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15 March 2016
Geology and NASA: An Interview with Dr. Ellen Stofan, NASA Chief Scientist
Dr. Ellen Stofan is a planetary scientist, STEM advocate and Chief Scientist at NASA. Her research interests include the geology of Venus, Mars, Titan and Earth and she’s been involved in several planetary missions including Cassini (Radar Team), the proposed Titan Mare Explorer mission, and the Magellan mission to Venus.
14 October 2015
New research shows impacts from comets or asteroids could have created Europa’s chaos terrain
What began as Williams College students requesting a new course on planets and moons nearly 12 years ago has now culminated in a new research paper showing that impactors, such as comets or asteroids, can penetrate the frozen surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa. Since 2004, undergraduate students led by Rónadh Cox, professor of geoscience, have studied the ice-covered surface of Europa, trying to understand the origins of its chaos terrain: areas that look like crustal breaches, with icebergs embedded in frozen slush.
16 December 2010
Saturn’s moonlets play hide-and-seek
Everyone knows Saturn has rings. Lots of them. They’re big, easily visible, and have achieved iconic status.
But did you know that hiding within those rings are tiny, tiny moons, some less than a kilometer across?
The moons–or moonlets–are so small they’re invisible even to the Cassini spacecraft buzzing around Saturn. But we know they’re there: we can see the distinctive, propeller-shaped patterns they make in Saturn’s rings as they orbit the plane
Strange landscapes of the outer giants’ moons
Kansas might be flatter than a pancake, but some of the moons circling Jupiter and Saturn are not. The relatively tiny, icy, rocky moons of the outer solar system host a gigantic array of interesting surface features. Some are more exotic, like the measured, undulating ridges on Ganymede and the cratered ruins blanketing Callisto, both moons of Jupiter. And some make the leap to the truly bizarre: enormous mountains encircling the equator of Saturn’s Iapetus, the likes of which have not been observed elsewhere.
GeoSpace is a blog on Earth and space science, managed by AGU’s Public Information staff. The blog features posts by AGU writers and guest contributors on all sorts of relevant science topics, but with a focus on new research and geo and space sciences-related stories that are currently in the news.