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When it descends through the thick golden haze on Saturn’s moon Titan, NASA’s Dragonfly rotorcraft will find eerily familiar terrain. Dunes wrap around Titan’s equator. Clouds drift across its skies. Rain drizzles. Rivers flow, forming canyons, lakes and seas. But…
Saturn’s moon Titan is an intriguing world cloaked in a yellowish, smoggy haze. Similar to Earth, the atmosphere is mostly nitrogen and has weather, including clouds and rain. Unlike Earth, whose weather is driven by evaporating and condensing water, frigid…
Encountering Neptune in 1989, NASA’s Voyager mission completed humankind’s first close-up exploration of the four giant outer planets of our solar system. Collectively, since their launch in 1977, the twin Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft discovered that Jupiter, Saturn,…
Europa, a moon of Jupiter, and Enceladus, a moon of Saturn, have evidence of oceans beneath their ice crusts. A NASA experiment suggests that if these oceans support life, signatures of that life in the form of organic molecules (e.g.…
Known for his steady leadership, consensus building, and enthusiasm for engaging the public in science, Stone left a deep impact on the space community. Edward C. Stone, former director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, and longtime project…
NASA has confirmed its Dragonfly rotorcraft mission to Saturn’s organic-rich moon Titan. The decision allows the mission to progress to completion of final design, followed by the construction and testing of the entire spacecraft and science instruments. “Dragonfly is a…
This photo of Saturn was taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope on October 22, 2023, when the ringed planet was approximately 850 million miles from Earth. Hubble’s ultra-sharp vision reveals a phenomenon called ring spokes. Saturn’s spokes are transient features…
A study zooms in on data that NASA’s Cassini gathered at Saturn’s icy moon and finds evidence of a key ingredient for life and a supercharged source of energy to fuel it. Scientists have known that the giant plume of…
NASA’s Dragonfly mission has been authorized to proceed with work on final mission design and fabrication – known as Phase C – during fiscal year (FY) 2024. The agency is postponing formal confirmation of the mission (including its total cost…
Where were you during the storm? In 2011, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft circled Saturn for a front-row view of the huge storm there. One of those looks made the mission scientists’ list of Top 10 images of 2011. What else made…