Extremely elongated cloud returns over Arsia Mons volcano, Mars

Extremely elongated cloud returns over Arsia Mons volcano, Mars

The Visual Monitoring Camera (VMC) attached to Mars Express captured a mysteriously long, thin cloud over the 20 km (12 miles) high Arsia Mons volcano on July 17 and 19, 2020. According to ESA, the cloud is a recurrent feature made up of water ice and is influenced…

NASA’s Juno takes never-before seen photos of Ganymede’s north pole

NASA’s Juno takes never-before seen photos of Ganymede’s north pole

NASA's Juno Jupiter probe has captured the first images of the north pole of Ganymede– the largest moon in the solar system and the only moon with its own magnetic field. During a close flyby of Jupiter in December 2019, Juno mapped the north polar regions of…

New phenomena discovered on the Sun

New phenomena discovered on the Sun

A new Sun-observing mission led by ESA and NASA — Solar Orbiter — has returned its first images of the Sun, revealing previously unknown omnipresent miniature solar flares, dubbed 'campfires.' The campfires shown in the image below were captured by the…

NASA’s DART mission may cause first ever man-made meteor shower

NASA’s DART mission may cause first ever man-made meteor shower

The impact of NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission– which aims to nudge the orbit of its target for planetary defense purposes– may produce the first meteor shower from human activities in space, according to research published in The…

Eyes in the Sky: How satellites drastically improved hurricane forecasting

Eyes in the Sky: How satellites drastically improved hurricane forecasting

Satellite technology has drastically changed how we forecast hurricanes as it has allowed us to track the storm's location, movement, and intensity, from formation to dissipation. On September 8, 1900, a powerful hurricane hit Galveston, Texas, which resulted in…

eROSITA X-ray telescope captures deepest view of the entire sky

eROSITA X-ray telescope captures deepest view of the entire sky

The eROSITA telescope, which launched in July 2019, has since been scanning the entire sky in X-ray wavelengths, gathering observations for all the deepest all-sky survey. It has now completed its first full sweep, with all the data compiled into a map that contains…

SOHO discovers its 4 000th comet

SOHO discovers its 4 000th comet

A citizen scientist from Europe discovered SOHO's 4 000th comet in the spacecraft's 25-year history. SOHO — Solar and Heliospheric Observatory — jointly operated by NASA and ESA since 1995. The comet was discovered on June 15, 2020, and is currently…