Earth and Venus grew up as rambunctious planets

What doesn't stick comes around: Using machine learning and simulations of giant impacts, researchers at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory found that the planets residing in the inner solar systems were likely born from ...

Escape from Mars: How water fled the red planet

Mars once had oceans but is now bone-dry, leaving many to wonder how the water was lost. University of Arizona researchers have discovered a surprisingly large amount of water in the upper atmosphere of Mars, where it is ...

Mapping the moon for Apollo

At an International Astronomical Union meeting in 1955, noted astronomer Gerard Kuiper asked for suggestions and collaborators on a project to make a map of the moon. At the time, the best lunar atlases had hand-drawn images, ...

Laboratory's solar system legacy

When the first humans stepped onto the moon a half-century ago on July 20, 1969, they knew they were venturing into the unknown. Some had feared their lander would be swallowed up by bottomless layers of dust as almost nothing ...

New estimates of Mercury's thin, dense crust

Mercury is small, fast and close to the sun, making the rocky world challenging to visit. Only one probe has ever orbited the planet and collected enough data to tell scientists about the chemistry and landscape of Mercury's ...

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