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Perseverance finds evidence for an ancient river delta on Mars

New analyses of the Jezero impact crater reveal signs of flowing water

Image data of the potential Martian delta

Could lightning occur on Mars?

MAVEN probe captures signature of a "whistler"

Lunar magnetic field mystery may finally have an explanation

Physicists weren’t sure why Moon rocks brought back during the Apollo missions are more strongly magnetized than models predict

Three people standing in front of a green and grey cutaway model of the Earth's layers. Yellow lines representing magnetic fields spring out from the model Earth's poles.

Ancient reversal of Earth’s magnetic field took an extraordinarily long time

Field-flipping event 40 million years ago in the Eocene epoch lasted 70,000 years

A researcher in a laboratory looking through samples

Samples from the far side of the Moon shed light on lunar asymmetry

Unusual isotopic ratio in samples brought back by Chang'e-6 reveals clues about the early history of Earth's satellite

Diagram showing a meteor crashing into the Moon, triggering an upwelling of magma and leaving a huge crater

Uranus and Neptune may be more rocky than icy, say astrophysicists

Novel modelling approach suggests that the traditionally ice-rich image of these planets may be skewed

Images of Uranus, a turquoise-coloured world with a large white spot at the top, and Neptune, which is a slightly darker blue and has a smaller white spot. They're both floating against a black sky.

Exploring the icy moons of the solar system

Could the icy moons of our solar system hold life beyond our planet? Keith Cooper looks at how planetary scientists intend to find out

Components of RNA among life’s building blocks found in NASA asteroid sample

Samples from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu found to contain molecules and compounds vital to the origin of life

Bio-essential sugars found in asteroid Bennu samples

Young rogue planet grows like a star

Telescope observations reveal material accreting onto the planet Cha1107-7626 in a way that resembles the infancy of stars

Artist's impression of a rogue planet surrounded by a disk of gas and dust. The planet and its surrounding dust glow red-orange against the blackness of space

Optical gyroscope detects Earth’s rotation with the highest precision yet

With further improvements, the instrument could enable direct tests of relativistic effects

A photograph of the ring laser at the Geodetic Observatory Wettzell in Bavaria. It's mounted on a circular platform, which is itself mounted on a chunky-looking metal dais. There's a person in black clothing working on the laser at the back of the room, but most other things in the room are grey or white.

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