last decades of the 21st century the human-induced climate change will certainly dominate.'
Arctic sea ice covered an area six per cent smaller than average, marking the fourth month in a row when sea ice extents have seen record-breaking lows.
Likewise, Antarctic sea ice hit its fourth lowest monthly extent for March, standing 24 per cent lower than average.
The biggest contributors to the shift were the Antarctic ice sheet and the Greenland Ice Sheet (pictured) which is melting at an accelerating rate
This graph shows how much the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet could shift the pole on the X (top) and Y (bottom) axes by 2100. The red line shows the worst-case scenario in which emissions do not reduce and the blue line shows the more optimistic scenario
This could cause serious problems for satellite navigation and for space-based telescopes like the James Webb Space Telescope (pictured) which use the Earth's axis as a reference point for navigation. This could cause errors on the scale of kilometres
The researchers discovered that the biggest sources of polar shift are the melting of the Greenland Ice sheet and the Antarctic Ice sheet.
If this change continues, it is likely to cause issues for the sensitive navigation systems of satellites and space telescopes such as the James Webb Space Telescope.
In their paper, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, the researchers write: 'Since prediction of polar motion is crucial for applications such as spacecraft navigation and orientation of deep-space telescopes, the reduced predictability of polar motion under climate change might impact the operational accuracy of such applications.'
That would be bad for navigation systems here on Earth but even more perilous for spacecraft since it will become harder to work out their exact location.
Dr Shahvandi says this could create errors of 'kilometres' for spacecraft probing distant planets.
Global sea levels could rise as much as 1.2 metres (4 feet) by 2300 even if we meet the 2015 Paris climate goals, scientists have warned.
The long-term change will be driven by a thaw of ice from Greenland to Antarctica that is set to re-draw global coastlines.
Sea level rise threatens cities from Shanghai to London, to low-lying swathes of Florida or Bangladesh, and to entire nations such as the Maldives.
It is vital that we curb emissions as soon as possible to avoid an even greater rise, a German-led team of researchers said in a new report.
By 2300, the report projected that sea levels would gain by 0.7-1.2 metres, even if almost 200 nations fully meet goals under the 2015 Paris Agreement.
Targets set by the accords include cutting greenhouse gas emissions to net zero in the second half of this century.
Ocean levels will rise inexorably because heat-trapping industrial gases already emitted will linger in the atmosphere, melting more ice, it said.
In addition, water naturally expands as it warms above four degrees Celsius (39.2°F).
Every five years of delay beyond 2020 in peaking global emissions would mean an extra 8 inches (20 centimetres) of sea level rise by 2300.
'Sea level is often communicated as a really slow process that you can't do much about ... but the next 30 years really matter,' said lead author Dr Matthias Mengel, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, in Potsdam, Germany.
None of the nearly 200 governments to sign the Paris Accords are on track to meet its pledges.
This artist's concept of a lake at the north pole of Saturn's moon Titan illustrates raised rims and rampart-like features as seen by NASA's Cassini spacecraft (Credit : NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Saturn's largest moon Titan, stands out as one of the most Earth-like worlds in our Solar System. With its dense nitrogen atmosphere, a cold surface featuring methane lakes and rivers, and complex organic chemistry, this moon which is nearly the size of Mercury has been of great interest. The Cassini-Huygens mission revealed a landscape of mountains, dunes, and hydrocarbon seas, and even suggested there could be subsurface liquid water ocean beneath its icy crust, making Titan a prime target in the search for potential extraterrestrial habitats.
Saturn's moon Titan
(Credit : NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/Kevin M. Gill)
A further study of the moon by an international research team led by Antonin Affholder from the University of Arizona and Peter Higgins from Harvard University has investigated the possibility of life. The team used bioenergetic modelling and focused on Titan's unique organic content and deep subsurface ocean, which could potentially support microorganisms. Their findings, published in The Planetary Science Journal, suggest that while simple microscopic life might exist within Titan's estimated 482 kilometre deep ocean, the total biomass would likely amount to only a few kilograms. Comparing it to the Earth’s complex ecosystem, Titan’s is likely to be very limited.
The research leader Affholder challenges oversimplified estimates about potential Titan life, noting that despite abundant organic molecules, not all would constitute viable food sources, and limited exchange occurs between the organics rich surface and the vast ocean below. The research team modelled potential Titan life based on the fermentation process (a fundamental metabolic process requiring only organic molecules without oxidants like oxygen) as the most plausible biological pathway in Titan's environment.
A hydrothermal vent at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean where life has evolved
(Credit : P. Rona / OAR/National Undersea Research Program (NURP); NOAA)
It’s likely that a process like this evolved early in Earth's history too and the team highlight that it doesn’t require any previously unknown or speculative mechanisms to be a viable theory. The team investigated whether microbes similar to Earth's earliest life forms could exist in Titan's subsurface ocean by feeding on organic compounds from the moon's atmosphere and surface. They specifically focused on glycine, the simplest amino acid, chosen because of its universal presence throughout the Solar System in primordial matter, asteroids, comets, and even in particle clouds that form stars and planets.
Computer simulations revealed that only a small fraction of Titan's organic material could support microbial life, with microbes depending on limited glycine delivery through meteorite created "melt pools" in the ice shell. This supply could sustain only a minimal biomass, perhaps only a few kilograms total, less than one cell per litre throughout Titan's vast ocean. This finding challenges assumptions about Titan's habitability, suggesting that despite its rich organic inventory, future missions would face extremely low detection odds unless alternative biological potential exists beyond surface organic content.
Artist's illustration of Enceladus's plumes. (Credit: NASA)
What kind of mission would be best suited to sample the plumes of Saturn’s ocean world, Enceladus, to determine if this intriguing world has the ingredients to harbor life? This is what a recent study presented at the 56th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference hopes to address as a team of researchers investigated the pros and cons of an orbiter or flyby mission to sample Enceladus’ plumes. This study has the potential to help scientists, engineers, and mission planners design and develop the most scientifically effective mission to Enceladus with the goal of determining its potential habitability.
Here, Universe Today discusses this incredible research with Dr. Morgan Cable, who is a research scientist in the Laboratory Studies group at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, regarding the motivation behind the study, significant takeaways, how this proposed mission will compare to Cassini, next steps for developing such a mission, and what forms of life we might find on Enceladus. Therefore, what was the motivation behind the study?
“Enceladus is unique in that material from its subsurface ocean can be accessed without the need to dig, drill or even land,” Dr. Cable tells Universe Today. “This is not something you can do on other planetary bodies, and it’s all thanks to the plume emanating from four giant fissures in the south pole. A spacecraft doing a flythrough of the plume, either from Saturn orbit or via Enceladus orbit, could collect both gas and ice grains and perform measurements to better constrain the habitability of the subsurface ocean and potentially search for evidence of life.”
For the study, the researchers discussed the motivation and variety of reasons why sampling Enceladus’ plumes would produce the most valuable science for studying this ocean world. This included the benefits of a plume-focused mission as opposed to a lander or other type of scientific mission how data obtained by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft contributed to recent discoveries regarding Enceladus. Finally, they discussed the benefits of a flyby verses Enceladus orbiter and the challenges of performing such a daring mission.
The discussion was complemented by the researchers presenting models from previous studies that estimated the salt content of the grains that could potentially be sampled from Enceladus’ plumes. While one study estimated collecting salt-rich grains, the other study estimated collecting grains with less salt. By combining the two studies, the researchers of this recent study concluded that 100 times more material will need to be collected than previously estimated to obtain sufficient data regarding the contents of Enceladus’ subsurface ocean. Therefore, what are the most significant takeaways from this study?
“Enceladus is the only confirmed body in the solar system where we have access to fresh material from a habitable subsurface ocean,” Dr. Cable tells Universe Today. “We also at a point for the first time in human history where we have developed instruments that can fit on spacecraft and are sufficiently sensitive that, even if there is a single alien microbe entrained within an ice grain in the plume, we could detect it. While we certainly started the journey to search for life elsewhere with the Viking missions to Mars, we now may be embarking on the golden era of the search for life in our own cosmic backyard.”
While Cassini was technically designated as an orbiter since it orbited Saturn several times while conducting countless flybys of its many moons, including 11 of Enceladus, it did not enter Enceladus’ orbit to conduct an in-depth analysis of the ocean world and its surface. The only other missions that briefly explored Saturn and its moons were Pioneer 11 and Voyager 1 & 2, all of which conducted flybys of the Saturn system.
As noted, this study builds off data collected by NASA’s Cassini mission that conducted groundbreaking science for over 13 years (2004 to 2017) while orbiting Saturn and its many moons. During this time, Cassini discovered Enceladus’ plumes and even flew through them several times, obtaining data regarding the chemical compositions and grain sizes. While these plume samples revealed the presence of organic materials, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, water vapor, and volatile gases, Cassini’s instruments were not equipped to conduct an in-depth analysis of ice grains. Therefore, how will this proposed orbiter/flyby mission compare to Cassini’s results when it flew through Enceladus’ plumes?
“Cassini’s instruments were state-of-the-art at the time that spacecraft was built and launched; those instruments were also not meant to search for biosignatures or complex organic chemistry,” Dr. Cable tells Universe Today. “With modern instrumentation, we can better identify both small molecules and complex organics, even up to biomolecules such as lipids, polypeptides, DNA or RNA. This is because modern instruments have better mass range and resolution, as well as sensitivity (so even if the molecules are dilute, we can detect them) and the ability to more robustly handle interferents.”
NASA missions typically take several years to go from a concept to launch and often several more years before finally collecting valuable science. For example, while Cassini was launched in 1997, it was actually introduced in 1982 by a working group between the National Academy of Sciences and the European Science Foundation, hence why Cassini was a joint mission between NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Italian Space Agency.
The next several years consisted of further discussions and some political bumps as the U.S. Congress came close to canceling the project, but NASA persuaded them to stay the course. After launching in 1997, Cassini spent close to seven years traveling to Saturn before officially entering orbit in 2004, followed by spending until 2017 collecting groundbreaking science about Saturn and its many moons. Therefore, what are the next steps for developing this potential orbiter/flyby to sample Enceladus’ plumes?
Dr. Cable tells Universe Today, “The recent Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey recommended that Enceladus be included as a potential destination through the New Frontiers Program and also recommended that an Enceladus Orbilander follow Uranus Orbiter and Probe (UOP) as the next-priority flagship mission. So, I imagine one or more mission concept proposals may be submitted to the next New Frontiers call to explore Enceladus, and if selected, that would be very exciting. If not, there is significant community support for a flagship, but after UOP.”
Enceladus is one of the most intriguing and mysterious worlds in our solar system with its plumes of water ice being ejected from its subsurface ocean via cracks in its south pole. But it’s this subsurface ocean that causes the greatest amount of intrigue, as Earth demonstrates liquid water is one of the key ingredients for life as we know it, providing millions of aquatic species of all shapes and sizes.
An Earth analogy for what scientists could find on Enceladus are hydrothermal vents, which are found near regions of volcanic activity at the bottom of the ocean. These vents often consist of black smokers and white smokers, with each discharging their own respective set of minerals and ecosystems. Some examples of life found at hydrothermal vents include crabs, shrimp, tube worms, and mussels. Therefore, what forms of life do Dr. Cable think we could find in Enceladus?
“Based on our understanding of the amount of energy available in the ocean, it’s not likely that the density of life is very high,” Dr. Cable tells Universe Today. “In Earth’s oceans, where sunlight (our primary energy source) is abundant, we see cell densities on the order of 100,000-1,000,000 cells per milliliter of ocean water, which can support organisms as large as fish, sharks and whales. In energy-limited environments, such as the ice-covered lakes of Antarctica (which don’t have access to sunlight), we tend to see cell densities on the order of 100-1000 cells per milliliter.”
Dr. Cable continues, “And that I think is more likely at Enceladus, as sunlight won’t be an option in the ocean underneath the ice shell; the primary energy source is likely to be hydrothermal energy at the seafloor. But that doesn’t mean necessarily we’ll only see microbes. On Earth, at hydrothermal vents at our seafloor, we see diverse communities that include shrimp, octopods and other multicellular organisms, so we can’t rule that out! I think we’ll be excited no matter what we find.”
Other ocean worlds of intrigue include Saturn’s largest moon, Titan; Jupiter’s moons, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto; Uranus’ moons, Ariel, Umbriel, Oberon, and Titania; Neptun’s moon, Triton; and even dwarf planets Pluto and Ceres. Europa is being visited by NASA’s Europa Clipper to examine its subsurface ocean while NASA’s Juno continues to study Europa and the other Galilean moons. For Titan, NASA is slated to launch its Dragonfly quadcopter in 2028 with an estimated arrival at Titan in 2034.
For now, a future Enceladus mission continues to be on the drawing board with the Enceladus Orbilander being the most anticipated mission to explore Enceladus and its subsurface ocean while researchers continue to ponder whether life as we know it, or even as we don’t know it, could exist within its watery depths.
Dr. Cable tells Universe Today, “One of the most interesting parts of my research is the opportunity to work and interact with people from a multitude of different disciplines, ranging from chemistry and geophysics to marine biology and oceanography. So, I think it’s important to realize that you can study something pretty far-removed from astrophysics or astronomy and still potentially join a mission team to explore big questions about our Universe!”
What type of mission will be designed to explore Enceladus’ plumes in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
What Makes These Mysterious Moons the Most Puzzling in Our Solar System?
What Makes These Mysterious Moons the Most Puzzling in Our Solar System?
Here’s what makes some of the most mysterious moons in our solar system so captivating — and why they’ve become prime targets in the search for life beyond Earth.
Image Credit: SCIENCE: NASA, ESA, CSA, Webb Titan GTO Team IMAGE PROCESSING: Alyssa Pagan (STScI).
They’re not planets, yet they may be more intriguing. Moons like Europa and Enceladus have oceans beneath their icy crusts, Phobos is slowly falling toward Mars, and Triton orbits backward. These aren’t just barren satellites — they are worlds with geologic activity, strange orbits, and potential for life. And scientists are only beginning to understand what secrets these mysterious moons may be hiding.
Here’s what makes some of the most mysterious moons in our solar system so captivating — and why they’ve become prime targets in the search for life beyond Earth.
Europa and Enceladus: Oceans Beneath Ice
Among all the moons in the solar system, Europa (orbiting Jupiter) and Enceladus (orbiting Saturn) stand out as the most promising places to search for alien life.
Europa
Europa’s smooth, icy surface is crisscrossed with brownish lines — likely fractures in its outer shell. Below that ice lies a global ocean that may contain twice as much water as Earth. Scientists believe the ocean is kept warm by tidal forces created by Jupiter’s gravity, which flex the moon’s interior and generate heat.
Active geological resurfacing, possibly from erupting water
Oxygen and other materials on the surface that may mix with the ocean below
NASA’s Europa Clipper mission will fly by the moon dozens of times to investigate whether it could support life.
Enceladus
Enceladus is smaller than Europa but just as mysterious. In 2005, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft captured stunning images of plumes of water vapor erupting from its south pole — shooting ice particles and organic molecules into space.
Key discoveries:
Cryovolcanic geysers that erupt through surface cracks
Organic compounds, silica particles, and salt — all signs of an underground ocean
Detection of phosphates, essential for life as we know it
The presence of heat, water, and organic material make Enceladus one of the most exciting candidates for extraterrestrial life in the solar system.
Phobos and Deimos: Mars’s Mysterious Moons
Talking about mysterious moons, Mars has two tiny ones, Phobos and Deimos, and both present puzzles that still don’t have clear answers.
Phobos, the larger of the two, is slowly spiraling toward Mars and may eventually crash into the planet or break apart and form a ring. It’s oddly shaped, heavily cratered, and appears to be made of carbon-rich rock, not unlike certain asteroids.
Theories about its origin include:
A captured asteroid from the outer solar system
A re-accreted fragment from a massive impact on Mars
Deimos is even smaller and more distant, with a smoother appearance. Both moons challenge traditional models of how natural satellites form, and Japan’s upcoming Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission hopes to return samples from Phobos to help solve the mystery.
A photograph of Titan. Image Credit: Space Science Institute.
Triton and Titan: Outliers with Odd Behavior
Two other moons, mysterious moons — Triton (Neptune’s largest moon) and Titan (Saturn’s largest) — are full of strange surprises.
Triton
Triton is the only large moon in the solar system that orbits in the opposite direction of its planet’s rotation. This retrograde motion suggests it was once a captured object, possibly a dwarf planet from the Kuiper Belt.
It’s geologically active, with ice volcanoes, nitrogen geysers, and a frozen crust. Triton may also harbor a subsurface ocean.
NASA is currently studying potential flyby missions to Triton under its Trident concept, which would aim to investigate its active surface and interior.
Titan
Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, is the only moon with a dense atmosphere and features rivers, lakes, and seas — of liquid methane and ethane.
Despite the frigid temperatures, Titan’s chemistry is considered a potential analog for early Earth. NASA’s upcoming Dragonfly mission will send a rotorcraft to fly across Titan’s surface and explore its complex organic chemistry in the 2030s.
These moons aren’t just rocks in orbit — they are worlds in their own right, with active geology, unique atmospheres, and potential habitats for life. What makes them mysterious moons isn’t just their strange behaviors, but how little we still know about them.
In the coming decades, space agencies will focus on missions to these moons to answer questions that could reshape our understanding of planetary formation — and perhaps even the origin of life.
Each of these mysterious moons represents a new frontier in the search for answers about the solar system’s past — and our place in it.
Hubble's New Image of a Star Factory in the Small Magellanic Cloud
Hubble's New Image of a Star Factory in the Small Magellanic Cloud
By Mark Thompson
Nebula NGC 346 (Credit : ESA/Hubble)
NGC346 is a young star cluster in the Small Magellanic Clouds with an estimated 2,500 stars. It’s about 200,000 light years away and this image, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope reveals a beautiful region of star formation. The bright blue stars are many times more massive than the Sun and will live short lives ending in spectacular supernova explosions. The image helps us to understand the stellar formation process in a galaxy that has fewer metals than our own Galaxy.
Image of NGC 346 with a 30 arcminute wide field of view showing the wispy nebular structure around it
(Credit : European Southern Observatory)
The Small Magellanic Cloud that plays host to NGC346 is a dwarf irregular galaxy approximately 200,000 light-years from Earth, making it one of the Milky Way's nearest galactic neighbours. It’s visible primarily from the southern hemisphere as a faint, hazy patch (appearing much like the Milky Way) spanning about 7,000 light-years across. Thought to contains several billion stars it is dwarfed by our own Galaxy that has an estimated 200-400 billion stars.
The two-color image shows an overview of the full Small Magellanic Cloud and was composed from two images from the Digitized Sky Survey 2. N66 with the open star cluster NGC 346 is the largest of the star-forming regions seen below the centre
(Credit : ESA/Hubble and Digitized Sky Survey 2)
Also visible in the image is N66, also known as DEM S 103, is a stunning emission nebula and one of the largest and most active star forming regions in the Small Magellanic Cloud. It measures approximately 300 light years across and is visible because the its gas is energised by the radiation from the NGC 346. The intense stellar winds and ultraviolet radiation from these hot stars sculpt the surrounding hydrogen gas clouds, causing them to glow with a reddish/pink hue characteristic of ionized hydrogen. The relatively low metal content of N66 makes it a fabulous cosmic laboratory to study how stars formed in the early universe when heavier elements were scarce.
The European Space Agency's celebration of Hubble's 35th anniversary includes a series of newly processed images of previously released targets, showcasing scenes in breathtaking quality. NGC 346 is just one of them but thanks to Hubble's exceptional sensitivity and resolution, it reveals key insights into the stellar formation process. By analyzing observations taken 11 years apart, scientists discovered that stars within NGC 346 follow a spiralling motion toward the cluster's center, a phenomenon thought to be driven by external gas streams that fuel stellar birth within the turbulent cloud's core.
The Hubble Space Telescope (Credit : ESA)
The images are a fitting tribute to the space that was launched in April 1990 and has dramatically exceeded its expected 15 year operational lifespan by continuing to function for over 35 years. The operation of the telescope has been far from plain sailing though with optical issues discovered after its launch and five critical servicing missions where astronauts have replaced ageing components, installed new instruments, and performed crucial repairs. Despite facing numerous technical challenges Hubble has continued to deliver groundbreaking discoveries time and time again.
Asteroid 2024 YR4 Won't Hit Earth, But There May Be a Lunar Light Show
Asteroid 2024 YR4 Won't Hit Earth, But There May Be a Lunar Light Show
By Alan Boyle
The yellow streak represents possible locations of asteroid 2024 YR4 on Dec. 22, 2032, as calculated on April 2, 2025. (NASA / JPL / CNEOS)
Although astronomers have ruled out a smash-up between Earth and an asteroid known as 2024 YR4 in the year 2032, the building-sized space rock still has a chance of hitting the moon. In fact, the chances — slight as they are — have doubled in the past month.
The latest assessment from NASA puts the probability of a lunar impact on Dec. 22, 2032, at 3.8%. That's an increase from the 1.7% figure that was reported in February. Since then, further observations made by ground-based telescopes and NASA's James Webb Space Telescope have somewhat reduced the uncertainty over where exactly the asteroid will be when its orbit intersects Earth's orbital path (and the moon's).
Over the course of observing 2024 YR4, astronomers had set the chances of a collision with Earth in 2032 as high as 2.3% — but that wasn't because of what the asteroid may or may not do over the next seven years. Instead, it merely reflected how little was known about YR4's precise orbit. The chances of an Earth impact fell to zero more than a month ago as more observations came in.
Something similar might well happen to the chances for a lunar impact. If the calculations progress the way they usually do for asteroid orbits, the chances may go up for a while but then vanish completely. Stay tuned: The Webb telescope is due to check in again with YR4 in late April or early May.
What if it turns out that the asteroid is truly on course to hit the moon? "There might be an unbelievable light show," former NASA astronaut Ed Lu, who's in charge of the B612 Foundation's Asteroid Institute, said last week at the University of Washington.
The Asteroid Institute's researchers and collaborators are using computerized analytical tools to keep track of 2024 YR4 and thousands of other asteroids in our celestial neighborhood. Its estimates of lunar impact probabilities parallel NASA's assessments.
If YR4 does hit the moon, it's likely to happen near the lunar south pole, sometime around noon GMT on the appointed day in 2032, Lu said.
Over the course of billions of years, lots of space rocks have peppered the lunar surface, but this one could leave a mark. The latest estimates suggest that 2024 YR4 is 174 to 220 feet wide (53 to 67 meters wide), about the size of a 10- to 15-story building. Lu said an asteroid that big could create a crater as wide as 2 kilometers (1.2 miles).
"If anyone here has been to Meteor Crater [in Arizona] ... that's about 1 kilometer wide. So we could be witnessing the formation of a crater roughly double that size on the surface of the moon," Lu said.
"That's a lot of material thrown up that will basically end up in orbit around the moon, or surrounding the moon," he said. "If it hits, you will be able to see that from the Earth with the naked eye. A pretty big explosion — it will throw a lot of stuff up. In fact, I will bet that there will be meteor showers on Earth."
The study of 2024 YR4 serves as good practice for what astronomers are likely to face when the Vera C. Rubin Observatory begins science operations in Chile later this year.
"The Rubin Observatory is going to be about 10 times more effective at finding and tracking asteroids than all other telescopes combined, worldwide," Lu said. "For sure we're going to find ones that are going to come very close to the Earth. Now, are we going to find something that might hit the Earth? Actually, I think it's likely."
Terraforming Mars Will Require Hitting It With Mulitple Asteroids
Terraforming Mars Will Require Hitting It With Mulitple Asteroids
By Andy Tomaswick
Picture of Mars' atmosphere. Credit - NASA
Terraforming Mars has been the long-term dream of colonization enthusiasts for decades. But when you start to grapple with the actual physics of what would be necessary to do so, the effort seems further and further out of reach. Depictions like those of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy are just wildly unrealistic regarding the sheer amount of material that must be moved to the Red Planet to achieve anything remotely resembling Earth-like conditions. That is the conclusion of an abstract presented at the 56th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference by Leszek Czechowski of the Polish Academy of Sciences.
The paper, entitled "Energy problems of terraforming Mars," tackles the reality of what it would take in terms of gas to bring Mars up to an "acceptable" level of pressure. As Dr. Czechowski points out, water inside a person's body would begin boiling immediately at the current pressure on Mars, meaning that everyone on the entire planet would have to wear a pressure suit. However, certain places on the planet are closer to getting to the pressure level, estimated at about 1/10th Earth's atmospheric pressure, where water would only boil at 50C, which is slightly above typical body temperature. You gotta start somewhere, at least.
The place closest to that pressure currently on Mars is in Hellas Planitia, Mars' "lowland," where the average pressure is about 1/100th that of sea level on Earth, and only 1/10 the amount needed to ensure a person doesn't immediately boil to death if their skin is exposed to the atmosphere. While Dr. Czechowski mentions several other scenarios, such as bringing the average atmospheric pressure on the planet up to that of sea level on Earth, the total amount of atmosphere that would need to be shipped in is an order of magnitude more, which already is extremely expensive in terms of the energy required to realize that increase.
Fraser discusses various ways to terraform Mars.
Where would we get all this material for the atmosphere? Why the Kuiper Belt, of course. Or at least that is Dr. Czechowski's conclusion. He looked at the possibility of using asteroids from the main belt, which has the advantage of being relatively close to Mars. However, they lack enough water and nitrogen to help build an Earth-like atmosphere. The Oort Cloud, the giant, at this point theoretical, disk that contains billions of icy bodies, has more than enough material to supply Mars'’ atmosphere. However, after some brief calculations, Dr. Czechowski realized it would take 15,000 years to get a reasonably sized Oort Cloud object near enough to Mars to make a material impact on its atmosphere.
Impact is the optimal word as well, as the model these calculations describe slams the small body into Mars itself, thereby releasing both its material and a large enough of energy that helps warm the planet. Kuiper Belt objects seem the best fit for this, as they contain a lot of water and could theoretically be brought to Mars over decades rather than millennia. However, they are also very unpredictable when brought close to the Sun. They could fall apart, with some of the material going to waste in the inner solar system, especially if the technique used to send them into the inner solar system involves a gravity assist. Such a maneuver could tear apart these relatively loosely held-together balls of ice and rock.
Dr. Czechowski's final conclusion is simple - at least in theory, we can get enough material to dramatically increase Mars' atmospheric pressure to a point where it is tolerable for humans - or at least to a point where they don't die immediately when exposed to it. However, doing so will require us to crash a sizeable icy body from the Kuiper Belt into it. To do that, engineers would need to design a propulsion system that doesn't rely on gravity to direct the icy body. In the conclusion of his paper, Dr. Czechowski suggests a fusion reactor powering an ion engine but doesn't provide many details about what that system would look like.
There might be other methods to terraform Mars that involve bioengineering, but they would still take an absurd amount of energy, as Fraser discusses
Given the technological requirements needed to achieve that vision, it seems we're a long way off from doing so. But that won't stop Mars enthusiasts from dreaming of a terraformed future—even if it does involve smacking the planet with multiple large rocks to get there.
NASA’s SPHEREx, which will map millions of galaxies across the entire sky, captured one of its first exposures March 27. The observatory’s six detectors each captured one of these uncalibrated images, to which visible-light colors have been added to represent infrared wavelengths. SPHEREx’s complete field of view spans the top three images; the same area of the sky is also captured in the bottom three images (Credit : NASA/JPL-Caltech)
SPHEREx stands for the Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer. You can see why NASA came up with a natty name for it! It’s their new infrared space telescope designed to give us unprecedented insights into the evolution of the Universe. It was selected back in 2019 as part of NASA's Medium Explorer program and aims to; conduct an all-sky spectral survey to measure the history of galaxy formation, investigate the origins of water and molecules in regions where stars and planets form and explore the distribution of interstellar ice. Onboard it has cutting-edge spectroscopy technology so that it can observe in wavelengths ranging from 0.75 to 5.0 microns and allow us to peer through dust that obscures visible light.
SPHEREx on a work stand ahead of prelaunch operations at the Astrotech Processing Facility at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California in January 2025
(Credit : NASA Kennedy Space Center / BAE Systems/Benjamin Fry)
The new space observatory will scan the entire sky four times over a two-year mission, using spectroscopy to examine light from hundreds of millions of celestial objects across more wavelengths than any previous all-sky survey. It will capture infrared light invisible to the human eye and to process the images, assign a visible light colour to each infrared wavelength. This technique allows scientists to determine an object's composition or a galaxy's distance, enabling research on fundamental topics ranging from the earliest moments of the birth of the Universe to the origins of water in our Galaxy.
When light enters the telescope, it splits along two paths leading to rows of three detectors each. Each of its six detectors captures 17 unique wavelength bands, creating a detailed spectrum of 102 distinct hues in every exposure. Unlike standard filters that block all wavelengths except one specific colour, SPHEREx uses special "rainbow-tinted" filters where the wavelengths blocked change gradually from top to bottom, allowing it to capture a more complete spectrum of cosmic light!
SPHEREx and its detectors
( Credit : NASA/JPL-Caltech)
After its launch, engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory have been completing spacecraft checks on SPHEREx. To date, all systems are functioning properly and the spacecraft is in good health. Its detectors and hardware have been cooling down to their operating temperature of around -210°C, a critical part of its design since heat would interfere with the telescope's ability to detect infrared light. The initial images just released confirm that the telescope's focus is correct which is a release to engineers since its focus was permanently set before launch and cannot be adjusted while in orbit!
“Our spacecraft has opened its eyes on the universe, it’s performing just as it was designed to” - Olivier Doré, SPHEREx project scientist at Caltech and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
SPHEREx is expected to begin operations in late April and astronomers worldwide are waiting in keen anticipation. The mission represents a significant leap forward in our attempts to understand the evolution of the Universe. By mapping the entire sky with unprecedented detail, SPHEREx will create a three-dimensional map of our cosmos more comprehensive than any before and there is no doubt, the coming months will reveal the full capabilities of this innovative new observatory.
"The fall of Aguas Zarcas was huge news in the country. No other fireball was as widely reported and then recovered as stones on the ground in Costa Rica in the past 150 years."
A 146-gram fragment of the Aguas Zarcas meteorite fall.
(Image credit: Arizona State University / SETI Institute.)
The pieces of a meteorite that fell in Costa Rica in 2019 are so unusual that scientists believe it had moved through space relatively unscathed — that is, until it encountered our planet. This is in stark contrast to other typical meteorites that show the wounds of having been in numerous collisions before reaching Earth.
The meteorites were recovered from near the Costa Rican town of Aguas Zarcas, and are of a type referred to as 'mudballs', in the sense that they contain water-rich minerals.
The findings have resulted in a reappraisal of these so-called mudball meteorites. It had been assumed that their high content of water-rich minerals would make them structurally weaker than other types of meteorites, rendering them more susceptible to damage or burning. But, "Apparently, [the presence of water-rich minerals] … does not mean they are weak," said Peter Jenniskens, a meteor astronomer from the SETI Institute and NASA Ames Research Center in California, in a statement.
Scientists say the discovery rivals one of the largest discoveries of meteorites nearly 50 years prior. "Twenty-seven kilograms [60lbs] of rocks were recovered, making this the largest fall of its kind since similar meteorites fell near Murchison in Australia in 1969," said Jenniskens.
The Murchison meteorite fall occurred just two months after the Apollo 11 mission. The recovered pieces showed that evidence of having been altered by liquid water on its parent body before an impact smashed apart that parent body and sent the Murchison and, later, the Aguas Zarcas meteoroids spinning into space. (Meteoroids are what we call meteorites when they are in space.)
Video camera footage shows the 2019 mudball meteor entering the atmosphere from the west-north-west direction over Costa Rica at a steep, almost vertical angle of 81 degrees, and at a velocity of 9 miles (14.6 kilometers) per second. This steep angle allowed the meteor passed through less of Earth's atmosphere than it would have if it had approached on a shallower angle. That means more of the original meteoroid survived the fiery passage through the sky above Costa Rica.
Based on the incoming meteor's trajectory, "We can tell that this object came from a larger asteroid low in the asteroid belt, likely from its outer regions," said Jenniskens.
As it entered Earth's atmosphere, the rocky body is estimated to have been about 23.6 inches (60 centimeters) across. Friction with the atmosphere generated heat that melted its surface, stripping away much of the rock in a process known as ablation as it began to burn up.
"It penetrated deep into Earth's atmosphere, until the surviving mass shattered at 15.5 miles (25 kilometers) above the Earth's surface, where it produced a bright flash that was detected by satellites in orbit," said Jenniskens.
Those satellites were the Geostationary Operational Environment Satellites (GOES) 16 and 17 and their lightning detectors, which are Earth-observing satellites operated by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAO).
The fragments scattered themselves across the soft ground of Costa Rican jungle and grasslands, where they were subsequently found by meteorite hunters and volunteers. But the meteorites had a slightly unusual appearance.
"The Aguas Zarcas fall produced an amazing selection of fusion-crusted stones with a wide range of shapes," said meteor scientist Laurence Garvie of the Buseck Center for Meteorite Studies at Arizona State University. "Some stones have a beautiful blue iridescence to the fusion crust."
The fusion crust is the glassy, melted surface of a meteorite after it has endured ablation.
Usually, meteorites have some flat sides, where they have broken apart as the result of stress fractures in the original meteoroid that were placed there by collisions in space with other meteoroids. The rounded rather than flat shapes of the Aguas Zarcas meteorites suggested that the meteoroid had travelled through space relatively unscathed after being blasted off its parent body.
The Murchison meteorite. (Image credit: Wikimedia Commons)
It has even been possible to calculate how long ago that was. Exposure to cosmic rays alters the composition of a meteoroid, so the degree of alteration tells us how long a meteoroid has been in space after breaking off its parent body.
"The last collision experienced by this rock was two million years ago," said cosmochemist Kees Welton of UC Berkeley, who led this part of the study.
"After getting loose, it took two million years to hit the tiny target of Earth, all the time avoiding getting cracked," added Jenniskens. This seems surprisingly recent, given the 4.6-billion-year history of the solar system.
"We know of other Murchison-like meteorites that broke off at approximately the same time [as Murchison], and likely in the same event, but most broke much more recently," said Welton, with the Aguas Zarcas meteorites exemplifying the point.
Perhaps it is appropriate that the last word goes to Gerado Soto of the University of Costa Rica in San José, who draws similarities with the Murchison meteorite fall and its closeness in time to Apollo 11.
"The fall of Aguas Zarcas was huge news in the country. No other fireball was as widely reported and then recovered as stones on the ground in Costa Rica in the past 150 years," he said. "The recovery of Aguas Zarcas [meteorites], too, was a small step for man, but a giant leap in meteoritics."
The classified Kosmos satellite trio has sparked intrigue in space-tracking circles.
(Image credit: Roscosmos)
A trio of secretive Russian satellites launched earlier this year has released a mysterious object into orbit, sparking interest among space trackers and analysts.
The three satellites, designated Kosmos 2581, 2582 and 2583, launched on a Soyuz-2.1V rocket from Plesetsk cosmodrome early on Feb. 2 (GMT). Since then, the satellites, whose purpose is unknown, have displayed interesting behavior, while in a near-polar orbit roughly 364 miles (585 kilometers) aboveEarth.
In March, the satellites appeared to be conducting potential proximity operations, or maneuvering close to other objects in space, according to Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist and spaceflight activity tracker.
Russia has provided no details about the satellites and their mission. Many Kosmos missions are classified.
The released object could be used for a number of objectives, including military experiments, such as satellite inspection or target practice, testing technology for docking or formation flying. It may also be a scientific payload or even the result of an unintentional fragmentation, though this would usually result in numerous pieces of debris.
Space Force have cataloged a new object associated with the Kosmos-2581/2582/2583 launch. It may have separated from Kosmos-2583 on Mar 18.March 19, 2025
The Kosmos (or Cosmos) designation has been used by the Soviet Union and later Russia for a very wide range of military and scientific satellites since 1962. The satellites have covered a range of apparent uses, some of which are experimental, secret, or part of military programs, including early ASAT (anti-satellite) tests and satellite inspection, reconnaissance and electronic intelligence.
Satellite trios flying in formation in orbit is not unusual. Both the United States (for example, the Naval Ocean Surveillance System) and China (Yaogan) have launched numerous sets of satellite triplets, many of which are thought to be for electronic intelligence purposes, along with other satellite series.
However, it remains to be seen what the three Kosmos satellites and their new companion will get up to in orbit.
Where it is: 142 million miles (228 million kilometers) from the sun, on average
How big it is: 4,222 miles (6,795 km) wide, about half the diameter of Earth
How long a day lasts: 24.6 hours
How long a year lasts: 669.6 Martian days (sols), or 687 Earth days
Atmosphere: Extremely thin, about 95% carbon dioxide
Temperature: Minus 225 to 70 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 143 to 20 degrees Celsius)
Mars, the fourth planet from the sun, is a dry, rocky world. Its famous red color has earned it the nickname the Red Planet. Mars has fascinated people throughout history, and today, it is one of the most explored places in the solar system, with many rovers and orbiters searching the planet for evidence of past or present life.
Mars orbits at an average distance of 142 million miles (228 million km) from the sun. Its orbit is about 1.5 times the size of Earth's. Sunlight takes about 13 minutes to get to Mars, while it takes around 8 minutes to reach our planet.
Past missions from Earth to the Red Planet have taken anywhere from 128 to 333 days, depending on how far apart the planets were in their orbits at the time. While many robotic missions have visited Mars, no human has ever set foot there. Various missions by the world’s space agencies plan to change this in the coming decades.
5 fast facts about Mars
The name Mars comes from the ancient Roman god of war. Romans could see the planet in the night sky, and its red color reminded them of blood, according to NASA.
Mars is red because the dust that covers the planet's surface is full of iron oxides — in other words, rust.
It's not just rusty, it's also dusty. Mars experiences planet-wide dust storms every few years, and enormous cyclones of dust called "dust devils" on Mars can tower more than a mile above the planet's surface.
Mars is home to the tallest mountain in the solar system, Olympus Mons, which is like three Mount Everests stacked on top of each other.
"Martians" (aliens from Mars) aren't real, but scientists used to think they were. Researchers once thought the dark spots they saw on Mars were canals that hinted that there could be advanced cities and intelligent life on Mars.
Everything you need to know about Mars
Is Mars bigger than Earth?
Mars is smaller than Earth. It has a diameter of roughly 4,222 miles (6,794 km) — about half Earth's diameter, according to the European Space Agency (ESA).
The Red Planet is rocky, much like Earth. The inside structure of Mars is also similar to Earth's, NASA rovers have revealed. Mars' outer crust is 6 to 30 miles (10 to 50 km) thick and is composed mainly of iron, magnesium, aluminum, calcium and potassium, according to NASA. Below that is a rocky mantle that's 770 to 1,170 miles (1,240 to 1,880 km) thick, which surrounds a dense core that's made of iron, nickel and sulfur and has a radius of 930 to 1,300 miles (1,500 to 2,100 km).
A composite image showing the comparable sizes of Earth and Mars. Earth's diameter is roughly twice that of Mars. (Image credit: NASA/JPL)
Does Mars have a moon?
Mars has two small, potato-shaped moons, called Phobos and Deimos. These moons are named for two sons of the Greek god of war, Ares, which the Romans called Mars. The names Phobos and Deimos mean "fear" and "panic."
The innermost moon, Phobos, has lots of craters and is roughly 13.8 miles (22.2 km) in diameter. In about 50 million years, it is expected to break up or crash into Mars.
Deimos orbits 2.5 times farther from Mars than Phobos does and is half the size — about 7.8 miles (12.6 km) across. Both moons are made mostly from rock and iron and may have once been asteroids that got captured by Mars' gravitational pull.
A composite image showing Mars and its two moons, Phobos and Deimos. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/GSFC/Univ. of Arizona)
Is there life on Mars?
NASA scientists think life may have once been plentiful on Mars, as there is a lot of evidence that the planet used to be much warmer and wetter billions of years ago. Whether there is anything alive today on Mars is not known.
However, scientists can make some educated guesses about the kind of life that might be there or might have lived there in the past. If there is life on Mars today, it is probably microscopic — teeny-tiny organisms living beneath the Martian soil.
NASA's Perseverance rover has spent years drilling into Martian rocks to collect samples, in hopes that scientists can one day test them for signs of life. Scientists are working on plans to bring those samples back to Earth.
Is there water on Mars?
Although Mars is a dry planet today, lots of evidence suggests there were once oceans and rivers all over Mars. Lines carved into rocks show where water once flowed, and there may have even been sandy beaches like we have on Earth today. However, sometime in the past 2 billion years or so, Mars' water dried up.
Some satellites have found signs of water in the form of frost at the top of Mars' tallest volcanoes and in buried frozen lakes deep below the planet's surface. But for now, no liquid water has been spotted on the Red Planet.
A composite image showing some of the NASA vehicles that have explored Mars. Clockwise from top left: Perseverance rover and Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, InSight lander, Odyssey orbiter, MAVEN orbiter, Curiosity rover and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Have humans explored Mars?
Humans have never been to Mars, but we've been studying it for hundreds of years — starting with British astronomer William Herschel, who watched the Red Planet through an early telescope in the late 1700s.
The first spacecraft to successfully reach Mars was NASA's Mariner 4 probe, in July 1965. Flying without any humans aboard, the probe soared past Mars and sent back photos of the planet's surface, according to NASA.
In 1971, NASA's Mariner 9 became the first mission to successfully orbit Mars. The Viking 1 and 2 landers were the first human-made objects to make it to the Red Planet's surface and survive for more than a few minutes, when they touched down in 1976, according to The Planetary Society. From the surface, they took photos and conducted the first search for life on the planet.
The current group of robots on Mars includes NASA's Curiosity and Perseverance rovers, both of which have made incredible scientific discoveries. Perseverance carried Ingenuity, the first helicopter to fly on Mars, which took many incredible images before several of its rotor blades broke during a rough landing in 2024. China's Zhurong rover successfully landed on Mars in 2021, and it has sent back beautiful pictures, and even sounds from the surface.
Many other missions, both past and present, have revealed amazing insights about the planet's history, and future planned missions should help continue this progress. NASA aims to send humans to explore the Red Planet in the 2030s, though there is no specific plan to do so yet.
Mars pictures
(Image credit: NASA/JPL/USGS)Mars from spaceA global view of Mars from orbit, showing one of the planet's frosty polar ice caps on top.
(Image credit: NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems)Snow on MarsA close-up of one of Mars' polar ice caps, covered in white frost.
(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona)A Martian dust devilA satellite image of a dust devil raging across the surface of Mars. These cyclones of dust can tower a mile high and are visible from orbit.
(Image credit: NASA/JPL)The surface of MarsThe rocky, dusty surface of Mars photographed by NASA's Viking lander.
(Image credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell)Meteor on MarsA NASA rover snapped this photograph of an iron meteorite sitting on the Martian surface.
(Image credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin)Martian volcanoes, and the tallest mountain ever knownFour Martian volcanoes seen by the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter. The top volcano is Olympus Mons, the tallest mountain in the solar system.
Discover more about Mars
See how NASA is currently exploring Mars, as well as the agency's plans for Mars exploration, on this website dedicated to Martian probes.
Dive into this stunning map of different regions on the Red Planet, courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey.
Browse even more amazing images from NASA's Mars missions on the agency's multimedia page.
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has teamed up with the MeerKAT radio telescope array to explore how magnetic fields affect star formation at the chaotic center of the Milky Way.
The Milky Way captured by the MeerKAT radio telescope array, with the James Webb Space Telescope's image inset.
(Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, SARAO, Samuel Crowe (UVA), John Bally (CU), Ruben Fedriani (IAA-CSIC), Ian Heywood (Oxford))
What it is:Sagittarius C (Sgr C) region of the Milky Way.
Where it is: 25,000 light-years from the solar system in the constellation Sagittarius.
When it was shared: April 2, 2025
Why it's so special: The Milky Way often appears as a reddish, pinkish and bluish-white arc across the night sky, but this new super-long exposure image from South Africa's ground-based MeerKAT radio telescope shows our home galaxy in a completely new way.
Colored in blue, cyan, yellow and white, the main image — whose many bubbles of color are remnants of supernovas — span 1,000 light-years of the Milky Way.
The new radio image helps to put in context the inset infrared image by the James Webb Space Telescope from 2023 of Sagittarius C (Sgr C). This is a 44 light-year-wide region about 200 light-years from the Milky Way's central supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A*, where stars are being formed.
JWST's image revealed more than 500,000 stars, but in this Central Molecular Zone — an extreme environment — stars are not being formed as quickly as astronomers expect. One reason may be the strong magnetic fields around that supermassive black hole, which are shaping the filaments seen by MeerKAT and JWST. These magnetic fields may also be strong enough to resist the gravity that causes dense clouds of gas and dust to collapse to create stars, thus suppressing star formation in Sgr C.
"A big question in the Central Molecular Zone of our galaxy has been, if there is so much dense gas and cosmic dust here, and we know that stars form in such clouds, why are so few stars born here?" said John Bally, an astrophysicist at the University of Colorado Boulder and one of the principal investigators of a related paper published April 2 in The Astrophysical Journal. "Now, for the first time, we are seeing directly that strong magnetic fields may play an important role in suppressing star formation, even at small scales," Bally said in a NASAstatement.
MeerKAT is a radio telescope made up of 64 dishes in South Africa's Karoo region. It will eventually form part of a far larger radio telescope called the Square Kilometre Array, the world's largest and most sensitive radio telescope that will also use more than 130,000 Christmas tree-shaped antennas on the traditional lands of the Wajarri Yamaji, in Murchison, Western Australia.
Varda Space Industries' W-2 space capsule reentered Earth's atmosphere and touched down in the Australian outback last month, becoming the first commercial spacecraft to land Down Under.
Varda's W-2 capsule is the first commercial spacecraft to land in Australia.
(Image credit: Photo by William Godwin, Courtesy Varda Space Industries.)
A saucer-like space capsule touched down in the Australian outback last month, marking the first time a commercial spacecraft has landed Down Under.
Varda Space Industries' Winnebago-2 (W-2) space capsule reentered Earth's atmosphere and dropped down in South Australia on Feb. 28. In doing so, W-2 also set a world first by becoming the first commercial spacecraft to return to a commercial spaceport, according to a statement released by the Australian Space Agency.
The successful return of W-2 was a "landmark moment for the Australian space sector," Australian Space Agency representatives wrote in the statement.
The company behind W-2, Varda, is an American startup based in California. W-2 originally left Earth from California on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on Jan. 14 as part of the Transporter-12 rideshare mission — the Transporter carries satellites from various customers into space. W-2 then spent 45 days in orbit, carrying payloads from the U.S. Air Force and NASA before dropping down to the Koonibba Test Range, run by Australian aerospace company Southern Launch.
W-2 weighed 265 pounds (120 kilograms) and had various technologies onboard to advance space research. For example, W-2 carried Varda’s expanded pharmaceutical reactor, which allows for the production of medicine in space, according to a statement released by Southern Launch.
The space capsule was also equipped with a heatshield developed with NASA and a spectrometer built by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory. The spectrometer, known as Optical Sensing of Plasmas in the ReEntry Environment (OSPREE), measured the environment around the capsule as it reentered at speeds exceeding Mach 25, which is 25 times the speed of sound, or around 19,000 miles per hour (31,000 kilometers per hour), according to a statement released by Varda.
The W-2 space capsule re-entering Earth’s atmosphere last month.(Image credit: Photo by William Godwin, Courtesy Varda Space Industries.)
"We are ecstatic to have W-2 back on our home planet safely and are proud to support significant reentry research for our government partners as we continue building a thriving foundation for economic expansion to low Earth orbit," Varda CEO Will Bruey said in the statement.
The Southern Launch team watched the W-2 reentry from the ground with advanced tracking telescopes and led the recovery operations, which included representatives from the Far West Coast Aboriginal Corporation, the traditional owners of the land where the capsule landed, according to the Southern Launch statement.
"For Australia, this mission ushers in a new era of space capabilities for the nation," Southern Launch representatives wrote in its statement. "The W-2 mission was the first time a commercial space craft re-entry was granted under Australian legislation and is just the first of many scheduled to return to the Koonibba Test Range."
A sudden stratospheric warming event reversed the winds that make up the northern polar vortex on March 9. A new animation shows the vortex also moved away from the Arctic towards Europe.
Between March 1 and March 20, the polar vortex traveled from above the Arctic to above Northern Europe.
(Image credit: NOAA Climate)
A major disruption to the Arctic polar vortex has bumped the ring of wind that circles the North Pole off its perch and towards Europe, a new animation shows.
The migration could trigger colder-than-average temperatures in parts of the continent and across the eastern U.S. over the coming week, climate scientists say.
The polar vortex started wandering off course March 9, when its high winds suddenly switched from blowing west to east to blowing in the opposite direction. This switch normally happens each year, but it tends to occur in mid-April — meaning this year's reversal struck unusually early, according to a blog post published April 3 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
"For much of this winter season, the polar vortex has been strong," NOAA officials wrote in the blog post. "But like a true atmospheric diva, the polar vortex had one last trick up its sleeve, breaking down in a spectacular fashion and bringing some cold air with it."
The Arctic polar vortex is a circle of strong, cold winds that picks up every winter over the North Pole. The vortex is always present, but it strengthens in the winter due to a redistribution of heat from the tropics. During the winter, the winds that make up the polar vortex blow from west to east. In spring, as Earth's tilt changes and the North Pole receives more sunlight, the direction of the winds changes to blow from east to west. The winds also become weaker as a result of less heat wafting from the tropics to the pole.
These winds are located in the stratosphere — a layer of the atmosphere that extends between around 6 and 31 miles (10 to 50 kilometers) above Earth's surface.
Occasional "sudden stratospheric warming" events can disrupt the polar vortex. These events happen when large-scale atmospheric waves, called Rossby waves, get pushed into the stratosphere from below, triggering sudden spikes in temperature. Like ocean waves,Rossby waves can "break"on top of the polar vortex, weakening it and — in extreme cases — reversing the direction of its winds.
Last year, a sudden stratospheric warming event hit the polar vortex and reversed its winds in early March, but the vortex recovered. This time, "the vortex does not seem likely to gain a foothold again," NOAA officials wrote.
The switch in wind direction doesn't mean the polar vortex will immediately drop off for the summer, however. The reversed polar vortex has simply "moved off the pole, meandering around over Northern Europe," officials wrote.
NOAA's latest forecasts suggest the polar vortex is unlikely to wander back to its normal position over the North Pole. It probably won't regain its wintertime strength either, officials said, so the likelihood is that it will dissipate and eventually "enter hibernation" over Northern Europe.
As it dissipates, the polar vortex will bring below-average temperatures to Northern Europe, parts of Asia and the eastern U.S., NOAA officials wrote. "Temperatures for the last week of March were pretty normal across the eastern U.S., but the latest forecasts do predict increased chances of below-normal temperatures for the next week," they wrote.
A Glimpse of the Stunning Full Image Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Benjamin F. Williams (University of Washington), Zhuo Chen (University of Washington), L. Clifton Johnson (Northwestern University);
Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI).
The Andromeda Galaxy, our closest large galactic neighbor, has just revealed its breathtaking secrets in an image so detailed it feels like stepping into the cosmos itself. Captured through over a decade of meticulous observations by the Hubble Space Telescope, this 2.5-billion-pixel masterpiece isn’t just a pretty picture—it’s a cosmic treasure map exposing Andromeda’s dramatic past and chaotic evolution.
A Visual Marvel That Took Over 10 Years to Create
The monumental task of creating this image required stitching together data from 600 individual views, forming a mosaic of unparalleled clarity. Spanning an incredible 2.5 billion pixels, this image allows astronomers to analyze approximately 200 million stars, each shining brighter than our Sun.
While this is just a small fraction of Andromeda’s estimated trillion stars, the data has unlocked a deeper understanding of the galaxy’s structure and history. Ben Williams, the project’s lead scientist, explained, “With Hubble, we can examine the entire disk of the galaxy in extraordinary detail. No other galaxy this large offers such an opportunity.”
The image also uncovered a tumultuous story. Hubble detected streams of stars and a unique stellar population that indicate Andromeda has endured cosmic collisions, likely with neighboring galaxies.
Andromeda as We’ve Never Seen It Before Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Benjamin F. Williams (University of Washington), Zhuo Chen (University of Washington), L. Clifton Johnson (Northwestern University); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI).
“Andromeda looks like it’s been through a massive event—like a train wreck,” said Daniel Weisz of the University of California, Berkeley. “This collision triggered intense star formation but then shut down quickly afterward.”
One prime suspect in this intergalactic drama is Messier 32, a small satellite galaxy. Researchers believe Andromeda siphoned Messier 32’s gas, fueling the formation of countless stars before transitioning into its current, less active state.
A Cosmic Puzzle Waiting to Be Solved
Andromeda now sits in a transitional phase, straddling the line between a vibrant, star-forming spiral galaxy and an elliptical galaxy dominated by aging stars. Its central bulge glows with the light of older stars, while its outer regions show surprisingly limited star formation.
Hubble’s decade-long mission not only provides insights into Andromeda’s chaotic history but also offers a roadmap for understanding how galaxies like our own might evolve. “Every resolved star tells us more about the galaxy’s history of mergers and interactions,” Williams added.
This astonishing image is available to view in full resolution, and experts recommend experiencing it on the largest screen possible.
Martian dust devil captured by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona
Mars is well known for its seasonal dust storms, which occur when the southern hemisphere experiences summer. Periodically, these storms grow to engulf the entire planet and can last for months, wreaking havoc on robotic missions. Smaller regional storms are far more common on Mars, as are swirling columns of air and dust (aka. dust devils). NASA's Perseverance rover recently took pictures of several dust devils on the rim of the Jezero crater. Some of these images were stitched together to create a short video of a larger dust devil consuming a smaller one.
These images were taken by the rover's navigation camera on January 25th when the rover was exploring the location called "Witch Hazel Hill." The rover was about 1 km (0.6 mi) from the two dust devils, the larger of which was approximately 65 m (210 ft) wide, while the smaller, trailing dust devil was roughly 5 m (16 ft). The captures were part of an imaging experiment conducted by Perseverance's science team to learn more about the planet's atmospheric dynamics. Two other dust devils can also be seen in the background at the left and center of the video (shown below).
Like dust devils on Earth, these weather patterns are formed by rising and rotating air columns. They begin close to the ground, where the air is heated by contact with the warmer ground, then rises through the cooler air above. Meanwhile, cooler air moves in to occupy the space near the surface, which causes the rising air to rotate and pick up speed. This process also kicks up dust from the surface, creating the swirling columns of dust and air that meteorologists call "convective vortices" or dust devils.
Mark Lemmon, a Perseverance scientist at the Space Science Institute (SSI), explained in a NASA press release:
"Convective vortices — aka dust devils — can be rather fiendish. These mini-twisters wander the surface of Mars, picking up dust as they go and lowering the visibility in their immediate area. If two dust devils happen upon each other, they can either obliterate one another or merge, with the stronger one consuming the weaker. If you feel bad for the little devil in our latest video, it may give you some solace to know the larger perpetrator most likely met its own end a few minutes later. Dust devils on Mars only last about 10 minutes.”
Martian dust devils were first photographed from space by NASA's Viking orbiters, which studied Mars in the 1970s. The Pathfinder mission, consisting of a lander and the Sojourner rover,was the first to image a dust devil on the surface. Subsequent orbiters and rovers, like the Spiritand Opportunityrovers and theMars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), have taken images of these weather patterns from the surface and space. The Curiosity rover also took multiple images of dust devils in the Gale Crater, some of which were used to create a video.
Since landing in the Jezero Crater in 2021, Perseverance has also observed dust devils and even recorded what they sound like using its SuperCam microphone. Said Katie Stack Morgan, a project scientist for the Perseverance rover at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory:
"Dust devils play a significant role in Martian weather patterns. Dust devil study is important because these phenomena indicate atmospheric conditions, such as prevailing wind directions and speed, and are responsible for about half the dust in the Martian atmosphere."
Learning more about these swirling columns of air is vital to understanding the dynamics of Mars' atmosphere. It could also lead to predictive models, allowing scientists to know where they might occur in advance. Capturing these features is presently a matter of luck and timing, which is why Perseverance routinely monitors in all directions for them.
This image from NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover reveals hundreds of strange, spherical-shaped objects comprising the rock. Perseverance acquired this image on March 11, 2025, or sol 1442 (Martian day 1,442 of its mission)
A rock that has no earthly business in a Martian crater: Perseverance acquired this image on March 13, 2025 - sol 1444, or Martian day 1,444 of the Mars 2020 mission
NASA's new images were found by Perseverance along the rim of the Jezero Crater, a 28-mile-wide region on Mars that may have once been flooded with water.
Alex Jones, a PhD student from Imperial College London's department of earth science, described the rock as 'strange' and 'shocking'.
'The Perseverance Science Team were astonished by a strange rock comprised of hundreds of millimeter-sized spheres,' he said in a blog post on NASA's website.
'Placing these features in geologic context will be critical for understanding their origin, and determining their significance for the geological history of the Jezero Crater rim and beyond.'
Technically, the mass is made up of 'spherules' – roughly spherical pebbles, ranging 0.01mm to 4mm in diameter (up to 0.15 inches).
Some of these spherules are more elongate, elliptical shapes, while others have angular edges, perhaps representing broken spherule fragments.
Others even have miniscule holes as if they'd been pricked with a pin – but how or why they show such variety is a mystery.
On Earth, spherules are formed by rapid cooling of molten rock droplets during a volcanic eruption, or by the condensation of rock vaporized by a meteorite impact.
The Jezero Crater is a 28-mile-wide region on Mars that may have once been flooded with water
The Red Planet (pictured) is an average of 140 million miles (225 million km) away from Earth
Did Mars have volcanoes?
Mars was once dotted with thousands of huge volcanoes which saw 'super eruptions', according to NASA.
The eruptions shot water vapor, carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide into the Martian atmosphere, resulting in a significant change to Mars' climate.
In 2021, scientists said some volcanoes on Mars may still be active, raising the possibility there were microbes on the planet as recently as 30,000 years ago.
'Each of these formation mechanisms would have vastly different implications for the evolution of these rocks, so the team is working hard to determine their context and origin,' Jones said.
Dr Matthew Chojnacki, a planetary geologist at the Planetary Science Institute, said they could be 'frothy lava' that rapidly cooled might lead to such a deposit.
'But it's hard to tell without chemistry or mineralogy, especially given it's a float rock (a piece of rock that is not part of the bedrock),' he told MailOnline.
Dr Joel Davis, planetary geologist at Imperial College London, said they may have been formed by water circulating through the Martian ground billions of years ago.
'[This was] potentially when conditions were too cold for liquid water to exist on the surface,' Dr Davis told MailOnline.
'Findings like this help geologists build a picture of how and when Mars might have changed, from a warm, wet planet 3-4 billion of years ago, to the cold, very dry environment we see today.'
This isn’t the first time strange spheres have been spotted on Mars, which is an average of 140 million miles (225 million km) away from Earth.
In 2004, the Opportunity rover – active on Mars from 2004-2018 – spotted 'Martian Blueberries' at Meridiani Planum, a large plain straddling the equator of Mars. These marble-sized objects, named for their similar appearance to the fruit, are remnants of small meteorites that broke up in the Martian atmosphere.
A full scale test model of the Perseverance rover currently on Mars is displayed during a press conference for the Mars Sample Return mission in the Mars Yard at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California on April 11, 2023
In June last year, Perseverance spied popcorn-like textures in sedimentary rocks exposed in the Jezero crater inlet channel, Neretva Vallis
Then in 2012, the Curiosity rover, which is still exploring Mars after more than a decade, observed spherules in the rocks of Yellowknife Bay at Gale crater.
Meanwhile, Perseverance spied 'popcorn-like textures' in sedimentary rocks exposed in the Jezero crater inlet channel, Neretva Vallis, last year.
Perseverance acquired the two new images on March 11 and March 13 – on sol (Martian day) 1442 and 1444 of its mission.
A Martian day (a 'sol') is 24 hours, 39 minutes and 35 seconds long – so about 40 minutes longer than a day on Earth.
Perseverance touched down on Mars' Jezero Crater – believed to be the home of a lush lakebed and river delta billions of years ago – in February 2021 after a nearly seven-month journey through space.
It is tasked with seeking traces of fossilised microbial life from Mars' ancient past and to collect rock specimens for return to Earth through future missions to the Red Planet.
NASA's Rover to Explore the Lunar South Pole Is Taking Shape
NASA's Rover to Explore the Lunar South Pole Is Taking Shape
By Andy Tomaswick
Artist's conception of the Endurance Rover. Credit - Baker & Keane
Sometimes, a brief update is all that is needed to keep the public interested in major projects. That's precisely what John Baker and James Keane of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory provided to the 56th annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference held in Texas last month. Their brief paper showcased the ongoing development of the Endurance autonomous rover, which was more thoroughly fleshed out in a massive 296-page mission concept study back in 2023. But what has the team been up to since then?
Before getting to the details of current work, it's best to understand the original purpose of the mission. Endurance is a response to the Planetary Science Decadal Survey, which listed developing an autonomous rover to explore the area around the lunar south pole as the highest priority for NASA's Lunar Exploration and Discovery Program. In its current iteration, Endurance will traverse over 2,000 km of the South Pole-Aitken basin, one of the most scientifically interesting parts of the Moon.
It's also the part most likely to attract human visitors as part of NASA's plan to return to the Moon. Endurance will be ready, having collected up to 100 kg of samples along the way for hand-off to the humans who will be joining it. AI will also play a central role in the rover, helping it navigate and even helping to decide what rocks to sample.
Fraser discusses why the lunar south pole - the target of Endurance - is so important.
So, what has the development team, led by Dr. Keane and Mr. Baker, been up to since the original project announcement? Quite a lot, apparently. One of the major milestones was developing a basic system design and then having an artist render what it would look like operating with an astronaut. While looks are nice, it's the underlying engineering that will really enable Endurance.
There were three major steps in those directions. First, the team has been working to utilize different data sources about the Moon to map out a planned path for the rover. 2,000 km is quite the distance, and the lunar south pole isn't particularly hospitable. Navigating around boulders and crevasses is the standard operating procedure for any planetary exploration rover, but Endurance will have to do it 10 times faster than any of its predecessors to complete its mission.
To do so, AI will be needed. Perseverance, the most capable rover launched to date, used a relatively limited AI platform to navigate around Jezero Crater on Mars. However, advances in the field have skyrocketed the technology's capabilities since then, and JPL scientists have taken advantage of it. They implemented a code update to a test rover called Athena that would allow it to navigate semi-autonomously at the speed required by Endurance. It even did so at night, which is particularly important on the Moon.
Water is one thing that is expected to be found at the pole - as Fraser explains.
Athena itself wasn't the only demonstration platform for the technology, though—the researchers also built the Exploration Rover for Navigating Extreme and Sloped Terrains, or ERNEST, rover test bed, which looks much more similar to the system design of Endurance. It's about half the size of the full rover but will enable testing of the various subsystems of its larger-scale successor.
Even with all the technical advances, there is still some basic science to get right. The next major step for Endurance is implementing a Science Definition Team for the project. This team will fully define the science objectives of the mission, allowing the team to fully scope out the engineering challenges for the rover's further development.
Given budget cuts across the US federal government, the Artemis program's future is still uncertain. However, as long as there are still people employed at JPL, scientists and engineers will still be hoping to create Endurance or something like it. With luck and continued funding, one day, it will roam the surface of our nearest neighbor and travel where no rover has gone before.
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 75 jaar jong.
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Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
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