solar system Archives

16 April 2020

Dust devils may roam hydrocarbon dunes on Saturn’s moon Titan

Smoggy, with a chance of dust devils: conditions at the surface of Saturn’s moon Titan may spawn convective whirlwinds By Liza Lester Meteorological conditions on Saturn’s large moon Titan, the strange, distant world that may be the most Earth-like in the solar system, appear conducive to the formation of dust devils, according to new research in AGU’s journal Geophysical Research Letters. If true, these dry whirlwinds may be primary movers …

Problematic asteroids could be pushed off course by gentle thrusts

When faced with the threat of large Earth-bound asteroids, some have suggested deflecting the rocky bodies by striking them with large objects. Others prefer to nuke them. But planetary astronomer Michael Busch takes a less violent approach: he suggests we deflect dangerous asteroids without ever touching them.

Busch, an astronomer at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute in Mountain View, California, studies gravity tractors: special spacecraft designed to pull problem asteroids away from destructive trajectories and onto benign paths. He said the technology could come alive within the next decade through NASA’s Asteroid Redirect Mission. Busch presented his team’s research on gravity tractors at the 2015 American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in San Francisco.

A First for the Inner Frontier: Q&A with Sean Solomon on the MESSENGER mission

Sean C. Solomon, Principal Investigator for the MESSENGER mission and a former president of the American Geophysical Union, spoke with GeoSpace about the mission’s goals, Mercury’s potential to surprise, and his own path in research. He gave GeoSpace a sneak preview of topics he might be discussing during his talk at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science this Sunday in Washington, D.C.