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Categories: Energy: Fossil Fuels, Space: The Solar System

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What goes on inside planets like Neptune and Uranus? To find out, an international team conducted a novel experiment. They fired a laser at a thin film of simple PET plastic and investigated what happened using intensive laser flashes. One result was that the researchers were able to confirm their earlier thesis that it really does rain diamonds inside the ice giants at the periphery of our solar system. And another was that this method could establish a new way of producing nanodiamonds, which are needed, for example, for highly-sensitive quantum sensors.

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The MOXIE experiment has now produced oxygen on Mars. It is the first demonstration of in-situ resource utilization on the Red Planet, and a key step in the goal of sending humans on a Martian mission.

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NASA's MAVEN and the United Arab Emirates' EMM missions have released joint observations of dynamic proton aurora events at Mars. By combining the observations, scientists determined that what they were seeing was essentially a map of where the solar wind was raining down onto the planet, opening new avenues for understanding the Martian atmosphere.

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The accepted view of Mars is red rocks and craters as far as the eye can see. That's much what scientists expected when they landed the rover Perseverance in the Jezero Crater, a spot chosen partly for the crater's history as a lake and as part of a rich river system, back when Mars had liquid water, air and a magnetic field. What the rover found once on the ground was startling: Rather than the expected sedimentary rocks -- washed in by rivers and accumulated on the lake bottom -- many of the rocks are volcanic in nature. Specifically, they are composed of large grains of olivine, the muddier less-gemlike version of peridot that tints so many of Hawaii's beaches dark green.

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NASA's Perseverance landed on Mars in February 2021 and has been gathering data on the planet's geology and climate and searching for signs of ancient life. The rover's subsurface radar experiment has returned images showing unexpected variations in rock layers beneath the Jezero crater. The variations could indicate past lava flows or possibly a river delta even older than the one currently being explored on the crater floor.

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More than 60 engineers and scientists are gathering at Southwest Research Institute Aug. 23-24 to kick off the launch vehicle collaboration for NASA's Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) mission. PUNCH, which will study the inception of the solar wind, has secured its ride into Earth orbit aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9, sharing a ride into space with NASA's Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Re-ionization, and Ices Explorer (SPHEREx) mission.

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Abundant internet claims about the acoustic power of the Saturn V suggest that it melted concrete and lit grass on fire over a mile away, but such ideas are undeniably false. Researchers used a physics-based model to estimate the rocket's acoustic levels and obtained a value of 203 decibels, which matched the limited data from the 1960s. So, while the Saturn V was extremely loud, that kind of power is nowhere near enough to melt concrete or start grass fires.

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A new study highlights that global demand for sulfuric acid is set to rise significantly from '246 to 400 million tons' by 2040 -- a result of more intensive agriculture and the world moving away from fossil fuels. A projected shortage of sulfuric acid, a crucial chemical in our modern industrial society, could stifle green technology advancement and threaten global food security, according to a new study.

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Impacts affect the porosity and structure of moons and planets more dramatically than scientists suspected, increasing their potential habitability for life. Studying how those impacts affect planetary bodies, asteroids, moons and other rocks in space helps planetary scientists understand extraplanetary geology, especially where to look for precious matter including water, ice and even, potentially, microbial life.

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A mathematical model developed by space medicine experts could be used to predict whether an astronaut can safely travel to Mars and fulfill their mission duties upon stepping foot on the Red Planet.

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Researchers have devised a plasma-based way to produce and separate oxygen within the Martian environment. It's a complementary approach to NASA's Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment and may deliver high rates of molecule production per kilogram of instrumentation sent to space. The team presents the method for harnessing and processing local resources to generate products on Mars.

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The star Betelgeuse appears as a brilliant, ruby-red, twinkling spot of light in the upper right shoulder of the winter constellation Orion the Hunter. But when viewed close up, astronomers know it as a seething monster with a 400-day-long heartbeat of regular pulsations. This aging star is classified as a supergiant because it has swelled up to an astonishing diameter of approximately 1 billion miles. If placed at the center of our solar system it would reach out to the orbit of Jupiter. The star's ultimate fate is to explode as a supernova.

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Researchers discover the first definitive proof that the Moon inherited indigenous noble gases from the Earth's mantle. The discovery represents a significant piece of the puzzle towards understanding how the Moon and, potentially, the Earth and other celestial bodies were formed.

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Across the United States, local wind and solar jobs can fully replace the coal-plant jobs that will be lost as the nation's power-generation system moves away from fossil fuels in the coming decades, according to a new study.

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Scientists using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to study planet formation have made the first-ever detection of gas in a circumplanetary disk. What's more, the detection also suggests the presence of a very young exoplanet.

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A team led by planetary scientists has discovered shady locations within pits on the moon that always hover around a comfortable 63 degrees Fahrenheit. The pits, and caves to which they may lead, would make safer, more thermally stable base camps for lunar exploration and long-term habitation than the rest of the moon's surface, which heats up to 260 degrees during the day and drops to 280 degrees below zero at night.

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Planetary scientists have an answer to a mystery that's puzzled the Mars research community since NASA's Curiosity rover discovered a mineral called tridymite in Gale Crater in 2016.

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A new report has identified the 10 financial actors with the most influence on the fossil fuel economy and outlines the decisive role they can play in helping de-carbonize our future.

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Because it's bigger, Jupiter ought to have larger, more spectacular rings than Saturn has. But new research shows Jupiter's massive moons prevent that vision from lighting up the night sky.

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Using data collected over two decades ago, scientists have compiled the first complete map of hydrogen abundances on the Moon's surface. The map identifies two types of lunar materials containing enhanced hydrogen and corroborates previous ideas about lunar hydrogen and water, including findings that water likely played a role in the Moon's original magma-ocean formation and solidification.