compiled by Arlene & David Kaplan

NASA Releases First Detailed Map of the Insides of Mars
NASA’s InSight mission revealed Mars’s inner workings down to its core, highlighting great differences of the red planet from our blue world. A trio of papers reveal the red planet to be something like a colossal candy treat, its crust split into layers of volcanic chocolate, the mantle rigid and toffee-like and the planet’s core light and syrupy….more

Hubble Returns to Full Science Observations and Releases New Images NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope is back in business, exploring the universe near and far. The science instruments have returned to full operation, following recovery from a computer anomaly that suspended the telescope’s observations for more than a month…more

Nasa’s Perseverance prepares to drill first rock sample The US space agency’s Perseverance rover is getting ready to take its first sample of Mars rock. The core, about the size of a finger, will be packaged in a sealed tube for eventual return to Earth. Scientists say their best chance of determining whether Mars ever hosted life is to study its surface materials in sophisticated home laboratories…more

Moon wobble to bring surge in coastal flooding in 2030s, NASA study predicts Nearly all US mainland coastal areas will see a surge in high-tide floods in the mid-2030s, when a lunar cycle will amplify rising sea levels, a NASA study found. The rapid increase will start in the mid-2030s, when a lunar cycle will amplify rising sea levels caused by the climate crisis…more

Glauconitic-like clay found on Mars suggests the planet once had habitable conditions A team of researchers from Spain, France and the U.S. has found evidence of a glauconitic-like clay on Mars that suggests the planet once had habitable conditions. In their paper published in the journal Nature Astronomy, the group describes their study of clay minerals extracted from Gale Crater by Curiosity rover back in 2016 and what they found….more

Winchcombe meteorite gets official classification The Winchcombe meteorite is now official. The rocky material that fell to Earth in a blazing fireball over the Cotswold town of Winchcombe in February has had its classification formally accepted. Details have just been published by the international Meteoritical Society in its bulletin database…more

 Subsurface Ocean of Enceladus Has Currents, New Theory Suggests A novel theory proposed by planetary scientists from Caltech and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory challenges the current thinking that the saltwater global ocean of Enceladus, the sixth largest moon of Saturn, is homogenous. In 2014, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft discovered evidence of a large subsurface ocean on Enceladus and sampled water from geyser-like eruptions…more

Scientists Accidentally Find a ‘Very Exciting’ Unique Exoplanet Has More Water Than Earth Scientists have accidentally discovered details about a “very exciting” planet orbiting a nearby star system, which is thought to contain more water than Earth. The scientific interest in the planet, known as Nu2 Lupi d, was sparked after researchers spotted it using the European Space Agency’s Cheops satellite…more

Meteor wows Norway after blazing through night sky Norwegians have been left awestruck by a bright meteor that illuminated the night sky in the country’s south-east. Footage shows powerful flashes of light over Norway, followed by what witnesses described as loud bangs on Sunday…more

First Detection of Light from Behind a Black Hole Watching X-rays flung out into the universe by the supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy 800 million light-years away, Stanford University astrophysicist Dan Wilkins noticed an intriguing pattern. He observed a series of bright flares of X-rays – exciting, but not unprecedented – and then, the telescopes recorded something unexpected: additional flashes of X-rays that were smaller, later and of different “colors” than the bright flares…more