The search for habitable, alien worlds needs to make room for a second “Goldilocks,” according to a Yale University researcher. For decades, it has been thought that the key factor in determining whether a planet can support life was its distance from its sun. In our solar system, for instance, Venus is too close to […]
Venus may have had a shallow liquid-water ocean and habitable surface temperatures for up to 2 billion years of its early history, according to computer modeling of the planet’s ancient climate by scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York. The findings, published this week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, […]
The JunoCam camera aboard NASA’s Juno mission is operational and sending down data after the spacecraft’s July 4 arrival at Jupiter. Juno’s visible-light camera was turned on six days after Juno fired its main engine and placed itself into orbit around the largest planetary inhabitant of our solar system. The first high-resolution images of the […]
PASADENA, CALIFORNIA—There were hugs, “high fives” and handshakes at Juno mission control at Jet Propulsion Laboratory Monday, as the unmanned spacecraft completed its engine burn to enter Jupiter orbit and start its 20-month mission mapping the giant planet. Scientists and engineers in Pasadena, California, felt “a huge sigh of relief, and excitement,” said principal investigator […]