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22 December 2015
Ancient solar storms may explain how Mars morphed into a cold, barren desert
In March of this year, the sun hurled a giant magnetic solar storm into Mars. The solar wind, full of charged particles, slammed into the red planet’s atmosphere, bouncing or “sputtering” the oxygen into deep space.
Researchers now think the same process could have evaporated Mar’s water several billion years ago, according to a new study presented at the 2015 American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting and recently published in AGU’s publication Geophysical Research Letters.
16 December 2015
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.
10 December 2013
Students collecting space dust may help find distant planets
NASA’s fastest spacecraft collects dust like no other scientific instrument. Hurtling through space on its one-way trip toward Pluto, New Horizons is measuring space dust — a technique that could help astronomers find planets in other solar systems.
16 October 2013
Making Martian clouds on Earth
If you want to understand the atmosphere of a planet, it helps to think big. That’s just what scientists did recently when they created conditions in the world’s largest cloud chamber mimicking those in the thin veil of gases that surrounds Mars. Experiments by the researchers within the three-story shell of a former nuclear reactor confirmed earlier runs in tabletop setups that have shown how the most common clouds on Mars form.
14 August 2013
Around the world in four days: NASA tracks Chelyabinsk meteor plume
Atmospheric physicist Nick Gorkavyi missed witnessing an event of the century last winter when a meteor exploded over his hometown of Chelyabinsk, Russia. From Greenbelt, Md., however, NASA’s Gorkavyi and colleagues witnessed a never-before-seen view of the atmospheric aftermath of the explosion.
15 February 2011
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.
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.