Space Probes

Crater north of Hellas Planitia (Image ESA/DLR/FU Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO)

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ESA has published some images of a crater with more than 30 kilometers (about 20 miles) across north of the large Hellas Planitia basin on the planet Mars obtained thanks to the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) instrument of the Mars Express space probe. The appearance of the crater along with the river valleys to the south indicates that at the time of impact there was groundwater near the surface. This is another indication that there was a lake in that region.

The last pictures of Saturn's rings taken by the Cassini space probe (Image NASA/JPL)

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NASA has confirmed that it has lost contact with the Cassini space probe, which until the last moment was sending information as it descended into the atmosphere of the planet Saturn and went to its destruction. It’s the end of the Cassini-Huygens mission, a collaboration between NASA, ESA and ASI (Italian Space Agency), one of the most extraordinary space missions in history.

Jupiter's southern aurora (Image NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI)

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An article published in the journal “Nature” describes a research on the auroras on the planet Jupiter and on the differences with those on Earth. A team of researchers led by Barry Mauk of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory investigated data collected in particular by two instruments aboard NASA’s Juno space probe finding traces of remarkable electrical potentials. They’re aligned with Jupiter’s magnetic field, which accelerates the electrons towards the atmosphere at energies even tenths times higher than those of the Earth’s auroras.

Thaumasia mountains and Coracis Fossae (Image ESA/DLR/FU Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO)

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ESA has released some photos taken by its Mars Express space probe showing an area of ​​the Thaumasia mountains and Coracis Fossae on Mars. This area is south of the gigantic canyon system called Valles Marineris and of Tharsis volcanoes and shows traces of the activity that led to their formation more than 3.5 billion years ago. The result is a variety of features with mountains and graben.

Artist’s concept of 2014 MU69 as a pair of asteroids (Image NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI/Alex Parker)

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NASA has communicated the results of the observations of 2014 MU69, the object in the Kuiper Belt that represents the next target for the New Horizons space probe. The study of the observations made on July 17, 2017 when 2014 MU69 passed in front of a star suggests that it has the shape of an extreme prolate spheroid or that it’s actually two asteroids very close if not in contact.