Centaurs are mysterious icy small-bodies that are neither purely comets nor purely inactive asteroids, but they all orbit the Sun between Jupiter and Neptune in unstable orbits. They’re relatively ...

Planetary Science Institute scientists have converged in the lab, trying to decipher the mineral composition of dust. Not just any dust, but rather a simulated sample of Mercury’s surface, created as ...

NASA’s Curiosity rover found siderite, an iron carbonate mineral, within the rocky layers of Mount Sharp in Mars’ Gale Crater. This discovery could provide an answer to the mystery of what happened to ...

Secondary craters – you know, the kind that are created by the falling debris that follows an initial impact – are what scientists call… annoying. This is because they can muddy up crater counts, ...

A mysterious object discovered in the main asteroid belt in 2021 was determined to be a main-belt comet by Planetary Science Institute Senior Scientist Henry Hsieh, Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie ...

Non PSI Personnel: Andrew Dombard (Co-Investigator, University of Illinois at Chicago) PSI is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) corporation, and an Affirmative Action/Equal ...

Haumea is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper Belt that is a rapid rotator (P=3.9 hr) with a pronounced light curve, despite an apparently uniform surface, implying a triaxial ellipsoid shape consistent with ...

PSI is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) corporation, and an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer, including disability/veterans.

Nov. 1, 2024, TUCSON, Ariz. – On a cold, ancient Mars, rivers flowed and a lake the size of the Mediterranean Sea swelled under the protection of thick ice ceilings, according to new research ...

Oct. 28, 2024, TUCSON, Ariz. – The Moon and Mars are pocked with giant impact craters acquired very long ago, while there appears to be a dearth of them on Earth and Venus. Time may have healed many ...

Sept. 16, 2024, Tucson, Ariz. – A new analysis of maps of the near and far sides of the Moon shows that there are multiple sources of water and hydroxyl in the sunlit rocks and soils, including ...

Sept. 1, 2024, TUCSON, Ariz. – People have observed the bright Martian poles wax and wane for centuries, but only within the last 50 years have scientists discovered that they are mostly comprised of ...