From Sept. 7-12, PSI scientists gathered in Helsinki, Finland with planetary science colleagues for a joint science meeting between the Europlanet Science Congress (EPSC) and the U.S.-based Division ...

Feb. 14, 2024, Tucson, Ariz. – Stars that pass by our Solar System have altered the long-term orbital evolution of planets, including Earth, and by extension modified our climate. “Perturbations – a ...

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 ...

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 ...

Mishal K T was awarded the 2025 Pierazzo International Student Travel Award at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference at The Woodlands, Texas, along with a check for $2,000 from PSI Director and ...

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, ...

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 ...

Mars is more than a dusty, red planet. Some parts of its surface can resemble the folds and ridges of the human brain or ocean corals. Scientists have dubbed such Martian surface features ‘brain coral ...

Detection and mapping of minerals, vegetation species, chemicals, liquids, and solids is being done through the field of imaging spectroscopy. Imaging spectrometers are deployed on aircraft, ...

July 24, 2025, TUCSON, Ariz. – On the slopes of Martian mountains and craters clings what appears to be flowing honey, coated in dust and frozen in time. In reality, these features are incredibly slow ...

June 26, 2025, TUCSON, Ariz. – After nearly 20 years of operations, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, or MRO for short, is on a roll, performing a new maneuver to squeeze even more science out of ...