Space

For the first time, scientists have mapped vast, continent-scale river drainage systems on Mars — ancient networks that may also be among the most promising places to search for signs of past life. Billions of years ago, before the Red Planet became the frigid desert it is today, water sculpted its surface on a massive scale. For decades, Mars has tempted scientists with whispered clues of that…

The Voyager 2 mission may have caught Uranus at a special time during which the ice giant’s radiation belts were being supercharged with electrons accelerated by a similar process to what can drive geomagnetic storms on Earth. This realization, resulting from placing old data from Voyager 2 under new scrutiny, could help explain several puzzling aspects of Uranus’s magnetic…

The first astronauts to set foot on Mars should hunt for signs of past or present Red Planet life. That’s the overarching conclusion of an in-depth report about human Mars exploration from the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine that came out today (Dec. 9). “The detection of life on Mars is a persistent top priority for explorers of many disciplines, and it…

This article was originally published at Eos. The publication contributed the article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. The solar system’s oddball planet has some pretty odd moons, too. The first infrared spectra of Uranus’s small inner moons, which will be presented on 18 December at the 2025 AGU Annual Meeting in New Orleans, have shown that their surfaces…