The German space agency DLR has published new photographs of Mawrth Vallis, a large valley on Mars where there are traces of the ancient presence of liquid water. It’s not a surprise because for years scientists have known the presence of phyllosilicates, clay minerals that can only exist where there was water. A view created using a mosaic of nine imagine taken by ESA’s Mars Express space probe’s HRSC instrument shows Mawrth Vallis in all its glory.
An article published in the journal “Nature” describes a research on two exoplanets of the TRAPPIST-1 system. A group of researchers led by Julien de Wit of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts used the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes to better examine two of the three exoplanets whose discovery was announced in May 2016.
An article published in “Journal of Geophysical Research” describes a research that may have found new traces of liquid water on Mars. A team of researchers led by Matthew Chojnacki of the University of Arizona examined images from NASA’s MRO (Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter) space probe’s HiRise instrument, finding what look like wet sand strips in some regions of the Valles Marineris canyon network.
An international team of astronomers discovered the dwarf planet identified for now only as 2015 RR245. Using the telescope on Mount Maunakea, Hawaii, as part of the OSSOS survey, they found 2015 RR245, whose orbit is in the Kuiper belt, the area of the solar system beyond Neptune where there are many icy celestial bodies.
The diameter of the dwarf planet 2015 RR245 has been estimated at around 700 kilometers (about 435 miles), which means it’s a bit smaller than Ceres. In the Kuiper belt there are 17 objects larger that that so this discovery is not at the level of that of a planet or at least of a dwarf planet the size of Pluto or Eris. However, each object discovered out there can tell us something more about the history of the solar system.
An article published in the journal “Nature Geoscience” describes a research conducted by scientists from Université Paris Diderot and Royal Observatory of Belgium, in collaboration with the CNRS, Université de Rennes 1 and the Japanese Institute ELSI on Deimos and Phobos, Mars moons, which supports the theory of an ancient impact as their origin. It’s complementary to another, independent, led by scientists of the French space agency CNRS and Aix-Marseille Université whose results will be published in “The Astrophysical Journal”.
