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Categories: Offbeat: Paleontology and Archeology, Space: The Solar System

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On Jan. 4, 2019, at 4:37 a.m. EST the CAPER-2 mission launched from Norway. The rocket flew through active aurora borealis, or northern lights, to study the waves that accelerate electrons into our atmosphere.

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For the first time ever, astronomers have detected a 1.3 km radius body at the edge of the Solar System. Kilometer sized bodies like the one discovered have been predicted to exist for more than 70 years. These objects acted as an important step in the planet formation process between small initial amalgamations of dust and ice and the planets we see today.

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A new study tackles one of the greatest mysteries about Titan, one of Saturn's moons: the origin of its thick, nitrogen-rich atmosphere. The study posits that one key to Titan's mysterious atmosphere is the 'cooking' of organic material in the moon's interior.

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The strange orbits of some objects in the farthest reaches of our solar system, hypothesized by some astronomers to be shaped by an unknown ninth planet, can instead be explained by the combined gravitational force of small objects orbiting the sun beyond Neptune, say researchers.

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Saturn's distinctive rings were observed in unprecedented detail by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, and scientists have now used those observations to probe the interior of the giant planet and obtain the first precise determination of its rotation rate. The length of a day on Saturn, according to their calculations, is 10 hours 33 minutes and 38 seconds.

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In its last days, the Cassini spacecraft looped between Saturn and its rings so that Earth-based radio telescopes could track the gravitational tug of each. Scientists have now used these measurements to determine the mass of the rings and estimate its age, which is young: 10-100 million years. This supports the hypothesis that the rings are rubble from a comet or Kuiper Belt object captured late in Saturn's history.

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An image from the international Cassini spacecraft provides evidence of rainfall on the north pole of Titan, the largest of Saturn's moons. The rainfall would be the first indication of the start of a summer season in the moon's northern hemisphere.

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Astronomers have identified a giant streak structure among the clouds covering planet Venus based on observation from the spacecraft Akatsuki. The team also revealed the origins of this structure using large-scale climate simulations.

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Data from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, which explored Kuiper Belt object Ultima Thule earlier this week, is yielding scientific discoveries daily.

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Scientists from NASA's New Horizons mission released the first detailed images of the most distant object ever explored -- the Kuiper Belt object nicknamed Ultima Thule. Its remarkable appearance, unlike anything we've seen before, illuminates the processes that built the planets four and a half billion years ago.

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NASA's New Horizons spacecraft flew past Ultima Thule in the early hours of New Year's Day, ushering in the era of exploration from the enigmatic Kuiper Belt, a region of primordial objects that holds keys to understanding the origins of the solar system.

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Only hours from completing a historic flyby of Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU69, nicknamed Ultima Thule, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is on course and ready to gather scientific data on the small object's geology, composition, atmosphere and more. Closest approach takes place in the early morning hours of New Year's Day -- 12:33 a.m. EST -- marking the event as the most distant exploration of worlds ever completed by humankind.

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NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is set to fly by a target nicknamed 'Ultima Thule,' 4 billion miles from the Sun, on New Year's Day 2019. No spacecraft has ever explored such a distant world.

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New NASA research confirms that Saturn is losing its iconic rings at the maximum rate estimated from Voyager 1 and 2 observations made decades ago. The rings are being pulled into Saturn by gravity as a dusty rain of ice particles under the influence of Saturn's magnetic field.

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'Where did the hot Neptunes go?' This is the question astronomers have been asking for a long time, faced with the mysterious absence of planets the size of Neptune. Researchers have just discovered that one of these planets is losing its atmosphere at a frantic pace. This observation strengthens the theory that hot Neptunes have lost much of their atmosphere and turned into smaller planets called super-Earths.

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Scientists have discovered a new method to explain how radiation belts are formed around the planet Saturn.

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Forget those shepherding moons. Gravity and the odd shapes of asteroid Chariklo and dwarf planet Haumea -- small objects deep in our solar system -- can be credited for forming and maintaining their own rings, according new research.

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A close study of auroras has revealed new ways of understanding the physics of explosive energy releases in space.

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Astronomers have made several discoveries that expand the range and value of a future Pluto orbiter mission. The breakthroughs define a fuel-saving orbital tour and demonstrate that an orbiter can continue exploration in the Kuiper Belt after surveying Pluto.

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A new study based on data from the final orbits last year of NASA's Cassini spacecraft shows the rings of Saturn -- some of the most visually stupendous objects in the universe -- are far more chemically complicated than previously was understood.