50 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
SOLAR SYSTEM: THE INTERNATIONAL ASTRONOMICAL UNION/M. KORNMESSER/SCIENCE SOURCESPACE
Things Are Looking Up
Thanks to telescopes and probes, our solar system becomes a little less mysterious.Venus
While studying a
6,000-mile-long wave in
Venus’ clouds, planetary
scientists reported in June
in Nature Geoscience that
the rocky planet’s thick and
fast-moving atmosphere
likely influences its rotation
rate by pushing against its
mountain ranges, adding
or subtracting up to two
minutes a day.Moon
The moon may have been
capable of harboring life
billions of years ago, due to
a combination of heat and
abundant water (some of
which remains frozen on and
in the surface), according to
research in Astrobiology in
August.Mars
There’s always something
happening on Mars, the site
of six ongoing NASA missions
(plus InSight, a lander due to
touch down in November).
While a global dust storm
made it tough to observe
the Red Planet’s features this
summer during its closest
approach to Earth in 15 years,
astronomers did finally figure
out the origins of all that dust.
A chemical analysis in Nature
Communications tied it to the
Medusae Fossae Formation, a
single 770,000-square-mile
volcanic ash deposit
near the equator.
Scientists also
discovered
a huge
underground
lake of liquid,
briny water near
the southern
ice cap; the find,
described in July in
Science, suggests more
lakes may await discovery.Mercury
After their launch
in late October,
the European and
Japanese joint
BepiColombo probes
will visit the littlest
planet in late 2025. The
mission should answer
questions about
Mercury’s origins and
structure, particularly
relevant after a May
study in Earth and
Planetary Science
Letters suggested the
planet’s crust is only
about 16 miles thick
— much thinner than
previously thought.Sun
A July paper in The Astrophysical Journal
found the erratic flow of matter within the
sun might help explain why sunspots on its
surface cluster seemingly at random. To
answer more of our local star’s mysteries,
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe launched on
Aug. 12. It will eventually orbit less than
4 million miles from the solar surface, inside
the corona (the sun’s atmosphere) — our
closest look yet.