Planets, Comets, Asteroids & More: The Asteroid Belt Journeys of The Voyager Probes Satellites & Moons Solar Winds

SATURN
NEW URANUS
NEPTUNE
PLANETS, COMETS, ASTEROIDS & MORE
MARS
VENUS
FROM THE
MAKERS OF
MERCURY
JUPITER
Edition
Digital
EARTH
EDITION
THE ASTEROID BELT • JOURNEYS OF THE VOYAGER PROBES • SATELLITES & MOONS • SOLAR WINDS
FIRST
Welcome to the
Our Solar System is one of the most interesting places in the galaxy – perhaps in
the entire universe. It’s the only place we know of so far that harbours life, on
one small blue-green planet in the habitable zone of its star. But our planetary
neighbours are interesting in their own right too. In this complete guide to our
circumstellar neighbourhood, you’ll discover everything you need to know
about them, from the warm rocky world of Mercury to the distant orbit of the
object scientists call Farfarout. You’ll discover a wealth of worlds – not just the
main eight planets but some of the moons that orbit them, and the dwarf
planets that swing through the outer reaches of transneptunian space. The
planets and moons of our Solar System will be some of the first places humans
will explore when we finally venture beyond our own Earth and Moon. Isn’t it
time you got to know them?
© Getty
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Part of the
bookazine series
6
Contents
Contents
08 Everything you need to know 68 Planet profile: Jupiter

about the Solar System The largest planet has a lot to tell us
A tour of the planetary system
we call home 72 Moon profile: Europa
One of the Solar’s System’s ocean
14 What did our Sun look worlds
like in its infancy? 76 Planet profile: Saturn
New findings may shed light on what
Saturn is famous for its rings
our Sun looked like in its youth
16 Our Sun is getting hotter 80 Moon profile: Mimas

The icy moon baffles scientists
Physicists have revealed what the
future holds
84 Signals from Saturn
Strange signals from moon Rhea
24 Is our Sun going into
hibernation? 90 Moon profile: Titan
Is our star falling asleep?
A harsh uninhabitable world =
30 Planet profile: Mercury 94 What hit Uranus?
The minute world is the least explored
terrestrial planet Oldest Solar System mystery solved
34 What’s new at Mercury? 102 Planet profile: Neptune

Surprises from MESSENGER The azure giant remains a mystery
42 22 things you didn’t know 106 Dwarf planet profile: Pluto

about Venus Not just a barren ball of rock and ice
Earth’s sister planet is an intriguing
world 110 Moon profile: Charon
The secrets of Pluto’s largest moon
48 Planet profile: Earth
Our rocky planet home is full of 114 Is there a Planet Nine?
wonders Is the theory of a ninth world in
doubt?
52 The Moon is alive
The lunar surface is home to more 120 Farfarout
activity than it lets on The Solar System’s most distant
object revealed
60 Planet profile: Mars
The Red Planet has a host of robots 122 Nemesis
investigating it The Sun’s evil twin?
64 Martian moons exploration

Japan’s sample collection mission
“Evidence suggests the
66 Captured asteroids
They could provide rare resources
Solar System began to
form about 4.57 billion
years ago" p10
© Getty
7
Guide to the solar system
EVERYTHING YOU
NEED TO KNOW ABOUT…
THE SOLAR
SYSTEM Join us on a tour through our
current understanding of the
planetary system we call home
Reported by Giles Sparrow
© Nicholas Forder
8
Solar System
Introducing
the Solar System
Our Solar System consists of the area influenced by the Sun
and, apart from occasional stray visitors from interstellar space,
everything it contains. Aside from the Sun, its main components
are the eight major planets, their moons and rings, a handful of
worlds classified as dwarf planets and vast numbers of smaller
bodies made of varying amounts of rock and ice, which are
broadly termed asteroids and comets. Most of these objects orbit
in a plane roughly in line with the Sun’s equator and in the same
direction as the Sun’s rotation – anticlockwise when viewed from
‘above’ the plane.
The four innermost planets are mostly composed of dense
rock and metal. Earth is the largest of these ‘terrestrial’ planets,
with Venus almost the same size, Mars significantly smaller and
Mercury the smallest of all. A large gap separates the orbit of
Mars from that of Jupiter, the innermost gas giant and the largest
planet in the entire Solar System, with a diameter of 11.2 Earths.
Saturn is somewhat smaller, and outer Uranus and Neptune are
near twins, both about four times the diameter of Earth.
The entire Solar System sits in the Milky Way – a vast spiral
galaxy within which the Sun is just one of several hundred billion
stars. At about 26,000 light years from the centre, it takes some
230 million years to complete one trip around the galaxy.
AR SCAN HERE
9
guide to the solar system
An evolving Origins farther out incorporated substantial amounts of ice,

and in the case of the largest planets were also able
system Evidence from rock grains in ancient asteroids
suggests the Solar System began to form about
to keep hold of huge gaseous atmospheres thanks
to their powerful gravity.
Our neighbourhood 4.57 billion years ago. Like other stars, the Sun was
hasn’t always been quiet born from a collapsing cloud, or nebula, rich in gas
Although today’s Solar System

and dust. As the centre of the cloud grew hotter
and denser it began to spin more rapidly, while
The Sun
seems stable, it represents just Our local star controls conditions across the wider
material around it flattened out into a rotating
a snapshot in a long history of Solar System. With a visible diameter of 1.39
change and evolution. Asteroids disc. Dust grains collided and stuck together in the
million kilometres (860,000 miles), it accounts
and comets in planet-crossing disc, perhaps growing step by step through chance
orbits are doomed to suffer for some 99.8 per cent of the Solar System’s
collisions until they had sufficient gravity to draw
disruption of some kind on Below (top): entire mass and has a composition dominated
astronomical timescales, and so Everything in more material from around them, or perhaps
by hydrogen – the lightest and simplest gas in
their supplies must continuously in the Solar forming huge clouds of orbiting ‘pebbles’ that
System the universe.
be replenished. In the first billion underwent sudden collapse into larger protoplanets
years of Solar System history, formed from a The Sun shines by nuclear fusion, a process that
protoplanetary when they became unstable.
however, changes were far more forces hydrogen nuclei together in the core to form
dramatic. It’s increasingly clear disc around Meanwhile, as the Sun became hot enough
nuclei of helium, the next lightest element. Energy
that the giant planets formed the Sun to shine properly, rising temperatures caused
is released in the process as photons of high-energy
closer to the Sun – and to each easily melted chemicals to evaporate as far out
other – than they are now, and a Below: The radiation that gradually force their way outwards
Sun sends as an ‘ice line’ in the present-day asteroid belt.
subsequent gravitational tug of through the overlying layers, losing energy as they
war saw their orbits evolve and out ionised Simultaneously, fiery radiation from the newborn
do, and keeping the Sun’s interior hot. The Sun’s
change. Jupiter may have first particles that Sun and a solar wind of ionised particles blowing
migrated even closer to the Sun, carry through incandescent visible surface, or photosphere, marks
out from its surface began to drive gas outwards.
scattering vast numbers of icy to the outer the region where its gas becomes cool and sparse
reaches of the While the worlds of the inner Solar System had
objects from the outer edge of enough to be transparent, and visible, infrared
today’s asteroid belt and beyond Solar System to form mostly from dry, rocky materials, those
and ultraviolet light can escape. This surface has
into extreme elliptical orbits
to form the Oort Cloud, before an average temperature of around 5,500 degrees
reversing its track. Neptune may Celsius (9,932 degrees Fahrenheit), although
have started its life closer to the dark sunspots, created where the Sun’s tangled
Sun than Uranus before their
magnetic field bursts from its surface, can be a
own complex gravitational dance
swapped them over, pulling couple of thousand degrees cooler.
Uranus’ axis of rotation over to its Above the photosphere, the Sun’s upper layers
extreme 98-degree angle. Some are home to violent activity that varies, along with
computer models even suggest
sunspot numbers, in an 11-year cycle. The cycle
that in order to reach the current
© ESO
configuration of giant planets, significantly affects the shape of the Sun’s corona,
there must once have been a fifth
Neptune-sized world that was
long ago ejected from the Solar
System entirely, or perhaps flung
into exile amid the comets of the
Oort Cloud.
“As the Sun became

hot enough to shine
properly, rising
temperatures caused
easily melted chemicals
to evaporate”
© Tobias Roetsch
AR SCAN HERE
10
Solar System
Source: Wikipedia Commons © Justin Cowart

captured during later close encounters. Each giant
Venus also has a ring system of its own, made up of
particles trapped in concentric orbits. These vary
Mars wildly between the broad, icy planes of Saturn to
the tenuous dust around Jupiter and the tightly
defined arcs around Uranus and Neptune.
Mercury Left: Our

home planet is
the largest of
Dwarf planets Ceres
The term dwarf planet was introduced
Earth the four rocky to clarify the organisation of the Solar
© Alamy
bodies closest
to the Sun System in 2006 – though some might
say it’s made matters more confusing.
Dwarf planets are worlds in orbit around the Sun
with sufficient gravity to pull themselves into a
spherical shape, but not enough to deflect the
or outer atmosphere, which typically extends to as water, methane and ammonia. All four have paths of other nearby bodies and ‘clear their orbits’.
several times its visible diameter before merging deep outer atmospheres that are home to complex The first dwarfs to be discovered were Ceres in
with the solar wind of particles blowing out across weather systems. Despite their size these planets 1801 and Pluto in 1930. Both were originally treated
the Solar System. spin rapidly, generating high winds that wrap cloud as new major planets, despite their small size, but
systems into bands parallel to their equator. Ceres was swiftly reclassified as an asteroid once
Beneath the active atmospheres of Jupiter and more of its neighbours in the main asteroid belt
Rocky planets Saturn, pressure from above forces hydrogen into a were discovered. Pluto’s status became doubtful
A variety of factors have shaped the evolution of liquid state, and can even break it down into liquid in the 1990s as more small bodies in similar orbits
the terrestrial planets – most importantly their metallic form, generating extremely powerful were found in the Kuiper Belt, but matters came to
size, composition and distance from the Sun. magnetic fields. The deeper layers of Uranus a head with the discovery of Eris, another ‘trans-
As a rule, the larger a planet is, the hotter its and Neptune, meanwhile, are composed of icy Neptunian object’ of similar size, in 2003.
interior will remain, giving rise to a more complex chemicals in liquid form. Slow contractions of the Faced with a potentially ballooning list of
structure and potentially a molten metallic core. inner layers due to gravity, coupled with chemical ‘major’ planets, astronomers opted to introduce
Size and mass determine a planet’s gravity, which reactions, generates significant heat inside three the new category, demoting Pluto, but sweeping
along with its temperature and the presence of a of the giants, though Uranus is a mysterious up Ceres into the bargain. Because dwarf planets
protective magnetic field influence how well it can exception, helping to power their weather systems are classified in part by their shape, and this is still
hold on to an atmosphere. These factors influence even in the cold outer Solar System. uncertain for some distant worlds, there
the chemicals that can exist on its surface. The considerable gravity of the giants puts each are still fierce debates about which
It’s likely that all four rocky planets were one at the centre of its own substantial satellite objects qualify. The International
bombarded by icy objects from farther out in system – all four are orbited by a mix of ‘regular’ Astronomical Union currently
the Solar System during or shortly after their moons, formed from material left in orbit as recognises just five: Ceres, Pluto,
formation, returning water to their surfaces. Venus, the planet itself formed, and ‘irregular’ objects Haumea, Makemake and Eris.
Earth and Mars all once had oceans of liquid water,
but Venus’ was lost to a runaway greenhouse Pluto
effect early in its history, leaving behind an arid,
hellish landscape. The weak gravity and lack of a
protective magnetic field around Mars, meanwhile, Right: Beyond
allowed much of its atmosphere and water to the asteroid
belt, the
escape into space, cooling the surface until
planets are
most of the remaining water became locked in gaseous and Jupiter
permafrost and the polar ice caps. Venus and Mars gigantic in
show signs of geological activity in the relatively comparison
to Earth
recent past, but this mostly takes the form of Saturn
volcanism, while activity on Earth is far more
complex and continuous.
uranus
Giants of gas and ice

The giant planets of the outer Solar System are
© Tobias Roetsch
broadly divided into two pairs: the inner gas giants

Jupiter and Saturn, dominated by huge envelopes
Neptune
of hydrogen, and the outer ice giants Uranus and
Neptune, made of more complex chemicals such
11
Life in the Right: There

are millions
Rocky debris
Solar System of tiny icy
and rocky
fragments
Although the formation of the Solar System left
plenty of rock and dust scattered across the inner
Could there be life floating Solar System, most of the smaller rocky objects
outside of Earth? through space
that survive today are confined to the asteroid belt
Earth’s abundant life is due to Below: between Mars and Jupiter, where the giant planet’s
its unique position in the Solar ‘Oumuamua gravity and early shifts in its orbit disrupted any
System near the inner edge of our was identified
© Alamy
Solar System’s ‘Goldilocks zone’, potential for the formation of a fifth rocky planet.
as an
where temperatures are neither interstellar Today’s asteroid belt contains around 1.5 million
too hot nor too cold, but ‘just interloper asteroids more than one kilometre (0.6 miles)
right’ for liquid water to survive passing and above all in the small worlds of the Kuiper Belt
across, along with countless smaller objects.
on a planet’s surface. Water is through our beyond Neptune.
widely seen as a key requirement Although they’re scattered across such a vast
Solar System The most familiar icy objects, however, are
for life because it’s the most volume of space that crossing the belt is easy,
abundant and effective ‘solvent’ comets. These icy wanderers spend most of
collisions and close encounters are inevitable on
that we know of – a chemical their lives in a deep-frozen state, orbiting among
a longer timescale. These lead to the formation of
within which other molecules the Kuiper Belt objects or even farther out in
can dissolve and move around, asteroid families with similar compositions and
the Oort Cloud – a vast, spherical comet cloud
permitting the encounters and orbits that can be traced back to a common origin.
reactions that are needed for life that surrounds the Solar System. However, they
Asteroids vary in composition from ‘carbonaceous’
to evolve and survive. spark into life when chance puts them on an
objects that have barely altered since the birth of
Mars is the only other elliptical orbit that brings them close to the Sun.
planet technically just within the Solar System to bodies rich in silicate minerals
As the comet’s solid nucleus warms up, gases
the Goldilocks zone, and its or even iron – fragments of larger ancient worlds
warmer, wetter history makes evaporating from the surface first form a vast,
that had begun to develop an internal structure
it an intriguing destination in diffuse atmosphere, called a ‘coma’, and then an
the search for past or present before they were smashed apart.
elongated tail that is caught up on the solar wind
life, but there are also surprising Collisions can also send asteroids onto elliptical
and dragged away from the Sun.
possibilities farther from the Sun. orbits that cross over those of the inner planets,
Several large satellites and Comets that visit the inner Solar System may
with some becoming potentially hazardous near-
dwarf planets seem to have follow orbits that vary from just a few years to
liquid-water layers deep in their Earth objects, or NEOs. However, NEO orbits are
tens of thousands. However, each successive visit
interiors, while tidal forces inevitably unstable over long timescales – ending
raised by Jupiter and Saturn strips away some of their ice until they eventually
either in a collision with a major planet or more
on their icy moons Europa and become dark, dormant and – depending on their
likely deflection from a close encounter – and so
Enceladus pummel and heat their orbits – barely distinguishable from asteroids.
interiors so much that they have this supply must be steadily renewed.
substantial liquid-water oceans
just below the surface. Fed with
chemical nutrients by undersea
volcanoes, these two worlds are
Icy wanderers Testing the limits
Many astronomers from across the world define
seen as the Solar System’s most The farther out we look in the Solar System, the
the Solar System’s outer limit as the boundary
likely spots for alien life to exist. more volatile ices – not just water ice, but also
where the Sun ceases to be the exclusive dominant
frozen methane and other compounds – become
influence over nearby objects. According to this
mixed with the rocky components of solid bodies.
definition, the edge of the Solar System lies at
This trend is already apparent fairly close to the
“These icy wanderers Sun in the asteroid belt, but it becomes more
the heliopause – the wall where the solar wind
streaming out from the Sun comes to a halt in the
pronounced among the moons of the giant planets,
spend most of their lives face of pressure from countless other stellar winds
and the ‘interstellar medium’ – clouds of sparse gas
in a deep-frozen state” that lie between the stars.

This boundary lies around four times farther
from the Sun than Neptune, or 120 times farther
out than Earth. Four spacecraft – Pioneers 10 and
11 and Voyagers 1 and 2 – have crossed it so far, and
the two Voyagers continue to send back data about
conditions on the other side.
Despite the widespread adoption of the
heliopause as the formal ‘edge’ of the Solar System,
there are many objects in the space beyond it that
still orbit the Sun. Most of these lie within either
the scattered disc, a broad outer extension of the
Kuiper Belt, or the Oort Cloud. According to the
most generous definition, the Solar System extends
to the edge of the Oort Cloud, roughly a light year
AR SCAN HERE from the Sun.

© ESO
12
Solar System
The eight major planets Scan here for

AR models
Mercury Venus Earth Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune

Diameter: Diameter: Diameter: Diameter: Diameter: Diameter: Diameter: Diameter:
4,879 12,104 12,742 6,779 139,822 116,464 50,724 49,244
kilometres kilometres kilometres kilometres kilometres kilometres kilometres kilometres
(3,032 miles) (7,521 miles) (7,918 miles) (4,212 miles) (86,881 miles) (72,367 miles) (31,518 miles) (30,598 miles)
Mass: Mass: Mass: 5.97 Mass: Mass: Mass: Mass: Mass:
0.055 Earths 0.815 Earths billion trillion 0.107 Earths 317.8 Earths 95.2 Earths 14.5 Earths 17.1 Earths
Distance from Distance from tonnes Distance from Distance from Distance from Distance from Distance from
the Sun: 46 the Sun: 107.5 Distance from the Sun: 206.7 the Sun: 740.5 the Sun: 1.35 the Sun: 2.74 the Sun: 4.44
to 69.8 million to 108.9 million the Sun: 147.1 to 249.2 million to 816.6 million to 1.51 billion to 3.01 billion to 4.54 billion
kilometres kilometres to 152.1 million kilometres kilometres kilometres (838 kilometres kilometres
(28.6 to 43.4 (66.8 to 67.7 kilometres (128.4 to 154.8 (460 to 506.4 to 938 million (1.7 to 1.87 (2.76 to 2.82
million miles) million miles) (91.4 to 94.5 million miles) million miles) miles) billion miles) billion miles)
Orbital period: Orbital period: million miles) Orbital period: Orbital period: Orbital period: Orbital period: Orbital period:
88 days 224.7 days Orbital period: 686.98 days 11.86 years 29.46 years 84.02 years 164.8 years
Rotation Rotation 365.256 days Rotation Rotation Rotation Rotation Rotation
period: period: Rotation period: 24 period: 9 hours period: 10 period: 17 period: 16
58.65 days 243.02 days period: 23 hours and 37 and 55 minutes hours and hours and hours and 7
Axial tilt: Axial tilt: hours and 56 minutes Axial tilt: 34 minutes 14 minutes minutes
0.03 degrees 177.36 degrees minutes Axial tilt: 3.13 degrees Axial tilt: Axial tilt: Axial tilt:
Satellites: Zero Satellites: Zero Axial tilt: 25.19 degrees Known 26.73 degrees 97.77 degrees 28.32 degrees
23.44 degrees Satellites: Two satellites: 79 Known Known Known
Satellites: One satellites: 82 satellites: 27 satellites: 14
Sun
Diameter of
photosphere:
1.39 million
kilometres
(863,706 miles)
Mass: Around
330,000 Earths
Rotation
period: 25 days
at equator, 34.4
days at the poles
© Getty
13
WHAT DID OUR

SUN LOOK LIKE IN
ITS INFANCY?
New findings may shed light on what
our star looked like in its youth
Reported by Charles Q. Choi
ewborn stars are surrounded by suggested this happened because the source of
N a disc of gas and dust from which

planets, asteroids, comets and
moons are born. The star’s magnetic
field connects the star with this protoplanetary
the visible and ultraviolet light moved into and
out of view as it rotated along with the star.
When combined with computer models of
matter accreting onto stars, these findings
disc, “funnelling material from the disc onto the suggest the hotspot varies in density from its
star,” said Catherine Espaillat, an astrophysicist centre to its rim on the star’s surface. Areas
at Boston University. In a recent study, Espaillat of the hotspot with different densities have
and her colleagues investigated the spot where a different temperatures and so emit different
star’s magnetic field deposits protoplanetary disc wavelengths of light.
material onto a star. “This footprint is called the “For the first time, we mapped the structure in
‘hotspot’ since the material is very hot when it this hotspot using observations and confirmed
slams onto the surface of the star,” she explained. theoretical predictions,” Espaillat said. “This
They focused on GM Aurigae, a star about the result teaches us more about what our Sun
same mass as the Sun located about 420 light looked like when it was young. Now our Sun has
years away in the constellation of Auriga. sunspots, dark areas where the temperature on
GM Aurigae is only about 2 million years old; the surface is cooler. When our Sun was young, it
in comparison, the Sun is about 4.6 billion years also had hotspots.” Future research will analyse
old. Previous work could not get a clear picture GM Aurigae and other stars to detect more
of the structure and dynamics of these hotspots. details about these hotspots.
But in the new study, the researchers analysed
GM Aurigae with multiple space and ground-
based observatories. “This is the first time such
“This is the first time such an
an extensive time-coordinated study has been
done on a young star,” Espaillat said.
extensive time-coordinated study
The scientists found the visible light they
detected from GM Aurigae peaked in brightness
has been done on a young star”
© Getty
about a day after ultraviolet light. They Catherine Espaillat
14
infant Sun
Left: Studying
Sun-like stars
can tell us
more about
our stellar host
15
As our nearest star enters its next solar

cycle, physicists have revealed what
the future holds – and it’s not what
they expected
Reported by James Romero
© Tobias Roetsch
16
getting hotter
s a life-giver that warms and lights up
A our world, it is easy to forget the true,

violent nature of the Sun. As the Sun
enters a new cycle of surface activity,
we are only now beginning to fully appreciate the
wide-ranging ways our star’s changeable nature can
impact our planet and modern lives.
Solar weather describes the influence of the
Sun on the Earth-space environment. Back in 2011
it was added to the UK government’s National
Risk Register and placed on a similar level to the
emergence of a new disease due to the number of
people it could potentially impact on Earth.
“The Sun is very dynamic,” says Helen O’Brien,
lead engineer on the European Space Agency’s
Solar Orbiter mission. “It has different moods, it is
very explosive and it has the potential to damage
our modern infrastructure.” As well as providing
heat and light, our star is constantly throwing out
more deadly material. The solar wind is the name
given to this constant stream of energised, charged
particles, primarily electrons and protons.
On Earth we are shielded by our planet’s
magnetic field while high-energy X-rays and
ultraviolet light are absorbed high up in the
atmosphere. They electrify their surroundings to
create the Earth’s ionosphere and simultaneously
excite constituents of our own atmosphere so they
glow and create the famous aurorae.
“[The Sun] is very

explosive and has the
potential to damage our
modern infrastructure”
Helen O'Brien
While the aurorae are harmlessly enjoyed by
polar communities and tourists, the Sun’s own
magnetic field can throw far more violent eruptions
our way. Its much larger field is composed of a
series of magnetic lines that connect distant points
on the surface. Over time these lines can become
twisted as the Sun’s compositional fluidity sees
material at its equator rotate faster than at its
poles, and the magnetic field gets wrapped around
the star. “When you distort a magnetic field it is
like stretching an elastic band,” says Chris Scott,
professor of Space and Atmospheric Physics at the
University of Reading. “You are storing up energy.”
Those magnetic distortions cause complex knots
to form, which burst to the surface as sunspots.
When the Sun is very active you have lots of
energy stored up in these knots, and occasionally
the system will reconfigure itself through solar
flares that throw out vast quantities of high-energy
plasma like a cloud from the Sun's atmosphere.
These eruptions can be incredibly violent. The
largest, known as coronal mass ejections, can
contain billions of tonnes of material, which travels
out at speeds of several million miles per hour.
17
NASA's Solar If Earth is in the crosshair of these large storms an economic risk assessment by researchers from
Dynamics the consequences can be both spectacular and the University of Oxford found that a Carrington-
Observatory costly. This was evident even back in September style event could leave the UK with £15.9 billion
captured this 1859 on the night of the most famous direct hit, (approximately $20.5 billion) worth of damage.
image of a known as the Carrington event, which bathed In general, a direct threat to human life on the
solar flare
almost the entire surface of the Earth in beautiful Earth's surface is low. However, a small proportion
on 2 October
2014 aurorae. Though Carrington was spectacular in its of our population are spending more and more
scale and spectacle, it was also the first example of time higher up, and that does create risks. Storms
solar weather impacting our technology – recently increase the radiation impacting spacecraft to levels
rolled out telegraph systems in America and Europe that could threaten astronaut health, while more
were hit by fires and gave people electric shocks. transatlantic flights are crossing the poles where
In today’s information age of integrated solar wind material is constantly funnelled by
power networks and satellite communications, Earth’s magnetic field.
a similar strike today could bring down radio Exposure from a single flight during normal
communications and upset electronics on the solar conditions will be tiny, but there is concern for
ground, causing long-distance power grids to fail. flight staff working up there year round. Also, recent
In 1989 a coronal mass ejection blacked out the research from Clive Dyer of the University of Surrey
entire Canadian province of Quebec, while last year Space Centre suggests flying in modern aircraft
“A strike today could bring down radio communications

and upset electronics on the ground, causing power
grids to fail”
What’s going to happen to the Sun?

Each layer of our home star is affected
1 Sun’s magnetic field
The magnetic field transitions from a
simple arrangement at solar minimum
in the cycle change to a complex tangled web as it wraps
around the Sun, though recent cycles
1 haven’t produced the same intensity of
maximum.
2 Corona
Though generally marked by lower
output, solar minimums can still see
2 heightened periods of high-energy
particles released from this upper-
atmospheric layer as the Sun's magnetic
field creates holes in the corona.
However, it’s during the solar maximum
when the corona will be most active,
full of spinning tornados, nanoflares and
looped-shaped helmet streamers. As
you move towards solar maximum solar
flares push more frequently through the
corona, heating its gas up.
3 3 Photosphere
On the surface of the lowest layer of
the Sun's atmosphere, the start of a new
cycle is marked by the appearance of
sunspots in higher latitudes. Solar flares
also become much more common as you
approach solar maximum.
4 Chromosphere
The second of the Sun’s three
atmospheric layers experiences frequent
heating by ascending solar flares as you
approach the solar maximum. Solar
prominences, gigantic plumes of gas
rising up from the photosphere, are
also more abundant at solar maximum
and during louder solar cycles. As are
spicules, jet eruptions of gas that shoot
upwards and outwards into the corona.
4
18
getting hotter
Sun’s effect on the planets

Whether stripping them away or lighting them up, the atmospheres of the
Solar System’s worlds are continually shaped by the output of our star
1 Venus
Without its own
magnetic field lighter
2 Mercury
Mercury’s close
proximity to the
3 Mars
Mars’ diminutive
size and weak
4 Jupiter
Recent data
from NASA's Juno
5 Saturn
Above and below
its ringed equator,
6 Uranus
On Uranus the
solar wind excites
7 Neptune
Aurorae were
spotted
gases from Venus’ Sun and lack of gravitational hold spacecraft suggests Saturn’s poles are atmospheric on Neptune by the
thick atmosphere, atmosphere leaves left it unable to Jupiter’s powerful regularly lit up by hydrogen to create Voyager 2 flyby in
including water its relativity weak cling onto its early blue aurorae are not strong aurorae, its aurorae, which the 1990s. However,
vapour, are magnetic field thick atmosphere entirely powered though as they can be found close the distinct offset
continuously blown swamped by solar as its own magnetic by the same solar are in the UV and to its geographical between the planet’s
away by the solar eruptions and its field was lost when wind mechanism infrared part of the – though magnetic field and its
wind, creating an surface bathed in the its molten interior behind aurorae on spectrum they would not geomagnetic rotational axis means
ionosphere that radiation of the solar cooled and solidified. the other planets. be invisible to us. – equator, as the these weak light
resembles a comet’s wind. It was subsequently Can the largest However, weaker planet orbits on its displays can be found
tail emanating from stripped away over planet in our Solar aurorae of pinky- side. across the surface.
its night side. time by the solar System generate its purple visible light
wind. own? have been observed.
7
5
6
4
3
1
2
© NASA; Tobias Roetsch; Nicholas Forder; Mark Garlick
19
during a solar storm could expose passengers to well as measuring snow accumulation and counting Above: A
radiation levels equivalent to the annual working tree rings to establish a remarkable agreement CME blasting
limit for air crews. This threat has left satellite between local precipitation rates and the number of from the Sun's
companies, aircraft operators and power companies sunspots, tracked back over many decades. “I can surface in the
monitoring the solar cycle for clues as to when the quite believe there is an 11-year cycle in the flow direction
of Earth
threat level will be at its highest. rates of the river,“ says Scott, who points to evidence
By counting sunspots on the Sun’s surface of similar solar-influenced systems closer to home. Left: The Sun
scientists have for some time known of 11-year During recent low periods of solar activity it goes through
cycles of increasing and decreasing solar activity seems the jet streams become more meandering, a natural
and surface eruptions, driven by the tangling and you get more ‘blocking events’ where air- solar cycle
and untangling of the magnetic field lines. These pressure systems get stuck over a certain location. every 11 years,
plots indicate we are approaching the latest solar These phenomena are thought to account for composed of
minimum, and therefore entering a new cycle. some of the very cold recent winters in northwest significant
Recent magnetic field evolution models Europe, but perhaps this trend may reverse slightly increases and
decreases in
developed by the Center of Excellence in Space if the next solar cycle is more active, as the Indian
sunspots and
Sciences in India concluded that the solar research team suggests.
eruptions
maximum of the next cycle, solar cycle 25, will In his own research Scott has shown that fast
occur around 2024. They also suggested the jets of solar wind passing the Earth, associated
cycle could buck a wider trend of decreasing solar with more active solar periods, can result in a
maximum intensities since the early 1990s, though substantial increase in lightning strikes across
perhaps not in a way that would greatly threaten Europe for up to 40 days as a result of disturbances
ground- or space-based infrastructure. to the electrical properties of the atmosphere. While
“It is unlikely that this will affect big solar storms, communities and populations may need to adapt to
as these can happen at any stage of the solar changes in these localised weather systems, a better
cycle,” says Scott. However, anticipating the timing way of predicting larger scale solar weather on a
and severity of the coming solar cycle could help more detailed day-to-day basis is an urgent priority.
us prepare for the more local effects such solar This becomes more pressing if Carrington events
variability that effect our lives and which have only prove to be more common than that ‘once-in-a-
come to light in the last decade or two. century’ tag. Reanalysis of magnetic behaviour
Researcher Pablo Mauas has published a series of measurements in the Earth’s atmosphere by Scott’s
papers analysing river flows of the Paraná River, as colleague Mike Lockwood has found storms in
20
getting hotter
1941 and 1972 that may have

been as big, if not bigger, than
And while we have models
of the solar wind and how it
Left: A
massive
What if our
Carrington, but had surprisingly
little impact. “It might be that the
propagates through space and
interacts with the Earth, we
sunspot
around the
Sun became
biggest parts occurred over parts
of the world where there wasn't
can't look down on the entire
system as we can when tracking
size of Jupiter
is identified
too active?
by the SOHO
the technological infrastructure to be tropical storms or rain fronts. spacecraft With enough notice and
disturbed,” says Scott. “Imagine yourself as a meteorologist in 2003 preparedness we could
There was also a storm in July 2012 back in the pre-space age in the 1950s, negate the dangers and
that narrowly missed the Earth and fortunately and you are trying to make sense of all these spot Below: simply enjoy the greatest
hit a solar-observation spacecraft from the Solar measurements without the benefits of a satellite Satellite light show of all time
TErrestrial RElations Observatory (STEREO) picture. That's probably where we are with space operators
have been
mission. It was travelling fast enough that if it had weather,” says Scott.
warned
All eyes to the skies
been on target it would have triggered a modern- Reliable space weather forecasts will also require If major solar activity were
of the
day Carrington-like event. If we are not to be a greater understanding of the relationship between to threaten Earth, our solar
dangers a
so fortunate during the next solar cycle we will what we see on the Sun’s surface and what is in line science community and their
large solar
need to investigate ways to provide more detailed to hit us several hours or days later. To help in this legion of orbiters as well as
storm
forecasts of what is coming at us. endeavour we have sent up a community of craft land-based observatories
could pose
“It’s like on Earth; we can say the winter will be to monitor the Sun. However, they are all primarily would need to work out the
likelihood, scale and arrival
colder than the summer and we will get more rain,” scientific missions sent up to answer scientific
date of a direct hit.
says O’Brien. “But what you really want to know questions. “They are proving useful, but they are
is if it is going to rain on the day of your party.“ not optimal,” says Scott, whose STEREO mission
However, there are challenges replicating our ability can only provide data at the end of each day, which
Planes take the long
to predict Earth weather in space. isn't much use when really powerful, fast-moving
way around
To avoid endangering staff and
Meteorologists utilise a vast network of monitors storms can get to Earth in 17 hours. passengers with exposure to
collecting data 24/7 as satellites constantly track The scientific community are in regular high radiation levels, operators
weather systems from above in order to run their contact with industry and space agencies who are of transatlantic flights would be
increasingly sophisticated simulations. working to ensure they have spares at the most encouraged to avoid usual ‘over
the poles’ routes.
“A lot of satellite operators choose not to Astronauts take refuge

During an intense solar storm
worry about forecasts because they do not have any planned spacewalks are
cancelled and astronauts would
sufficient accuracy” Professor Chris Scott be asked to set themselves up

in the most shielded modules of
the station.
Satellites switched
to safe mode
If given sufficient notice of an
incoming solar storm satellite
operators would be encouraged
to switch any orbiting units to
safe mode.
Saving power
To avoid widespread blackouts
power companies will
need significant stocks of
replacement transistors and
crew deployed on the ground
to tend to damaged parts of
their grids
The greatest light

show on Earth
One positive effect of intense
solar activity is the chance
for more people to enjoy the
northern and southern lights at
much lower latitudes than usual
are bathed in aurorae.
Solar surveyors
In order to better understand
and anticipate solar weather
© NASA; ESA;
space agencies have sent up a

family of orbiters, satellites
and probes.
21
8
1Parker Solar Probe

The mission to ‘touch’ the Sun,
this probe is the first man-made
object to get within 6 million
1 kilometres (4 million miles) of the
Sun’s surface. At that distance it
measures the pristine solar wind
Solar surveyors up close before the 'outburst'

gets jumbled up in the journey
towards Earth.
RESULTS: Pending
In order to better understand and anticipate solar weather,
space agencies have sent up a family of orbiters and satellites
2 3
10
2 Solar Orbiter
Due to launch in 2020,
it combines solar wind 3 ACE
Launched back in 1997 to study the energetic particles
from the solar wind, as well as providing the NOAA Space
particle and magnetic field
measurements with direct Weather Prediction Center with data for forecasts and
surface observation. It will warnings of solar storms.
monitor the Sun on highly 5 RESULTS: Discovered that the current solar cycle, as
elliptical orbits which will measured by sunspots and coronal mass ejections, has been
allow it to spend 10 to 15 much less magnetically active than the previous cycle.
days co-rotating with the
Sun, providing uninterrupted
coverage of sunspot, flare
and storm development.
RESULTS: Pending
5 Wind
A NASA science spacecraft
launched in 1994 to study radio
waves and plasma that occur in
7 the solar wind and in the Earth's
magnetosphere.
4IBEX
A NASA satellite launched
in 2008 that aimed to map the
RESULTS: Researchers have
found evidence for a type of
plasma wave moving faster
boundary between the Solar than theory predicted within
System and interstellar space. the solar wind using Wind data.
RESULTS: In 2013, IBEX results The research suggests that a
revealed the Sun’s heliosphere 6 different process than expected
has a tail. may be driving the waves.
6 IRIS 7 Hinode
© NASA; CESSI; Nicholas Forder
A NASA satellite launched in 2013 to Investigate the physical conditions A Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency-led
at the very edge of the Sun’s visible disc – known as the solar limb. In satellite whose Sun-synchronous orbit over the day/
particular it has looked at the chromosphere layer, whose rosy-red colour is night terminator allows near-continuous observation
4 only usually visible to us on Earth during eclipses.
RESULTS: IRIS has shown that the interface region of the Sun is significantly
to explore the magnetic fields of the Sun.
RESULTS: In 2018 astronomers using the Hinode
more complex than previously thought and includes features described as spacecraft observed the strongest magnetic field
solar heat bombs, high-speed plasma jets, nano-flares and mini-tornadoes. ever directly measured on the surface of the Sun.
22
getting hotter
8 STEREO
Two near-identical spacecraft launched
in 2006 into orbits around the Sun ahead of
vulnerable parts of their grids, safe modes for their
satellites, back-up routes for transatlantic airlines
and safe houses for orbiting astronauts. However,
and behind the orbit of the Earth. This enables today’s rudimentary early warning systems make
stereoscopic imaging to provide in-depth
preparedness a significant economic risk.
information when observing solar phenomena,
such as coronal mass ejections. “A lot of satellite operators choose not to worry
RESULTS: One of the STEREO craft – STEREO A – about space weather forecasts because they do
was in the path of the solar storm of 2012 which not have sufficient accuracy to make it worth their
was similar in strength to the Carrington Event. while,” says Scott, who calls for a new observation-
Its instrumentation was able to collect and relay a focused mission to put a spacecraft out far enough
significant amount of data about the event. to see the Sun and the Earth in the same field of
view. It would be stationed near enough to us to
provide continuous real-time observations.
9 SOHO
One of the original craft still
in operation, SOHO was launched
Further notice could be provided by looking
for signature surface behaviour that proceeds
major eruptions. This is where two of the latest
in 1995 and combines imagers additions to the Sun’s community of human-made
and spectrometry instruments to companions could prove useful. O’Brien’s ESA-
probe the layered structure of the funded Solar Orbiter mission is due to launch in
Sun with in-situ measurements of
2020. It combines solar wind particle and magnetic
the solar wind as it goes past.
RESULTS: SOHO has also field measurements with direct surface observation,
discovered over 3,400 comets as all from inside the orbit of Mercury.
they orbit around the Sun, as well Key to the Solar Orbiter’s ability to spot
as providing the main source of
11 impending eruptions will be its highly elliptical
near-real-time solar data for space orbit, which will allow it to spend 10 to 15 days
weather prediction. co-rotating with the Sun, providing uninterrupted
coverage of sunspot, flare and storm development.
While the Solar Orbiter will take direct solar
Above: observation closer than ever before, NASA’s Parker
10 Solar Dynamics
Observatory
Launched in 2010 to investigate how
11 Cluster II
Launched in 2000, the
Cluster II mission is an in-situ
Researchers
have modelled
the number
Solar Probe is pushing the boundary yet further.
On its journey to ‘touch’ the Sun the probe will
eventually fly as close as 6.1 million kilometres (3.8
the Sun's magnetic field is generated investigation of the interaction of sunspots
between 1913 million miles), meaning it will pass through the
and structured and how this stored between the solar wind and
the magnetosphere by using and 2031 Sun’s outer atmosphere.
magnetic energy is converted and
released into the heliosphere in the four satellites. At that distance it hopes to measure the
form of solar wind, energetic particles RESULTS: Has developed Below: The pristine solar wind – what it looks like when it
and variations in the solar irradiance. the first models of the coronal mass leaves the Sun before it gets jumbled up in the
RESULTS: Has identified possible Earth's magnetic field and its ejection, 150-million-kilometre (93-million-mile) journey
precursors to space weather in the interaction with the solar wind viewed in to Earth. “We will be able to couple together
behaviour of plasma within the regions based on actual measurements four extreme unprecedented details on what is happening on
encircling sunspots. rather than theory. ultraviolet
the dynamic, bubbling, boiling surface of the
wavelengths,
Sun with what is going in interstellar space,” says
in 2012 that
sent a massive O’Brien, who believes these new data sets and
solar storm monitoring stations provide hope for our ability to
that just give fair warning of future eruptions during the
missed Earth next solar cycle.
12
12 DSCOVR
Originally proposed by then-Vice
President Al Gore, DSCOVR monitors variable
solar wind conditions and their impact
on the Earth, including changes in ozone,
aerosols, dust and volcanic ash, cloud height,
vegetation cover and climate.
RESULTS: Took the second picture of the
entire Earth, following on from the final
Apollo mission's famous Blue Marble picture.
23
IS OUR SUN
GOING INTO
HIBERNATION?
Each sunspot cycle has been getting less
intense. Is our star falling asleep?
Reported by Kulvinder Singh Chadha
olar activity refers to the state of the Many other astronomers at the time either
S Sun’s magnetic field and associated

phenomena: sunspots, flares, solar
wind and coronal ejections. During
periods of minimal solar activity, such events
independently observed this cycle or were
inspired by the results of others. Wolf’s own
calculation of the 1755 to 1766 sunspot cycle was
labelled as the first, and each sunspot cycle since
are often uncommon and weak. During solar then has been progressively numbered as such.
maximum, they’re at their strongest and most We are now in Cycle 25.
frequent. Magnetic field fluctuations on the Sun But sometimes the spots don’t appear at all.
can happen on drastically different timescales, This was the case for 80 days of the first six
ranging from seconds all the way to billions of months of the current solar cycle, which started
years. When astronomers speak of a ‘slow down’ in December 2019. It was greater still for the
or a period of quiescence in the Sun’s activity, it same period in Cycle 24, where there were 139
doesn’t mean the Sun will stop shining, but that spot-free days. The period from 1645 to 1715 saw
there’s a slow down in activity. a near-total crash in sunspot numbers, where
The Sun has one particular rhythm, lasting they could literally be counted on two hands.
approximately 11 years, in which its polar Wolf struggled to piece together solar cycles
magnetic field flips polarity. Sunspots serve as an before the mid-1700s because of this dearth of
indicator of this change. Indeed, it’s often known information, but it didn’t mean sunspots weren’t
as ‘the sunspot cycle’.
Left: The
Although sunspots themselves were first modern
observed by Galileo, Christoph Scheiner and numbering of
others from 1609 onwards, the cyclical nature solar cycles
comes from
of their appearance and disappearance was first
Rudolf Wolf,
noted in 1775 by Danish astronomer Christian who studied
Horrebow. It was then rediscovered in 1843 by them back
Heinrich Schwabe. In 1848, Swiss astronomer to 1755
Rudolf Wolf used Schwabe and others’ results,
as well as performing his own observations, to
© Public Domain
calculate the 11-year cycle and a mathematical

method to count the number of sunspots. This
so-called ‘Wolf number’ remains in use today.
24
hibernation
© Nicholas Forder
AR SCAN HERE
25
being observed. Many distinguished astronomers Below

of the age, such as Giovanni Cassini, continued to
make observations. This 70-year solar lull was later
(clockwise
from left): What is A solar maximum
noted by German astronomer Gustav Spörer, which
then later inspired the British-Irish husband and
An active
region with
prominent
and solar minimum?
wife team Edward and Annie Maunder. The period magnetic Solar maxima and minima happen some years apart,
loops, often
has since been named the Maunder minimum.
visible during
though at regular but varied intervals
There have been other lulls before and since, such solar maxima
as the Spörer and Dalton minima.
An active
Solar minimum
But in 2020 Cycle 25 actually had 80 per cent The period within the 11-year
Sun at solar
more sunspots overall than the equivalent period solar cycle with the least
maximum
for Cycle 24, suggesting that the current cycle activity. Very few solar flares
(left) versus
and few – if any – sunspots
may in fact be stronger, rather than weaker. The the Sun at solar
are observed.
© NASA
international Solar Cycle 25 Prediction Panel said minimum
(right)
in September 2020 that they expect Cycle 25 to Solar maximum
be about as strong as Cycle 24. Has the consensus The Solar The most active point in the
changed since then, or is it still the same? Dynamics solar cycle. Solar flares will
Observatory manifest, as well as hundreds
“The consensus has not changed,” says panel
studies many of individual sunspots, due
co-chair Dr Doug Biesecker. The consensus is of the Sun’s to concentrated magnetic
still that the current cycle will be much like processes flux lines.
Cycle 24. “We have not seen anything that differs
significantly in the early stages of this cycle that
varies from the panel prediction of a peak of 115
[sunspots] in July 2025.” The predictions are based
The flux of high-energy particles can damage
on the 13-month ‘smoothed sunspot number’ – a with improved results! To this day it is the most
spacecraft, satellites and even ground-based power
statistical method for calculating sunspots. And powerful coronal mass ejection on record. If a
systems. The latter are particularly vulnerable, as
you have to be patient when studying the Sun. As Carrington-level event were to happen now, it
solar radiation easily disturbs Earth’s magnetic
Biesecker says: “It can take up to three years after would cause widespread damage and disruption to
field, inducing currents in long power lines.
the cycle begins before we can say with confidence power systems and satellites. As well as decimating
Such a geomagnetic storm destroyed large grid
whether the prediction is still valid.” electronics, any astronauts venturing beyond the
transformers and shut down the whole of Quebec,
Successfully predicting solar weather is certainly protective blanket of Earth’s geomagnetic field –
Canada, in March 1989. And this was just history
essential when testing scientific theories about such as to the Moon or Mars – would be in danger,
repeating itself. In September 1859 a geomagnetic
how the Sun works. But there’s a more pressing something that NASA’s upcoming Artemis lunar
storm, dubbed the Carrington event, caused
practical reason for doing so. Strong solar flare program needs to keep in mind.
interesting problems with the telegraph system.
events and coronal mass ejections – most likely Considering the stakes, coupled with the fact
Telegraph operators noticed that they could
to occur around the time of solar maxima – can that the Sun is such a complex system, there must
disconnect their batteries and work with just the
disrupt modern technology. be another way to glean information about its
induced currents from the storm – sometimes
© NASA/SDO
A DECADE OF THE SUN, FROM NASA
AR SCAN HERE
© NASA
© NASA
26
hibernation
future behaviour besides sunspots. Other tried-

and-trusted methods exist, but there may well be
another arrow in the quiver. A US-UK team led by
Dr Scott McIntosh of the High Altitude Observatory
at the National Center for Atmospheric Research
in Boulder, Colorado, has looked at a related
phenomenon to sunspot activity.
Using data from sources such as NASA’s Solar
Dynamics Observatory, the team looked at
extreme ultraviolet and X-ray flashes in the solar
corona. These so-called ‘bright points’ in the Sun’s
atmosphere correlate with large areas of material
flowing in the Sun’s interior, which rotates faster
than surface plasma, similar to rates seen for
Source: Wikipedia Commons © Luc.rouppe
sunspots. Dr Robert Leamon of the University

of Maryland likens it to helium balloons being
dragged along by weights attached to the bottom.
Such a study is potentially more useful than
the sunspot cycle as it shows magnetic polarity. In
the 19th century, Richard Carrington and Spörer
AR SCAN HERE
both discovered sunspots appearing at different
DETAILED PICTURE OF SOLAR
latitudes during different points in the solar cycle, SURFACE WITH ANTON PETROV
starting at mid-latitudes and migrating towards the
equator at the end. Plotted against time, this leads
to a distinctive ‘butterfly’ diagram.
But in the early 20th century, American Above: Close-
astronomer George Ellery Hale proved the
importance of solar magnetism by showing how
a complete polar flip actually spans two sunspot
up view of
a sunspot.
Counting
sunspots is
How are sunspots made?
the staple way
Sunspots are a consequence of the Sun’s magnetic field and
cycles: a flip, then a flip back. This 22-year Hale
of measuring complex fluid dynamics
cycle is what McIntosh’s team looks at. The bright
solar activity
points are markers of Hale cycle magnetic bands.
This begs the question of why the wider solar
scientific community doesn’t make more use of
1 Straight magnetic field
lines, few sunspots
The Sun’s global magnetic
2 Field lines start to
become distorted 3 Twisted tangles break
the surface
The Sun is not a solid As the global field
such observations in this way. “Folks have in the field lines start off straight, body like Earth, composed wraps around the Sun,
past – calling them ephemeral active regions – but meaning few – if any – instead from a fluid concentrated magnetic
sunspots are visible. This plasma. Its equator rotates loops break the surface,
predominantly they are locked into the ‘big white
occurs during, or close to, faster than its poles, forming sunspots. These
whales’ of solar activity: sunspots,” says McIntosh. solar minimum. dragging field lines with it. start at high latitudes.
Just like sunspots, the magnetic bands travel
the latitudes of the Sun to meet at the equator,
annihilating in what McIntosh calls ‘termination
events’. His team uses these termination events to
1
identify complete 22-year magnetic cycles, as well
as the 11-year sunspot cycles of the past.
Using these alongside predictions made for a
2020 terminator event, the team predicts that Solar
Cycle 25 will, in fact, be strong. In marked contrast
to scientific consensus, they say it will be among
the strongest few ever recorded.
Biesecker is supportive of the team’s approach:
2
“The Sun really wants to be 3

balanced, and what we see in
terms of sunspots is the result
of imbalance in that pressure”
Scott McIntosh
27
Our Sun
What goes on inside the mysterious powerhouse that dominates our Solar System?
Solar core Radiative zone Convection Photosphere Chromosphere Prominence Sunspots Coronal hole Coronal
The Sun’s Extending zone The Sun’s The Sun’s Hot plasma Concentrated A sparse streamer
1 thermonuclear
fusion heart
2 from the core
to 70 per cent 3 Extending
to just
4 visible
surface is
5 thin lower
atmosphere
6 emanating
from the
7 magnetic
fields inhibit
8 area of the
Sun’s upper 9 These bright
magnetic
spans 27 times of the Sun’s below the composed of sits above the photosphere, convection atmosphere, loops of
Earth’s diameter. radius, energy surface, the convective photosphere typically wherever the corona. charged
This is where propagates solar plasma’s cells, the and extends to extending they punch Unfettered particles only
hydrogen is outwards via density upwellings and 3,000 to 5,000 thousands of through the by any strong tend to form at
fused into heat conduction reduces downfalls of kilometres (1,864 kilometres. surface. This magnetic mid-latitudes.
helium at huge and diffusion of enough that the convection to 3,107 miles) Their structure reduces the fields, solar The solar wind
temperatures electromagnetic material can zone below. above. Its deep- comes from temperature particles stretches
and pressures, radiation. move in a This gives pink colour is loops of at those stream out them into the
releasing fluid way via the Sun its visible during magnetic points, leading at twice the coronal region.
energy. convection distinctive a total solar field lines. to relative average rate.
currents. granular look. eclipse. darkening.
“Whatever happens with

the sunspot level, there
will be some big storms”
Robert Leamon
3
6
9
1
4
What is
cycle 25?
Cycle 25 is the 25th rise and
5 fall in solar activity since 1755.
We are in the beginning of
2 the ‘rise’ period. It appears
that it’ll be similar to the
previous cycle, which had the
fourth-smallest amplitude on
record. Both NASA and NOAA
said that Cycle 25 began in
December 2019 and will peak
sometime around 2025, but
with a weak maximum, like
the previous one.
© Nicholas Forder
AR SCAN HERE
28 8
hibernation
“The work from McIntosh et al is very intriguing. systems inside the Sun are much stronger than we observational and photographic record, is very
It would be very exciting to have their prediction anticipate and that they interact strongly to shape overlooked. It suggests structural or geometric
come true, as it would help teach us about how to the production of spots,” says McIntosh. He says features that play a significant role in forming and
better predict future solar cycles.” But he does have the pressure of the magnetic field band relative aggregating the magnetic field in the Sun’s interior.
a caveat. “The McIntosh technique has yet to make to the surroundings is important. “My sense is The science still has many open questions.
a true prediction. That is, one for which there is that the Sun really wants to be balanced, and But is the team’s approach bearing out for space
no knowledge of the future. It’s very difficult for a what we see in terms of sunspots is the result of weather forecasting? As Leamon says: “It’s too early
panel to give much weight to a technique that is imbalance in that pressure – globally, locally and to tell, but so far the observed sunspot number and
new, which has never made a prediction that can longitudinally.” This means they think they’re only other measures, such as F10.7 solar radio flux [10.7
be tested.” He says other more traditional methods seeing the tip of the iceberg where the magnetic centimetre-wavelength radio waves] are tracking
continue to be used, as they have been successful field is concerned. closer to our higher predictions rather than the
in the past and are better known. McIntosh goes on to say that the recurrence lower panel consensus. Whatever happens with
If McIntosh’s study is right, however, what could of 55 degree latitude bands in their analysis, the sunspot level, there will be some big storms,
it say about the solar interior? “That the magnetic which can be traced back through the entire and our technological society will be impacted in
some way or another during Solar Cycle 25.”
McIntosh concurs: “Indications are that it’s on
track to be bigger than 24, and likely 23 too. But we
really need the termination event to happen to get
real fidelity on the forecast.” He’s still convinced
on Cycle 25 that it’ll be a larger-than-average cycle, perhaps

even in the top ten of every one on record. “But
Solar scientist Madhulika Guhathakurta gives her personal until that event happens, we won’t know for sure.”
view of our current solar cycle Biesecker’s looking further ahead. “The
relevance of the Hale cycle, as detailed in McIntosh
How unusual is Solar Cycle 25's
et al, will be something for the Solar Cycle 26
Dr Madhulika sunspot activity?
Panel to consider.” He points out that looking at
Guhathakurta Looking at sunspots as a non-physical index
the 22-year Hale cycle isn’t new to forecasting,
A heliophysicist of solar activity, I think this solar cycle isn't
and that scientists have looked at the effects of
at NASA and unusual, especially in the context of the prior
odd and even cycles in the past, although with
leader of the cycle. This cycle's sort of mimicking that.
Living with a less skill than looking at precursors of the next
Even in the early 1800s and 1900s, you see
Star Program. immediate cycle. “Expect the McIntosh technique
She started International cycles of this magnitude. During the Maunder
Below: to be a big part of the conversation when the
Living with a Star in 2003. minimum, when we couldn't detect any Sunspots
Presently on part-time panel to forecast Solar Cycle 26 convenes,” he
sunspots, the question remains how well could appear as dark
detail at Goddard as senior patches on the tantalisingly concludes.
we detect very faint sunspots then or even
advisor for new initiatives. tumultuous
now? We don't know and have no measure of surface in this
Guhathakurta gives her
opinion as an individual and that. The uncertainty associated with detecting image taken Kulvinder Singh Chadha
by the Solar Space science writer
not as a representative of no sunspots is much harder than counting
Dynamics Kulvinder is a freelance science writer,
any organisation. them during solar maximum. outreach worker and former assistant
Observatory editor of Astronomy Now. He holds a
degree in astrophysics.
How does Cycle 25 fit with current knowledge?
Our present understanding is Babcock's solar dynamo model. Even though the
details aren't well understood, it describes why we see what we see in terms of
magnetic field activity, including the 11-year sunspot cycle. Inside the Sun, closed
field magnetic loops are generated in the equatorial region, but open field lines
at the poles in the corona become more dominant during solar minimum. Solar
physicists agree that polar fields during solar minima dictate the strength of the
next solar cycle. We can't measure polar field strength accurately, as we have to
go outside the ecliptic plane. The Solar Orbiter mission from the European Space
Agency, partnered with NASA, will give us a better estimate.
Are you seeing longer term trends?

The importance of these hasn't received proper scrutiny for lack of data. Beyond
that I don't think we have a deeper understanding of the physics – there are
many layers to go through. I spent the last four years at NASA Ames Research
Center shaping a program called Frontier Development Lab and got fascinated
by artificial intelligence and how we might utilise our data and the tools of AI
to infer patterns that can better guide physics outcomes. Machine learning and
AI could be critical for understanding solar variability and climate with huge
© NASA/SDO
amounts of data.
29
Planet profile
Mercury
The minute world is arguably the least explored
of the four terrestrial planets
ercury is a planet that has sculpted atmosphere, meaning that no heat is trapped.
M not only our scientific understanding

over generations, but also our culture.
Mercury has been mentioned in texts
dating as far back as the 2nd millennium BCE by
This means the night side of the planet – the
one facing away from the Sun – can have
temperatures as low as -180 degrees Celsius (-290
degrees Fahrenheit).
the Sumerians, and the ancient namesake of the While Mercury is a similar size to the Moon,
planet is the Roman messenger god, Mercury. it is also similar in appearance. It is a heavily
Mercury is the smallest of all the true planets cratered, rocky body with some of the largest
in the Solar System and the closest planet to the craters in the Solar System. One crater studied
Sun, but there is so much more to it. Mercury is by previous exploration missions is a great
so tiny compared to the other planets that you example. The Caloris basin, which is roughly
can actually fit around 23,500 Mercurys into 1,550-kilometres (960-miles) wide, is about the
Jupiter, and it is roughly 1,400 kilometres (870 size of Texas, and was formed when an asteroid
miles) larger in diameter than the Moon. The about 100 kilometres (60 miles) across hit
small planet also orbits the Sun with less than Mercury’s surface 4 billion years ago, impacting
half the distance between the Sun and the Earth, the planet with energy equivalent to a trillion
resulting in it being ‘tidally locked’. one-megaton bombs.
Tidal locking occurs when an object is If you scratch beneath the surface, the
so close to its host object that the gravity is true weirdness of Mercury starts to become
overwhelmingly powerful, and instead of apparent. Under the ultra-thin cratered crust
continuously spinning on its axis, like Earth is an extremely dense planet, with somewhere
does, the object has one side facing towards the between 70 and 85 per cent of the planet being
host object at all times. In this case Mercury an enormous iron core. Astronomers have spent
is tidally locked to the Sun, and for every two years constraining whether it is solid, molten or
revolutions around the Sun, Mercury rotates both, and they seem to agree it has a solid iron
on its axis three times. Each orbit takes 88 core with an outer molten core. Astronomers
Earth days, making a year on Mercury roughly a believe that a molten core could explain
quarter of an Earth year. Mercury’s very weak magnetic field. However,
Because Mercury is so close to the Sun, the after the results were brought back and analysed
surface temperatures on the little planet can from NASA’s Mariner 10 and MESSENGER space
be scorching, reaching highs of 450 degrees probes, astronomers now believe that Mercury is
Celsius (840 degrees Fahrenheit). Enduring the exposed core of a much larger planet, with its
this bombardment of radiation from the Sun, outer layers lost to a powerful collision billions of
the planet also struggles to keep hold of its years ago.
“Astronomers now believe that Mercury is the

exposed core of a much larger planet, with its
outer layers lost to a powerful collision”
30
30
planet profile: Mercury
Mantle
Crust Atmospheric
composition
42%Oxygen
29% Sodium
Solid inner core 22%

Hydrogen
6% Helium
0.5%
Potassium
+Traces of
argon, carbon
dioxide, water,
nitrogen,
xenon, krypton,
neon, calcium,
magnesium
Outer molten core
© NASA
31
31
What’s been happ ening at Mercury?

ies
Mercury’s magnetic irregularit
motion of an internal
A magnetic field is the result of the
is certa inly the case on Earth. Earth’s
molten core, and that
n to shift in location
magnetic poles have also been know
to time , but now astro nom ers have suggested
from time
mag netic pole s have been doing the
that Mercury’s ancient
same thing .
known as paleopoles,
Mercury’s ancient magnetic poles,
ugho ut time , and this could
appear to have shifted thro
clues in the inves tigat ion of Merc ury’s interior.
present
the mag netic field , astro nomers could
By understanding
molten core. "There are
pinpoint the nature of the planet’s
et, but no one has used
several evolution models of the plan
to obta in the planet's evolution,"
the crustal magnetic field
icist at the European
says Joana S. Oliveira, an astrophys
Euro pean Spac e Rese arch and Technology
Space Agency's
erlan ds.
Centre in Noordwijk, the Neth
SENGER data
These results came from NASA’s MES
nt crate rs that had irreg ular magnetic
collected on ancie
er analysis help us
© ESA
signatures. Not only would a furth
interior, it could have
understand the nature of Mercury’s
ding how the planet evolved, and
implications for understan
ed.
even how Earth’s magnetic field evolv
An insulating blanket of iron sulphid e
re of is the cent
Once again Mercury’s magnetic field
nom ers’ rese arch . How ever , inste ad of trying to understand
astro
astro nom ers are tryin g to understand how it is
the nature of it,
seen with Mars how a planet
kept in place. Astronomers have
ler than Earth can solid ify and lose its molten core,
much smal
field, but Mercury still
and consequently lose its magnetic
appears to have one.
a layer of iron sulphide
This recent research suggests that
, main taini ng its molten state. “Based
could be insulating the core
to explain how actually
on lab experiments, we got some data
such a low mag netic field and sustain it for
you can generate
ral phys icist Geet h Manthilake of
such a long time,” says mine
rgne Univ ersit y in Clerm ont-F errand, France.
Clermont Auve
ury has a solid inner
These experiments predict that Merc
core, with a molten outer core of
water and oil, these elements
iron, sulphur and silicon. Much like
sulph ur com pounds were expelled
can’t mix, so the iron and
rds the oute r regio ns of the plan et and created the
towa
insulating layer.
© NASA
Searching for water ice on Mercurym has

the Solar Syste
The search for water elsewhere in
me more of a hunt amo ng astro nomers as engineers
beco
keep a keen eye out for its cosmic
and scientists alike
ion to the Moon’s poles.
signature and prepare for a miss
is anot her body that astro nom ers suspect is
Mercury
poles, with NASA’s
hiding the valuable comodity at its
the signatures of thick
MESSENGER space probe revealing
wate r ice hidd en in crate rs at the planet’s
deposits of
ght does n’t reach the depths
poles. In these craters, sunli
in, and there fore they ’re shelt ered from the radiation
with
. Astronomers
that could cause water ice to dissipate
answ ers about where
believe these craters could hold
is dispe rsed thro ugho ut the Solar System and even
water
the origins of life itself.
g Mercury and
Astronomers have also been comparin
to try and unde rstan d what the water ice in
the Moon
like. This invo lved look ing at about
these craters may look of which
over 2,00 0
14,000 craters on the two bodies,
© NASA
They have com e to the conc lusio n that on

are on Mercury. harb our ice
plan et, crate rs that
the Solar System’s smallest
ower sides than thos e that don’ t.
have shall
32
planet profile: mercury
Exploring the past and future of the swift planet

Visiting Mercury is a dangerous and difficult task. Some may think that this is because it’s a relatively small
planet and therefore more difficult to navigate to, but that is far from the case. The voyage to Mercury
is difficult because of the humongous ball of searing plasma, the Sun, and its pesky gravity. Navigating a
spacecraft to Mercury requires propulsion that will get it to Mercury and also counteract the gravity of the
Sun so the craft doesn’t go falling into the surface and burn up. This is why only two spacecraft have ever
visited the small terrestrial planet.
NASA has been the operator of both of these missions, the first being Mariner 10 in 1974, which
conducted a series of flybys and gathered close-up images. However, the mission that brought the most
consistent and fascinating results is the MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, Right: Using
and Ranging) spacecraft, which is the first and only spacecraft so far to orbit the planet. MESSENGER’s MESSENGER’s
most important results included how volatile-rich the colour base
© NASA
planet was – volatiles being chemical compounds with map imaging,
low boiling points – which has important implications for Mercury is
the planet’s formation. Also there were its ice deposits at shown in
the poles, its weird magnetic field offset and its irregular a colourful
contrast
depressions called ‘hollows’.
The next mission to Mercury is the exciting Left: BepiColombo’s
BepiColombo, a joint endeavour by the European Space MESSENGER
Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration spent the seven-year
Agency (JAXA). This mission will arrive at Mercury in best of four
2025, where it will separate into two orbiters and use its fruitful years
at Mercury
journey
impressive instrumental suite to investigate the planet
from all angles.
Below: The
to Mercury
The Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) was built
and will be operated by the ESA, and the Mercury
Van Eyck • Date: 20 October 2018
crater is just Activity: Launch from Earth
Magnetospheric Orbiter (Mio) was built and will be
one
operated by JAXA. This unique mission will have its two of the many • Date: 13 April 2020
orbiters working simultaneously as scientists get up-close enormous Activity: Earth flyby
© NASA
observations of the surface and far-away observations of craters

the magnetic field. on Mercury • Date: 16 October 2020
Activity: First Venus flyby
• Date: 11 August 2021

Activity: Second Venus flyby
Mercury facts • Date: 2 October 2021

Activity: First Mercury flyby
• Date: 9 January 2025

Activity: Sixth Mercury flyby
0
Mercury has no moons, making
it one of two planets in the Solar
System – along with Venus – to
Mercury’s atmosphere
is more comparable to a
‘thin exosphere’, as it is
comprised mostly of atoms
ejected from the surface
due to the solar wind and
meteoroid impacts.
If someone was standing
on Mercury’s night side at
the right time of year, they
would see a faint orange
glow from the sodium
scattered by sunlight.
• Date: 5 December 2025
Activity: Orbital insertion
around Mercury
not have its own moon.
One day on Mercury lasts 59 NASA’s MESSENGER mission Astronomers believe there was
Earth days – an incredibly long stayed in orbit around Mercury active volcanism on Mercury at
time in comparison – while a year from March 2011 to April 2015 some point, as there are areas
on Mercury lasts just 88 before crashing into the that appear to have been
Earth days. surface of the planet. flooded with lava.
© NASA
33
WHAT’S NEW AT
MERC
Scientists are still busy analysing data from the
MESSENGER mission – and it has plenty of surprises
Reported by Andrew May
Ice on a
hot planet
A view of the area
around Mercury’s north
pole, with regions that
permanently lie in Kandinsky
shadow shown in red and
suspected traces of ice
shown in yellow.
Prokofiev
SA
© NA
34
what’s new at Mercury?
URY?
© Getty
35
hich planet is Earth’s nearest Another problem is the extreme heat – well over
W neighbour in the Solar System? The

obvious answer is Venus, which
makes the closest approach to us
– but it spends half its orbit on the other side of
400 degrees Celsius (752 degrees Fahrenheit) –
in the vicinity of Mercury, which poses serious
challenges for spacecraft designers. Since the dawn
of the space age, only two space probes have been
the Sun, when it’s further away from us than to Mercury – Mariner 10 in the 1970s, followed by
Mercury. It was only last year that Tom Stockman, MESSENGER more recently, both by NASA.
a graduate research assistant at Los Alamos The photographs sent back by Mariner 10, which
National Laboratory, New Mexico, and colleagues made three close passes of Mercury in 1974 and
crunched the numbers to work out which planet 1975, revealed a desolate, crater-studded landscape
is actually closest on average – and they were as that looks a lot like our Moon. But the mission had
surprised as anyone by the answer: “When a surprise for scientists in its discovery of a well-
averaged over time, Earth’s nearest neighbour defined magnetic field around the planet. It’s a
is in fact Mercury,” they wrote. hundred times weaker than Earth’s field, but Venus
Despite its proximity, Mercury has always been a and Mars don’t have internal magnetic fields at all,
mysterious planet due to the difficulty of observing and Mercury wasn’t expected to either.
it through Earth-based telescopes. That’s down to A closer look at Mercury’s magnetic field was one
a combination of its small size and the fact that it of the key objectives of NASA’s follow-up mission,
© NASA
never gets very far from the Sun in the sky. The MESSENGER, which entered orbit around the planet
only time it makes a really spectacular sight, in fact, in March 2011. It remained there until it ran out of
is when it passes directly in front of the Sun during manoeuvring propellant four years later – and in
Elements that a transit of Mercury – like the one that took place a the final few months the mission controllers got
‘shouldn’t few months ago in November 2019. increasingly bold. They dipped the spacecraft to just
If Mercury is a difficult planet to observe from 15 kilometres (9.3 miles) above the planet, allowing
be there’ Earth, it’s not an easy destination for spacecraft them to measure relic magnetism in the surface
MESSENGER’s
either. That’s partly because a spacecraft speeds up rocks. “The signals we detected are really small,
instruments included
spectrometers to analyse under the effect of gravity as it falls towards the and very hard to measure,” explains planetary
the chemical composition Sun – and then its rocket engine has to work hard geophysicist Catherine Johnson. “We’d never have
of Mercury’s surface – they to lose that excess speed when it gets to Mercury. been able to measure them if not for these really
discovered a surprisingly
high level of volatile
elements such as sulphur
and potassium.
A giant
cannonball
Mercury’s structure is
dominated by its huge
iron core. Like Earth’s,
it’s molten in the outer
parts – which is where the
Outer molten core
magnetic field originates –
and solid at the centre.
Mantle
Solid inner core
Crust
© Getty
36
North cusp
Planetary ions
South cusp A protective

magnetic field
Like Earth, Mercury has
a global magnetic field
which helps to shield it
from the solar wind. The
dashed red line shows
MESSENGER’s orbit
through this field.
Mercury’s
“We’d never have been ancient
magnetism
able to measure them MESSENGER made
several low passes
if not for these really to measure ‘fossil
magnetism’ in surface
risky low-altitude rocks, with results

indicating that Mercury
had a much stronger
observations” Catherine Johnson magnetic field billions of
years in the past.
risky low-altitude observations in the last few

months of the MESSENGER mission.”
The measurements indicated that not only is
Mercury’s magnetism very old – going back at
least 3.8 billion years – but it was much stronger
in the past, “comparable to the strength of Earth’s
magnetic field today,” according to Johnson.
When all its propellant was used up,
MESSENGER was deliberately crashed into
Mercury’s surface – the first Earth-made artefact on
the planet – on 30 April 2015. From NASA’s point
of view the mission was a huge success, repeatedly
surprising researchers with its discoveries. “In the
end, most of what we considered to be gospel
about Mercury turned out to be a little different
© NASA
than we thought,” as mission scientist William

McClintock said at the time.
37
© Adrian Mann
On course
for Mercury
The two spacecraft
making up the exciting
BepiColombo mission,
from the European and
Japanese space agencies,
were launched in October
2018 and should go into
orbit around Mercury
in late 2025.
Rethinking “Most of what we considered to be gospel

Mercury’s origin
It used to be thought
about Mercury turned out to be a little different
that Mercury suffered
a huge impact which than we thought” William McClintock
stripped off its outer
Among MESSENGER’s biggest surprises was the System except Mercury. Called ‘hollows’, these
layers, but that’s less likely
now we know there are discovery of water ice on Mercury. This seems odd, are shallow depressions found inside many of the
volatiles on the surface. given the extremely high surface temperatures in planet’s craters. They’re believed to have formed
direct sunlight. But there are spots inside some of when volatile components in the surface material
the craters near the planet’s poles that never see the evaporated, causing the remaining material
Sun at all, and consequently the temperature there to collapse. “The hollows are one of the most
goes to the opposite extreme – closer to minus 200 viscerally interesting discoveries from the mission,”
degrees Celsius (minus 328 degrees Fahrenheit). according to another MESSENGER scientist, Steve
There had been hints of ice inside these Hauck. “They were completely unexpected – a new
permanently shadowed craters as long ago as the landform, and one that appears to form by loss of
1990s, when radar measurements indicated the rock to space.”
presence of highly reflective material. The issue The idea that volatile materials boiled off
wasn’t clinched, however, until MESSENGER Mercury in the distant past seems reasonable
detected hydrogen atoms in the same locations. enough, given its hot location close to the Sun.
“Water ice is the only candidate we’ve got that fits What would be more surprising would be to find
all those observations,” as principal investigator volatile materials still on the planet’s surface
Sean Solomon explained. It’s not just a few today – and yet that’s exactly what MESSENGER
traces of ice, either – according to Solomon it’s did find. It’s a subject Brian Cox talked about in
“enough ice to encase Washington DC in a his TV series The Planets last year. “The discovery
frozen block two-and-a-half miles deep”. of relatively large concentrations of elements like
Another unexpected finding was a sulphur and potassium on Mercury’s surface was a
brand-new type of surface feature that huge surprise,” he said. “So Mercury is an enigma,
© NASA
isn’t seen anywhere else in the Solar and discoveries like these force us to completely
38
57.9 million km
Distance from sun
108.2 million km
Distance from sun
Mercury
149.6 million km
MASS
330,104,000,000,000
Distance from sun
Billion kg
Equatorial diameter
4,879 kM
Orbit distance
57,909,227 kM
Venus
MASS
4,867,320,000,000,000
Billion kg
Equatorial diameter
12,104 kM
Orbit distance
108,209,475 kM Earth
MASS
5,972,190,000,000,000
Billion kg
Equatorial diameter
12,742
Inner planets Orbit distance
149,598,262
kM
kM
How does the third rock from the
© Tobias Toetsch
Sun compare to those further in?
39
rethink our theories about the formation of composition. Then, billions of years ago, it had like stars, which also appear to have large metallic
the planet.” its outer layers knocked off in a collision with a cores like Mercury.
The problem with this new discovery was that huge asteroid. Despite its numerous discoveries, MESSENGER
it didn’t fit in with existing ideas about Mercury’s The problem with that theory is it doesn’t explain left plenty of unanswered questions – but
origin, which had been developed over the years why there’s so much sulphur and potassium on fortunately there’s another mission, BepiColombo,
to explain its unusual internal structure. Like Mercury’s surface today. It now seems likely that on its way to Mercury right now. Made up of two
Earth, the planet is made up of a rocky crust Mercury formed much as it is now, and that its separate spacecraft, the ESA’s Mercury Planetary
and mantle surrounding an iron-rich core – but large core was a consequence of the different Orbiter and the Japan Aerospace Exploration
in Mercury’s case the core is huge, making up physical conditions in the inner parts of the early Agency’s Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter, it’s due
almost 85 per cent of its volume. For a long time Solar System compared with further out where to arrive in 2025. With 16 scientific instruments,
it was assumed that Mercury must have started the other planets formed. That’s supported by the researchers are hoping BepiColombo will make just
out looking very similar to Earth in size and discovery of exoplanets orbiting close to other Sun- as many discoveries as MESSENGER did.
“The discovery of relatively large concentrations of elements like sulphur and

potassium on Mercury’s surface was a huge surprise” Brian cox
A new type
of feature
These rounded
depressions in Raditladi
Basin are examples
of ‘hollows’ – features
unique to Mercury which
may have been formed
when volatile materials
evaporated into space
long ago.
Mercury on
steroids?
That’s how NASA
described exoplanet
K2-229b, which resembles
Mercury in being iron-rich
and orbiting close to a
Sun-like star, but it’s
four-times bigger and,
at 2,000°C (3,632°F),
much hotter.
The shrinking
planet
As Mercury’s interior
has cooled down, the
planet has shrunk, creating
tectonic fault lines such
as the one pictured here,
Carnegie Rupes.
x3 Images © NASA
40
YOUR COMPLETE GUIDE
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VEN 22 things you did
Earth’s sister planet is an intriguing

and mysterious world, with more to it
than meets the eye
Written by Lee Cavendish
1 Venus has a rich history

Studies of Venus can be traced back to the ancient Babylonians in 1600 BCE.
They tracked the movement of several planets and stars. The oldest astronomical
document on record is a Babylonian diary of Venus appearances over a 21-year
period. Venus played a serious part in the mythology of ancient civilisations,
© NASA/JPL
including the Mayans and Greeks. The name ‘Venus’ comes from the Roman
goddess of love and beauty.
42
22 facts about Venus
NUS
n’t know about
2 The
pressure’s on!
Walking around Venus would
be an unbearable experience
for several reasons, but one of
them is the extreme pressures
on the surface. The atmosphere
creates air pressure that is over
90 times the air pressure on
Earth, which is similar to the
pressure around a kilometre
(0.6 miles) deep in the ocean.
1 Atmosphere
96.5 per cent of
Venus’ atmosphere
is carbon dioxide,
with the remainder
being nitrogen,
sulphur dioxide,
argon and traces
of water vapour,
carbon monoxide,
helium and more.
3 Molten mantle
The heat from the core
creates a molten mantle that
is 3,000-kilometres (1,200-
miles) thick.
1
3
4
2
2 Crust
Venus’ crust
is made of silicate
rocks, and is
estimated to be 50
kilometres (31 miles)
thick.
4 Metallic core
Venus’ iron core consists of a
solid inner and liquid outer core
roughly 3,200 kilometres (2,000
miles) in radius.
43
guide
Venus to the solar system
6 It’s hellishly hot

Venus is the hottest planet in the Solar System,
even hotter than the dayside of Mercury, which has
temperatures of 427 degrees Celsius (801 degrees
Fahrenheit). Because of Venus’ thick, carbon
3 It’s just
?
dioxide-rich atmosphere, the heat is efficiently
retained, creating surface temperatures higher than
like our Earth 470 degrees Celsius (880 degrees Fahrenheit).
When looking purely at the
physical parameters of Venus,
it is remarkably similar to
Earth. They are both almost
7 Venusian volcanicity
To add to the hellish image of Venus, it also has the
the same in size and density,
most volcanoes present on the surface of all planets
their compositions are similar
in the Solar System. On Earth there are 1,500
and they both appear to have
known active volcanoes, and Mars is best known
relatively young surfaces
for the largest volcano in the Solar System, Olympus
that are surrounded by an
Mons. However, Venus has over 1,600 known major
© NASA/JPL
atmosphere with clouds. It’s
volcanoes, and that’s not including the smaller ones
worth stating that Venus’
or any that haven’t been detected yet.
clouds are primarily sulphuric
acid though, which isn’t
something that you’d want
raining down on you!
8 Why it doesn’t have a moon
Venus and Mercury are the only planets in our Solar System that do not have their own moon. It’s a bit
4 It has many more understandable as to why Mercury doesn’t have a moon, because its close proximity to the Sun
has a negative effect on any contenders, and it is even smaller than some known moons such as Jupiter’s
phases Ganymede and Saturn’s Titan. However, researchers have argued that the reason Venus doesn’t have a
Venus experiences different moon isn’t as simplistic. There are two theories: the first is that any moon that Venus had was stolen by the
phases, just like the Moon. As Sun’s gravity. The second is known as the ‘double-impact theory’, which states that a large celestial body hit
Venus travels around the Sun Venus billions of years ago and created a moon, in a similar way to how Earth got its lunar companion. But
within the orbit of Earth, it several million years later, an even bigger object hit Venus, causing the retrograde rotation, weakening the
changes between a ‘morning tidal forces and sending the moon to sink into Venus, never to be seen again.
star’ and ‘evening star’ roughly
every nine-and-a-half months.
During this period it shifts
between different percentages
of illumination, a trait that
9 Earth vs Venus
everyone normally associates What are the similarities and differences
with the Moon. between the second and third planet
from the Sun
5 Transits are The Sun

On Venus, the Sun would appear no more than a
very rare dimly glowing patch through the thick clouds and
everlasting overcast weather.
Venus is one of two planets
that orbit the Sun within the
Clouds
orbital path of Earth. Along
Venus is enveloped in clouds, not allowing any
with Mercury, these two
nosey astronomers to investigate the surface. While
planets can find themselves the Earth is also hidden by clouds, much more of
between Earth and the Sun, our planet’s surface is visible from space.
sometimes
creating a silhouette that Surface rocks
moves across the Sun over a Based on past exploration missions, the surface of
Venus contains rocks of different shades of grey,
period of hours. These journeys
carving out valleys and giving birth to mountains,
are known as ‘transits’, and similar to Earth.
Venus is known to transit in
pairs, with over a century Volcanoes
separating the pairs, making it Both planets contain at least 1,500 active and
a very rare event. dormant volcanoes on the surface.
44
The power of the Sun

10 A perfect world for Solar panels would be
extremely useful, as Venus
gets 190 per cent more
Easier to explore
from up high
futuristic spacecraft sunlight than Earth. There are more favourable
conditions in the clouds,
with much more bearable
There are advantages to scrutinising temperatures and pressures.
Venus from its clouds
Faster
exploration
Due to superrotation in
the upper atmosphere,
which completes one
rotation 60-times
quicker than the
surface below, this
would allow for a rapid
exploration of Venus.
Head in the clouds

Improved capabilities
© Adrian Mann
There has been discussion
With improved lightweight about whether it would be
technologies and controlled Removing obstacles possible to create a colony in
aerial mobility, aircraft on Venus In constant flight in the Venusian sky, this the clouds of Venus, much like
is now a more likely proposal eliminates the need to navigate around harmful Cloud City on Bespin in the
than it was in the 1960s. terrain and the planet’s many volcanoes. movie franchise Star Wars.
“Conditions on Venus that would

be favourable for life could
12 A day feels
exist in the clouds” like a year
On Venus, that is very much the case. One Venusian day, which
is one complete rotation on its axis, takes 243 Earth days, making
it the longest day of any other planet in the Solar System. Even a
11 Life in the clouds year on Venus is shorter, as it takes 224.7 Earth days to complete
Researchers have proposed that life could be one revolution around the Sun.
found on Venus – just not on the surface. A study
by Sanjay Limaye of the University of Wisconsin-
Madison’s Space Science and Engineering Center
suggested that microbial life could be present in the
cloud tops.
Microbial life on Earth has been found at
13 ‘Backwards’ rotation
Another trait that makes Venus different to most of the planets
altitudes of 41 kilometres (25 miles), and these
in the Solar System is its rotation. The usual routine for planets is
researchers have said that conditions on Venus that
to spin anti-clockwise on their axis, but Venus is an oddball and
would be favourable could exist at altitudes of 48 to
flaunts a clockwise rotation. The leading theory as to why Venus
51 kilometres (30 to 32 miles). Here, temperatures
and Uranus have what is known as a ‘retrograde rotation’ is that
would be roughly 60 degrees Celsius (140 degrees
they were smacked by large objects early in their history. This
Fahrenheit) and pressures would be similar to Earth
collision left the planet seeing stars and spinning the wrong way.
at sea level.
45
15 Rewinding
the clock
14 What the future holds
Researchers want to understand every planet in the Solar System. Efforts in the
Venus wasn’t much different from Earth once
upon a time, and could have even supported life. 700
million years ago, Venus suffered dramatic changes in its
late-20th century showed that Venus is a difficult planet to observe remotely climate that saw it bulk up its atmosphere in a process
from the surface, but with new technologies and a better understanding comes known as a ‘runaway greenhouse effect’.
innovative exploration ideas. A lot of these new ideas have a common theme, Before the runaway greenhouse effect took over, it is
which is exploring Venus from within the clouds. As Venus has more favourable believed that Venus had a reasonable atmosphere and
conditions in the clouds, with wind speeds that allow an object to travel around could have harboured liquid water for about 2 or 3
the planet much faster than it rotates, scientists are looking to introduce aircraft billion years. Before carbon dioxide dominated the
or airships. By utilising solar and wind power, and the added help of buoyancy, atmosphere and made it too hot and dense, it is
robotic missions could become a feature of Venus in the foreseeable future. possible that Venus had an environment
that could have supported life
for billions of years.
2Stationary waves
Scientists have found
1 Seen from
above
stationary waves, or ‘gravity
waves’, in the nightside’s
These irregular, patchy
filament-like structures
were observed by the
atmosphere that do not move
in the same way as the planet’s
superrotation.
3 Indirect surface
observations
These stationary waves
ESA’s Venus Express come from steep,
spacecraft, more mountainous areas on
specifically its Venus that send waves
Visible and Infrared 1 through the atmosphere
Thermal Imaging and reach the upper
Spectrometer (VIRTIS). atmosphere. These
stationary waves are
2 useful in telling scientists
what the planet’s
topography is like.
4 Never-ending heat
The extremely slow rotation
5The mystery of
the nightside
On the nightside the
and a tilt of just 3.39 degrees upper clouds form into
ensures that the planet stays different shapes and
© Tobias Roetsch
continuously boiling for morphologies, causing a

extended periods of time. more irregular system.
46
SA
NA
©
16 Loss of a
magnetic feeling
Although it is often referred to as Earth’s twin,
something that differentiates the two planets
deep down to their cores is that Venus creates
a negligible magnetic field. Planetary scientists
believe that Venus has an iron core that is a similar
size to Earth’s. However, due to the sluggish rotation
of Venus, consequently reducing the motion of the
planet’s core, this weakens the planet’s magnetic
20 One of the
brightest in
© ESA
field, or magnetosphere.
the sky
Because Venus is in such close
17 It has had many 18 Case of the proximity to Earth, it is the

third-brightest celestial object
spacecraft visitors missing lightning in the night sky, sitting behind
Before attention turned to the exploration of Mars There are electrical pulses bursting through the the Sun and the Moon. The
and other planets in the Solar System, Venus was heavy atmosphere, but the missions that have gone Latin nickname for Venus,
the target that space agencies wanted to send to Venus to find them have made it an even more which is largely unused in
their robotic missions to. This genesis of confusing endeavour. Ground-based telescopes modern days,
interplanetary exploration began with a lot of and space probes – including NASA’s Cassini, the is ‘Lucifer’, which translates to
spacecraft and launch failures, starting with the European Space Agency’s Venus Express and the ‘light bringer’. Lucifer is also a
Soviet Union’s Tyazhely Sputnik in February 1961. Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (JAXA) name for the Devil, which is
The first craft to aim for Venus experienced a Akatsuki missions – have had nothing more than quite a coincidence considering
launch failure, and there have since been 41 other some subtle hints about the presence of Venusian the hellish conditions on the
missions launched with the intention to explore lightning. Researchers believe it could still be surface of Venus.
the planet. Of these missions, over 20 have been present, but it is just much more localised and more
successful, and the first of these to conduct a rare, which is why there has been no definitive
successful planetary encounter was NASA’s evidence yet. Or it could be the case that there isn’t
Mariner 2 space probe on 14 December 1962. lightning at all. 21 A source
of shadows
Because Venus is the third-
brightest object in the night
19 Soviet success at Venus

The Russian Space Agency, Roscosmos, is not particularly well known for its robotic exploration missions
sky, it is bright enough to cast
shadows on the surface of
Earth. Only two other celestial
in recent years, as its missions are now few and far between. Before the dissolution of the Soviet Union
objects are capable of this: the
in 1991, the country was prominent in Venus exploration missions in the 1970s and 1980s. One historic
Sun and the Moon. However,
mission that the Soviets conducted was Venera 7 in December 1970, which became the first mission to
very good eyesight is needed to
land on a different planet. Then, in March 1982, the Venera 13 lander managed to survive Venus’ extreme
see these Venusian shadows.
temperatures and pressures for over an astonishing two hours.
22 Venus’
weird winds
Although the planet moves
slowly, the clouds move across
the atmosphere once every four
Earth days; this is known as
‘superrotation’. This generates
speeds of 360 kilometres
(224 miles) per hour, which
surpasses the speeds of the
most dangerous hurricanes
on Earth. The speeds decrease
© Shutterstock
with cloud height, creating

winds that are just a few miles
per hour on the surface.
47
Planet Profile
Earth
The rocky world that we call home
is full of wonders
rather pretty blue-and-white planet that sees glaciers coat large parts of the planet
A orbiting an otherwise obscure

G-type main sequence star, Earth
is notable largely for being the
only place in the universe to have evolved
over periods of up to 500,000 years. The
current interglacial should end in around 25,000
years, though warming caused by increased
atmospheric carbon dioxide levels could delay
organic life. Other than this quirk of chemistry, this by trapping heat within the atmosphere.
the third planet from the Sun also has active In a billion years’ time, the energy received
plate tectonics, and it’s one of the few planets by Earth from its star will have increased by ten
whose moon fits perfectly over its Sun during an per cent, enough for the oceans to be lost thanks
eclipse, leading to some fantastic sights. It is the to a combination of subduction into the planet’s
densest planet in its Solar System, and the largest mantle and photodissociation of the water
of the four rocky planets closest to its star. An molecules by increased levels of ultraviolet light.
atmosphere 100 kilometres (62 miles) thick coats Without surface water, plate tectonics will come
the planet, offering it protection from ultraviolet to a halt. Earth will become similar to its near-
light given out by its nearest star thanks to its twin Venus, its neighbour on the sunward side,
layer of ozone. Heating of the upper atmosphere with a runaway greenhouse effect eventually
means it’s slowly losing its hydrogen and helium raising the surface temperature to 1,330 degrees
into space, but at a very slow rate. Celsius (2,426 degrees Fahrenheit).
With its thick atmosphere and yellow sunlight, In another 5 billion years, the Sun will run
much of Earth’s vegetation is green, though most out of hydrogen to burn in its core and will
of its inhabitants are not. Its position at around begin the process of swelling into a red giant.
150 million kilometres (93 million miles) from As it expands, Earth, along with Venus and the
its star means liquid water is commonplace on small rocky planet Mercury, will be engulfed
its surface – both salty and non-salty forms, by its chromosphere. Tidal forces will break up
freezing at the poles – though a recent increase the Moon, briefly turning it into a ring system
in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels is causing before the surface and mantle are stripped from
this ice to melt. Unlike its neighbour Mars, which the Earth, leaving only its core. The final legacy
is populated solely by robots, biological life of Earth will be an increase in the Sun’s metal
flourishes both in Earth’s oceans and on the third content of 0.01 per cent.
of the planet not covered with water.
An axial tilt of 23.5 degrees leads to seasons
on the planet, which combine with both
atmospheric and oceanic circulations to produce
a variety of weather types, some of them
extreme. A single, large natural satellite is tidally
locked to the planet, and its gravitational pull
affects the water level beneath it, causing tides.
Along with the many artificial satellites created
by its inhabitants, Earth also has a small number
of quasi-satellites, mostly captured asteroids
circulating around Lagrange points L4 and L5 in Left: Earth is
surrounded
horseshoe orbits. by a magnetic
© NASA
Earth is currently 20,000 years into an bubble called its

© Getty
interglacial period, part of a cycle of ice ages magnetosphere
48
planet profile: Earth
“With its thick atmosphere

and yellow sunlight, much of
Earth’s vegetation is green”
composition
32.1%Iron
30.1%
Oxygen
15.1%
Silicon
13.9%
Magnesium
2.9%
Sulphur
1.8%
Nickel
1.5%
Calcium
1.4%
aluminium
1.2%
Traces of
other elements
49
NEWS FROM Earth

Extinction event
gical Conservation
A study published in the journal Biolo
cent of anim als and plants in mountain
suggests that 84 per
temp eratu re rises by
regions risk being wiped out if the
an aver age of three degr ees Celsi us
more than
rising to 100 per cent
(5.4 degrees Fahrenheit), with this
on islan ds.
as Madagascar’s
Geographically unique species such
of the Hima layas are 2.7
lemurs and the snow leopards
likely to go extin ct than spec ies that are more
times more
of unique tropical
widespread. More than 60 per cent
ks to the action of climate
species are likely to go extinct than
Caribbean islands and
change alone, and places such as the
t of their ende mic plants by 2050.
Sri Lanka could lose mos
and 95 per cent of those
Up to 92 per cent of species on land
face nega tive cons eque nces .
in the sea could
ay and South Africa,
The researchers – from Brazil, Norw
world can keep global
among others – concluded that if the
re rises with in the terms of the Paris
average temperatu
© Getty
vulnerable species drops
Climate Agreement, then the risk to
Celsius (2.7 degrees
by a factor of ten. With a 1.5 degrees
two per cent of land and marine
Fahrenheit) rise, only
spec ies face extin ction .
Artificial island
dy available to it,
Not content with all the islands alrea
ies on Earth has been busy
the dominant mammal spec
more . A new artificial islan d near Malé, the
making
blic of Mald ives, an arch ipelago in the
capital of the Repu
e for peop le stranded
Indian Ocean, will act as a refug
level s. With more than 80 per cent of its
by rising sea
above the water,
1,190 islands just one metre (3.2 feet)
Mald ives has the lowe st terra in of any country in
the
ly susceptible to
the world, which makes it particular
of the new island, known
sea-level rise. Construction
uma lé, bega n in 1997 , and it has grown to over
as Hulh
(1.5 squa re mile s) in area. It sits
four square kilometres
, constructed from
two metres (6.5 feet) above sea level
d coral, and is now the
sand pumped on top of submerge
the arch ipela go.
fourth-largest island in
up to half a metre
With sea levels predicted to rise by
if the Paris Clim ate Agre ement targets are
by 2100 even
cts like this may become more
hit, land reclamation proje
as popu latio ns are drive n from low-lying areas.
© NASA
common
Moon telescope
funding from NASA
An early stage proposal has received
a radio teles cope in a crate r on the far side of the
to build
conc ept to the Arec ibo Observatory, the
Moon. Similar in
wou ld take advantage of the
Lunar Crater Radio Telescope
man y mete or crate rs to supp ort its structure.
Moon’s
Moon are tidally
Because of the way Earth and the
ys faces away from us.
locked, one side of the Moon alwa
ce on the Moon,
The advantage of building such a devi
is the shiel ding effect it gives
particularly on its far side,
st Earth -gen erate d noise and even the radio waves
again
able to observe
emitted by the Sun. It would also be
that are bloc ked by Earth’s
the universe at frequencies
re, such as thos e belo w 30M Hz. Observations in
atmosphe
neve r been mad e by humans.
these wavebands have
climbing robots in a
The proposal is to deploy two wall-
to 3.1 miles) in diameter.
crater three to five kilometres (1.8
© Adrian Mann
weav e a dish one kilometre (0.62

The robots would then
s) acro ss using a wire mesh . A receiver would then be
mile
crossed cables, each
suspended above this dish on two
ld be able to move, adjusting
end held by a robot that wou
ion of the rece iver for the best results.
the posit
50
planet profile: Earth
The Evolution of
Surface Water and Ocean Topography mission Planet earth
Due to launch in April 2022, SWOT – a joint development between NASA and French space agency
CNES, with help from Canada and the UK – is designed to accurately measure the height of Earth’s • Date: 4.54 billion years ago
surface water. The SWOT mission aims to measure how bodies of water change over time. It will use Activity: Earth formed from a
a radar altimeter to measure the height of oceans, rivers and lakes across 90 per cent of the globe at protoplanetary disc around a
least twice every 21 days at an average precision better than 1.5 centimetres (0.6 inches). young star.
This data will lead to better weather and climate forecasting, providing more accurate information
about sea and river levels that can be plugged into the supercomputer prediction models used by • Date: 4.5 billion years ago
meteorological agencies. It will also be able to measure the 3D shape of floodwater, track flood levels Activity: Dense elements sank
and improve our ability to predict future floods. Below: Artist’s to the centre, forming Earth’s
The largest effect SWOT may have on Earth’s population is the data it will provide about freshwater model of core, while the outside layer
management. This will help urban planners to manage the distribution of water for agricultural, the SWOT cooled and solidified.
spacecraft
industrial and urban needs by providing information
about reservoirs and major rivers. The enhanced • Date: 4.48 billion years ago
knowledge we will gain of Earth’s water cycle Activity: A massive impact with
and ocean circulations will help us to better another body sent a portion of
understand everything from surface Earth’s crust into orbit, forming
water to the deep oceans, and the Moon.
this should improve our reactions
to natural disasters, waterborne • Date: 4.4 billion years ago
diseases, sharing water sources Activity: Volcanism released
among different populations water vapour into Earth’s
and countries, as well as atmosphere, raining down to
managing electricity production begin the formation of oceans.
from renewable means and
safeguarding biodiversity. • Date: 3.5 billion years ago
Activity: Earth’s magnetic
field was established, with a
© Getty
magnetosphere about half the
SA
NA
©
modern radius.
Planet Earth
One
• Date: 750 million years ago
Activity: The earliest known
by numbers supercontinent, Rodinia, began

to break apart.
One
Natural
atmosphere
Mean surface
pressure
• Date: 180 million years ago
Activity: The most recent
supercontinent, Pangaea,
broke apart.
43km
The difference in the
satellite • Date: 65 million years ago
Activity: Formation of the
Himalayas began as the Indian
14°C
Earth’s diameter at the
equator than if measured subcontinent drifted into Asia.
pole-to-pole Below: The
structure of • Date: 6 million years ago
the Earth from Activity: A small African ape
Average surface the surface
temperature crust down began a family tree that led to a
to the solid dominant species.
inner core
5,430°C
1G
Average surface
gravity
Temperature at
inner core
1auAverage distance
SA
© NA
to Sun
51
The lunar surface is home to more activity than its

barren appearance lets on
Reported by James Romero
52
The moon is alive
THE
MOON
IS
ALIVE
© Alamy
53
rom the 4-billion-year-old, but also many local, smooth-surfaced planets, dwarf This made sense. The Moon, as a relatively small
F 230-kilometre (143-mile) wide Clavius

impact crater to Neil Armstrong’s
50-year-old, size-nine-and-a-half ‘one
small step’, the Moon has recorded momentous
planets and moons. In each case the main concealer
of these impact blemishes is volcanism. This
recycling of surface crust is familiar to us on Earth,
but also accounts for the lack of cratering on Venus,
body, shouldn't have ever had huge amounts of
internal heat. And what it had should have been lost
quickly due to the large surface area to mass ratio
that blights smaller worlds.
episodes across much of our Solar System’s history. Jupiter’s moon Io and even further out to Pluto. This heat might have another effect. Evidence
For scientists its surface provides a 4-billion-year- But no such rejuvenation appears to have played from thrust faults shows the lunar surface shrunk
old astronomical archive of events that shaped both out on the lunar surface for a while. While the as it cooled, contracting the crust up against itself.
its own peppered surface and our planet too. A large, dark mares covered some of the most ancient This makes it even more difficult to imagine
passive observer, its record-keeping value lies in the cratered crust with wide-scale eruptions, billions of volcanic activity piercing through. But then came a
fact that things tend to happen to it, rather than it years of exposure to Solar System violence has left photograph that put that all in doubt.
showing signs of its own activity. them sporting plenty of blemishes of their own. The In 1971, while Apollo 15 astronauts David
And yet it seems we might have missed concentration of such cratering dates the mares to Scott and James Irwin test-drove the first rover on
something. Something small in size but larger in between 3 and 4 billion years old, figures backed the lunar surface, Command Module pilot Alfred
significance. Located right between the eyes of the up by analysis of recovered lunar rock samples. Worden, orbiting above, took a picture of a strange
‘Man in the Moon’, some scientists believe they have And after that? Well, not much. “We thought that blotchy feature. Named Ina, it was an exposure
found evidence that lunar volcanoes were erupting volcanism had ended by 1 billion years ago,” says of a dynamic landscape – by lunar standards
when dinosaurs roamed the Earth – and perhaps Julie Stopar, a director at the Lunar and Planetary anyway. The Moon’s surface is a collection of
they are still erupting somewhere on the surface Institute in Houston. homogeneously flat vistas covered by broken-up
right now. If confirmed such activity would tear up
current models of the Moon’s internal structure and
how it evolved, as well as rewriting assumptions
about other supposedly ‘lifeless’ worlds beyond. As
missions are proposed to visit this intriguing site,
we ask, is the Moon still alive?
“It is hard to explain how you can have young
A quick glance of its ancient, battered surface
offers little hope. The Moon’s cratered appearance
volcanism based on everything we know
is in stark contrast to not only the planet it orbits, about the Moon” Julie Stopar
Right
(clockwise):
In 1971, while
Apollo 15
astronauts David
Scott and James
Irwin test-drove
the first lunar
rover, Alfred
Worden, orbiting
above, took the
first pictures
of Ina
54
The moon is alive
rock and dusty regolith. It's a landscape bombarded at the time, and has been a cause of much debate
into uniform consistency, where any notable
topography has been eroded through landslides and
ever since. “It would totally destroy our current
understanding of the thermal history of the
How do we
impacts over vast eons of time.
Ina is different. It comprises steep, 20-metre
Moon,” says Lionel Wilson, planetary scientist at
Lancaster University and sceptic of the young
know that the
(65-foot), smooth-sided mounds surrounded by
lower relief, rougher deposits. Like drops of “dirty
volcanism hypothesis.
Wilson isn’t alone in his hesitance, especially
Moon is alive?
mercury” on the lunar surface was how astronomer after higher resolution imaging by the Lunar There are increasing
Ewen Whitaker described the mounds, which are Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). In 2012 NASA’s signs of ongoing life
typically less than a few hundred meters across. Brent Garry argued the lack of crisp fractures, often
However, with 45-degree slopes, they represent associated with young volcanic deposits due to the Finding Ina
some of the steepest deposits on the Moon. It would surface cooling quicker than the interior, implies In 1971 as part of
be quite a sight. “It will look even more dramatic either they eroded over billions of years, or never Apollo 15, Alfred
than even a fresh impact crater,” says Stopar. “The formed, and therefore Ina was not volcanic. For Worden took a
rough materials around it will look a bit like a rough modellers of the Moon’s evolution it is a tempting picture of a strange,
sea around the smooth island mounds.” conclusion. Dismissing the young volcanism blotchy feature. Later
The unusually well-preserved deposits and lack hypothesis certainly makes for a better fit with named Ina, the exposure
of superposed impact craters led to suggestions everything we know about our celestial companion. represented a uniquely
dynamic landscape.
Ina was formed by volcanic eruptions during However, no matter how logical it was to ignore,
the last 100 million years – possibly gaseous the suggestion that in Ina we are looking at
basaltic lava flows surrounded by ashy pyroclastic evidence of a planetary body that is still alive, or at Like liquid drops
deposits. “Metre-scale topography cannot survive least was very recently, won't go away. of mercury
for long, geologically speaking, due to the constant “It is really hard to explain how you can have Against a lunar
sandblasting of micro-meteoroid and macro- young volcanism based on everything we know landscape of almost
meteoroid bombardment,” says Mark Robinson, a about the Moon. However, others say we can't continuous flat vistas
lunar researcher at NASA. possibly preserve these features for 3 billion covered in a layer of
“It certainly looks much younger than anything years, so it has to be young,” says Stopar. And broken-up rock and dusty
else on the surface bar the youngest impact craters,” if Ina was proving hard to explain, the Lunar regolith, Ina’s smooth, steep-
observes Stopar. But this was a significant claim Reconnaissance Orbiter found 70 similar-looking sided mounds stand out.
sites, collectively known as Irregular Mare Patches,
or IMPs. And for some IMPs, the evidence for youth Pristine Ina
might be stronger still. Ina's unusually well-
“There is one IMP located on the ejecta of the preserved deposits
Aristarchus crater. This is a young crater that we and lack of superposed
think is roughly 200 million years old,” says Stopar. impact craters led to
So we have near-pristine Ina, IMPs seemingly suggestions it must
superimposed on crater material only a few be no older than 100
hundred million years old, plus a collection of 70 million years old – very recent
compared to the lunar surface.
other features for ongoing monitoring. Surely we
can allow ourselves to imagine lava spewing out
somewhere on the lunar surface today? “It's not IMP speculation
much of a stretch,” agrees Robinson. In 2014 a team
With such a tantalising prospect at stake – not from Arizona State
to mention our entire theoretical basis for the University, analysing
structure and evolution of the Moon – a resolution data from NASA’s LRO,
between observation and simulation was required. found 70 similar-looking
As the most
Theories to account for the ill-fitting Ina and its sites to Ina, which are
volcanically
collectively known as Irregular
IMP friends have fallen into two categories: those active body
Mare Patches.
maintaining Ina is old have given it a facelift. In in the Solar
2006 Peter H. Schultz at Brown University proposed System,
a spring clean via later subsurface outgassing that Jupiter’s Patchy Aristarchus
removed the overlying regolith, while Le Qiao, moon Io has One IMP is located on
a very young, top of the ejecta of the
uncratered Aristarchus crater. This
surface fresh crater is itself
only 200 million years
Thrust up old, providing further
lunar cliffs is evidence this new class of
evidence of lunar features are young.
the Moon’s
contraction
as it cooled. IMP concentration
Some have Grouping of IMP sites
questioned in one region might
where such provide additional
compression support for young
All photos © NASA
forces would volcanism by reducing

allow lava the amount of internal
to reach the heat the Moon needs to have
surface retained to power them.
55
Water on the Moon

Ideas of a bone-dry lunar surface have been overturned by
detection of water within rock minerals, and as surface ice
1Fra Mauro Highlands

The samples collected
from the Apollo 14 landing
site were in 2008 found to
include minerals containing
water in the form of hydroxyl,
a chemical that includes
hydrogen and oxygen.
2 Bullialdus crater
In 2013 a team at
John Hopkins University
7
analysing spectroscopic
data from the Moon 2
Mineralogy Mapper
detected magmatic water
in the central peak of this
impact crater.
3Southern poles
In 2009 a rocket from NASA's Lunar
Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite
spacecraft deliberately crashed into the
shadowed crater Cabeus. Within the
material thrown up, 150 kilograms of
3
56
The moon is alive
4 Shackleton Crater
Spacecraft
Perpetually in shadow,
the crater provides a cold trap
to freeze water from comet
impacts. The Lunar Prospector
spacecraft revealed higher than
© ESA
normal amounts of hydrogen,

indicative of water ice.
Chandrayaan-1 Lunar Crater NASA's Clementine Lunar Prospector
The first Indian Observation and Clementine found early The 19-month mission
lunar probe spent Sensing Satellite evidence of water ice was designed for a low-
almost a year in orbit. Launched after the first after scanning the polar orbit investigation
It contained the Moon detection of water by surface with radar of the Moon. This
Mineralogy Mapper Chandrayaan-1, LCROSS in 1996. However, included mapping the
imaging spectrometer was envisioned as a follow-up observations surface composition
instrument that low-cost means of with radio telescopes and locating lunar
provided the first high- determining the nature suggested the spots resources, measuring
resolution spatial and of hydrogen detected surveyed had too much magnetic and gravity
spectral map of the at the polar regions of Sun exposure for ice fields and studying
entire lunar surface. the Moon. to survive. outgassing events.
5 Taurus–
Littrow valley “A lot of the patches are
5
As well as water within
minerals from the lunar interior,
found in areas where we
the Apollo samples, like those
from Apollo 17, reveal water
think volcanism could
inside crustal rocks, thought
to be evidence of younger have lasted the longest”
volcanic intrusions.
Julie Stopar
visiting Brown, suggested a recent collapse into a

subsurface void.
Wilson was involved in a 2017 paper advocating
the replacement of standard mare basalt lava with
a more exotic variety that degrades differently,
creating the illusion of youth. Their lava of choice
is a gas-rich magmatic foam, like an extreme
pumice. While critics have questioned how such
a fragile deposit could survive billions of years
of micrometeorite impacts, Wilson believes his
6 Rozhdestvenskiy
crater
In 2018 a Hawaiian team found
solution could link IMPs to the origin of the mare
basalts themselves. “Maybe IMPs are places where
there were vents? During the very last stage of the
evidence of surface-exposed
mare eruptions, it [the lava] is not flooding out any
water ice within reflectance
more. The bulk of the gas comes out in intermittent
spectra of indirect lighting
from the crater’s permanently explosions and gas-filled lavas.”
shadowed regions. On the other side are those trying to keep the
Moon volcanically active long enough to account
for eruptions in the last 100 million years. One
way might be to ignore the vast majority of it.
Most IMPs are located in the same area, along with
elevated concentrations of thorium, a radioactive
source of internal heating in subsurface rocks. “A lot
of the patches are found in areas where we think
volcanism could have lasted the longest. Perhaps
7 Descartes Highlands
Modern analysis of various
lunar samples, including those
as recently as 50 to 60 million years ago,” suggests
Stopar. And if the last vestiges of lunar internal
heat had stuck around beneath certain parts of the
from this Apollo 16 site, have
All photos © NASA
surface, perhaps occasional upwellings might not

revealed water inside apatite
minerals of the lava plains that have had such a tough job reaching the surface.
arise deep within the Moon. This was one conclusion of earlier work, again
involving Stopar, which challenged the locked-up
57
Volcanoes on the Moon

The Moon has been volcanically active for most of its history
Pre-Nectarian period Early Imbrian epoch Late Imbrian epoch Eratosthenian period
Lunar crust formed via mineral The mantle lying below the lunar The thinned crust led to peak rates The massive basaltic volcanism of
crystallisation of a global magma basins melted due to frequent of effusive wide-ranging basalt the Imbrian period tapered off and
ocean, forming the lunar highlands. giant meteorite impacts that eruptions, creating the famous ceased. During this era late-stage
With liquid surface volcanism not came with the late heavy mare, the dark, smooth lowlands of volcanism filled low-lying regions
possible, hot vapour release did bombardment and thinned the Moon. There is also evidence of in and around Mare Imbrium and
create an atmosphere, however.
3.9 billion years ago (BYA) 3.0 BYA 2.5 BYA 2.0 BYA 1.5 BYA
surface hypothesis. “There are lots of young tectonic of being studied. While the Lunar Reconnaissance
features on the Moon that suggest the crust is still Orbiter is providing the best-ever images of the
moving around,” she explains. surface, the evidence of collapse features or recent
While Robinson sees Ina and the other IMPs as volcanism on the sub-metre scale is unlikely to be
compelling evidence for lunar volcanism in the last resolved. “We actually have to be there. It requires us
few 100 million years, Stopar sees problems with looking into the soil on the landform. I don't think
both hypotheses, and Wilson is maintaining his we can get that from orbit,” argues Stopar.
scepticism. “The discussion can get quite heated,” But who is ‘we’? In the same year US Vice
he says. President Mike Pence called on NASA to return
© NASA
One way out of the impasse would be to visit an American astronauts to the Moon by 2024, is Stopar
IMP, with Ina preferred due to its size and history suggesting setting up camp around the base of Ina
and mounting its smooth slopes? Not exactly.
Above:
Putting a geologist on the Moon has benefits.
Planetary
There are many interesting sites where complex
scientist Julie
Stopar has scientific questions could be chipped away.
proposed These include the south pole, where elevated
a ‘fast and concentrations of rare lunar water could explain
cheap’ our own blue planet. This is one reason the US has
SmallSat targeted it for a lunar base.
lander mission The Ina mystery is different. It represents a
to visit Ina relatively straightforward puzzle where we think we
and look for know what we are looking for. The key indicators
signs of recent
include the small fractures that Garry couldn’t see
volcanism
from orbit, lava flow textures and collapse pits,
Left: The as well as the general size, shape, porosity and
constant mineralogical content of surface grains, which
recycling of should all be indicative if derived from broken-up
rock through foamy lavas. In fact, so well defined is the question
plate tectonics that Stopar and colleagues have offered to answer
and volcanism it for just $100 million, a knock-down price in
across Earth’s planetary exploration.
history makes
For that money you get the Irregular Mare Patch
it a poor
Exploration Lander, or IMPEL, a SmallSat mission
record of
planetary and proposed this April in the journal Planetary and
Solar System Space Science. The lander would carry a mast
camera for high-resolution colour imaging of the
landing site, and a microscopic imager for close-up
© Getty
analysis of the surface regolith and any signs of

fracturing. “It's a great idea,” says Wilson. “It's a fast
58
The moon is alive
Copernican period
It is generally thought lunar volcanism
had ceased by the Copernican period.
However, evidence from Ina and 70
other similar-looking mare patches
suggest small-scale volcanism may
have continued.
1.0 BYA
Above:
NASA’s Lunar
Reconnaissance
Orbiter has
returned images
of 70 similar-
looking sites to
Ina, collectively
known as
© NASA
Irregular
Mare Patches
and cheap mission. And that is not a criticism.”

However, while he sees the potential for great
science, he doubts IMPEL alone can date Ina.
The Moon's explosive outgassing
“Detailed morphological studies by a lander would Outbursts could explain the appearance of the lunar surface
be enormously useful in establishing exactly
what happened, but only radiometric dating will
convince me of when.” However, he still sees value
in SmallSats to answer this question. In fact, Wilson
suggests sending more. “Why not send five of these
things to five candidate IMPs to establish the most
interesting one, then send the larger mission to
collect samples.”
In the meantime the rest of the community is
left with orbital images. Here there have been no
signs of any structural changes that could indicate
present-day activity. “It is still a leap to say it [the
1Building up of gas 2Mixture of gas and material

Moon] is still active today,” states Stopar. “However
this could be based on the limited timetable we
Gas builds up between the lunar megaregolith The concoction of regolith and gas now
have been observing.” and the upper layer of regolith (which has a low creates a substantial volume on the surface. It's
“If any form of observation were to capture diffusivity). The pressure is built up by the gas, filled with shells of regolith particles. The cloud
unambiguous images of any actual eruption, lifting a cone of material to the surface. of matter and gas expands.
then of course I would accept that there is
something fundamentally wrong with our current
understanding of the Moon's interior – and relish
trying to understand what we have been doing
wrong all these years,” says Wilson.
Stopar believes the implications of such a
discovery might go well beyond the lunar interior.
If the Moon could support recent volcanism, then
we would need to re-examine assumptions about
other small moons and dwarf planets. This includes
whether the same mechanism for preserving
residual heat could be keeping sub-surface water
Illustrations © Nicholas Forder
liquid elsewhere, maintaining more of the oceans

known to exist within Jupiter’s Europa and Saturn’s
Enceladus. “We need to go there to Ina because it
is a place where we can answer a really important
question with big implications, just based on this
3 Moon matter escapes to crater 4 All gas escapes
The cloud continues to expand until it
reaches a point where it's not very thick when
All of the gas starts to leak out and any lunar
material that was trapped within the cloud has
viewed from above. Regolith that has fallen from managed to escape. It is deposited onto the
one small area,” Stopar concludes. the gas cloud piles up around the crater. ground around and inside the 'impact'.
59
Planet Profile
Mars
The Red Planet has a host of new robots
investigating it
cross the gulf of space, no other the US, while Zhurong hails from China. These
A planet has fired humanity’s

imagination so much as the Red
Planet, and it has frequently been
associated with violence, war and death. To the
missions are the lucky ones. There have been
a spate of failed missions from the USSR, US,
UK and Japan – from rocket failures and solar
panels failing to open to a mix-up between the
ancient Sumerians it was Nergal, a god of war units of measurement used in America and
and plague who presided over the netherworld. the metric system used by most of the rest of
In Mesopotamia it was the ‘star of judgement of the world, which caused NASA’s Mars Climate
the fate of the dead’. The Chinese associated it Orbiter to either burn up or skip off the Martian
with the element fire, while for the people of the atmosphere and into deep space in 1999.
Tiwi Islands off the coast of Australia the planet Human missions to Mars have been a dream
was one of the four wives of the Moon Man, who since the earliest days of space exploration.
followed the path of the Sun Woman through In 2004 the Vision for Space Exploration
the sky – the other wives were Mercury, Jupiter announced by US president George W. Bush
and Venus. The planet was a familiar sight to the called for a crewed mission to the Moon in
astronomers of ancient Egypt, Babylonia, Rome 2020 as a stepping stone to Mars. In 2007 NASA
– where Mars was the god of war – and Greece, administrator Michael D. Griffin said the agency
where Aristotle noticed that the planet vanished aimed to put a person on Mars by 2037. The
behind the Moon during an occultation, proving Journey to Mars plan, formulated by NASA in
it was farther away. 2015, uses the ISS and an asteroid captured in
Following the invention of the telescope in 2020 to test deep-space habitation facilities. That
the 17th century, Mars could be observed in phase is behind schedule, but the ISS phase is
greater detail, and Christiaan Huygens was able underway and set to last until 2024. Humans on
to observe Syrtis Major – which he thought was a Mars in the 2030s is still NASA’s goal.
plain, but we now know to be a volcano – the first
surface feature seen on another planet, in 1659.
He was also able to measure Mars’ day length as
24 hours and 30 minutes – only seven minutes
short of the true value.
It would be another 312 years before a human-
made spacecraft would touch down on Martian
soil, with the Soviet Union’s Mars 3 lasting
110 seconds on the surface and managing to
transmit only part of a single image that showed
no detail. There would be several more failures
until NASA’s Viking 1 touched down in 1976 and
operated for over six years.
Exploration of the planet has continued, and
right now there are three operational rovers on
its surface. Curiosity and Perseverance are from Left: Mars
Pathfinder
explores
the rocky
© NASA
surface of the
Red Planet
60
planet profile: Mars
© NASA/JPL
Above: Mars’
north pole,
taken by the
Mars Global
Surveyor
Below:
Mars Global
Surveyor
image of ice at
the south pole
Atmospheric
Composition
95%
Carbon dioxide
2.6%
Molecular
nitrogen
1.9%Argon
0.16%
Molecular
oxygen
©N
AS
A
0.06%
Carbon
monoxide
0.03%
© NASA/JPL
Water vapour
61
NEWS FROM MARS

Renewable energy on Mars
y on Mars, which
Renewable power is a little bit trick
Sun, has dust storm s and has no
is farther from the
is wind, and so
tides. What it does have, however,
Technology have
scientists from Delft University of
idea of designing robots
come up with the excellent
fly huge pow er-ge nera ting kites in the Martian
to
pite the low dens ity of the Martian
atmosphere. “Des
high enou gh to make
atmosphere, wind speeds are
gy com petit ive with nucle ar pow er in terms
wind ener
per unit mass ,” the scien tists
of power produced
could generate 127
wrote in a research paper. One kite
the scientists say,
megawatt-hours of energy per year,
ehol ds in the US.
enough to power five hous
solar panels –
The assembly, which will also have
only 43 per cent of the sunlight we
though Mars gets
the wind and be reeled
enjoy on Earth – will catch
rming a serie s of tack ing man oeuvres
out, perfo
. This is all
to maximise its speed and pulling force
© NASA
wing-like kite,
controlled by a robot that steers the
the cable is pulled
changing its angle of attack. Once
ped to mini mise the pull as
out, the kite can be drop
reele d back in, read y to fly again .
it’s
Oxygen on Mars
not conducive to
The atmosphere on Mars is thin and
It’s a host ile environment,
effective human breathing.
astro naut s who expl ore there will need to take
and any
hum ans are to build an outpost on
their own oxygen. If
of generating their
the planet, however, they need a way
component of rocket
own oxygen, which is also a critical
to get four astronauts back
fuel. NASA estimates that
Mars wou ld take abou t 25 tonn es of the gas.
from
urce Utilization
Enter the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Reso
aboa rd NAS A’s
Experiment (MOXIE), carried
ance rove r. This uses 300 watt s of power to
Persever
ian atmosphere,
heat carbon dioxide from the Mart
from the
where it strips the oxygen atoms away
send s the resu lting carb on mon oxide back
carbon and
test in April , it creat ed just over
outside. During its first
gram s of oxyg en in an hour , whic h is about ten
five
. MOXIE is just a
minutes of breathing for an astronaut
pow erful versions of it
demonstrator, but larger, more
one day prod uce enou gh oxyg en for a colony.
could
© NASA
Ingenuity wobbles, but flies on

by NASA’s
The small robotic helicopter carried
ever ance rove r mad e its sixth flight across the Martian
Pers
was a flight marked by
surface near the end of May, but it
er spike s.
control disruptions and pow
opte r was aske d to climb to ten metres (33
The helic
ce befo re flyin g to the west to take
feet) above the surfa
interest there. It had
stereoscopic images of a region of
glitch was noticed in the
been flying for 54 seconds when a
from the navigation camera. Only
stream of images coming
imag e was lost, but this led to the following images
one
stamps. Ingenuity
being delivered with inaccurate time
that uses both visual data
uses an algorithm to navigate
re thing s are and time stam ps to tell it when it
about whe
saw them.
its velocity
As a result, Ingenuity began adjusting
back and forth in an oscil latin g pattern, and
and tilting
for the rest of the flight. It
this behaviour persisted
unte red roll and pitch excu rsion s of more than 20
enco
© NASA
and spikes in power

degrees, large control corrections
the robo tic aircraft was able to
consumption. Despite this,
in five metr es (16.5 feet) of its intended location.
land with
62
planet profile: Mars
© NASA
Evolution of the
Nuclear rockets red planet
All this talk of oxygen and energy
is all well and good, but before • Date: 4.57 billion years ago
you can start deploying these Activity: Mars was part of the
technologies on Mars you’ve got same protoplanetary disc as the
to get there. NASA has explored other planets, swirling around
the Solar System using a range the nascent Sun.
of chemical rockets and gas-
fuelled manoeuvring systems, • Date: 4 billion years ago
but is investigating two methods Activity: The Late Heavy
of nuclear propulsion to speed Bombardment scarred Mars’
humanity to the Red Planet. surface – these craters can still
The first is nuclear electric be seen today.
propulsion, otherwise known as
the ion drive, which supplies low thrust over a long interval to gradually build Above: • Date: 4 billion years ago
Illustration
high acceleration. The other is nuclear thermal propulsion, which provides high thrust and twice the Activity: Mars was hit by a
of a Mars
propellant efficiency of chemical rockets. NASA is looking into preliminary reactor design concepts for transit habitat body the size of Pluto, creating
such a rocket, which heats a fluid, usually liquid hydrogen, in a nuclear reactor. Once it reaches a high and nuclear the smooth Borealis Basin that
enough temperature, the fluid expands through a rocket nozzle to create thrust. propulsion covers 40 per cent of Mars.
system that
Nuclear thermal propulsion has been on NASA’s radar for more than 60 years. Research on the could one day
subject once concentrated on fission reactors, but these came with a number of problems, notably take astronauts • Date: 3.8 billion years ago
that no one wanted a flying fission reactor with even a chance of exploding over their heads. Recent to Mars Activity: Substantial amounts
research has moved to nuclear fusion power, and such a rocket could be constructed in orbit as an of liquid water on the surface
additional safety measure. Nuclear propulsion could enable missions to Mars at times when the planet began to dry up due to the loss
is not favourably positioned relative to Earth, and could cut the round trip time of a crewed mission to of the planet’s magnetic field
just two years. and its atmosphere.
• Date: 3.3 billion years ago

Activity: Olympus Mons,
a huge volcano, formed as
Mars by 15% 8 part of a period of enormous

geological activity.
numbers Mars is 15 per cent of

Earth’s volume Meters
There is eight metres of
• Date: 237 years ago
Activity: Astronomer William
Herschel declared Mars would
permanent frozen CO2 at offer “a situation in many
the south pole respects similar to ours”.
38% • Date: 144 years ago

Activity: Asaph Hall discovered
Phobos and Deimos, the
70%
Its gravity is 38 per cent Martian moons.
of Earth’s
Olympus • Date: 50 years ago

The polar caps are 70 per
cent water ice
Mons
The tallest mountain of any
Activity: Humans started
dropping craft and robots
onto the surface, but many of
planet, it’s 2.5 times the
these fail.
height of Everest above
sea level
© NASA
11%
Mars has 11 per cent of
Earth’s mass
7.7 Left: Olympus
Mons is a
dormant shield
Its soil pH is 7.7, which volcano, the
is slightly alkaline biggest in the
Solar System
63
MARTIAN MOONS
EXPLORATION
Japan’s next sample-collection feat will be to the second and
third closest natural satellites in the Solar System
apan has a very adept space agency to launch towards Phobos and Deimos in 2024, Astronomers have never been able to truly
J in terms of exploration. The Japan

Aerospace Exploration Agency, or
JAXA, has engineered the launches
of the Hayabusa missions to near-Earth asteroids
gain scientific data from both objects upon
arrival in 2025, collect a sample of Phobos in the
process and finish the mission by returning the
sample to Earth by 2029. Russia’s space agency,
understand the origins of Phobos and Deimos,
which are 23 and 12 kilometres (14 and 7.5 miles)
in diameter respectively. There are two leading
theories as to how they formed. The first is that
and the Akatsuki space probe to Venus. Although Roscosmos, attempted the same feat in 2011 with they are captured asteroids from the nearby
the Hayabusa2 spacecraft is the only mission the Fobos-Grunt mission. However, untimely asteroid belt. If this turns out to be correct, this
so far to occur without a hiccup, there is much rocket burns meant it did not reach a trajectory could mean they may have transported water,
to learn from these mistakes, and JAXA is now toward Mars, but instead became stranded in volatiles or other organic compounds from
readying itself to launch a new mission to Mars’ low-Earth orbit, ending with a controlled re-entry further regions of the Solar System.
moons, Phobos and Deimos. into the Pacific Ocean. The second explanation is that they were
JAXA is currently preparing its Martian The main aim of the MMX mission is to formed after a huge collision involving the Red
Moons Exploration (MMX) mission, with a plan investigate the origins of these two moons. Planet, implying that these moons are essentially
Three sections
1 MMX can be split into
three sections: the propulsion
5
module, the exploration
module and the return module.
Choosing Phobos over Deimos

3
3 Phobos was deemed more scientifically
desirable for collection of a sample because
of its closer proximity to the Martian surface
– plus it has more data already available.
International collaboration
2 The MEGANE and MacrOmega
instruments are being developed with NASA
and France’s National Centre for Space
Studies (CNES) respectively.
64
MArtian moons
frozen time capsules leftover from the planet’s need the spacecraft to gather a minimum sample
formation currently suspended in orbit, and of ten grams (0.4 ounces). The MMX sample-
could reveal a lot about the planet’s past. collection suite literally needs to be a hundred 4
The new spacecraft will be well equipped times better. There is no doubt that this call for
with an instrumental suite capable of providing technological improvement will be answered as
an extensive remote investigation of the this exploration mission develops.
moons’ surfaces. This high-tech instrumental On 19 February 2020 the MMX team
suite will consist of a gamma-ray and neutron announced that the mission has shifted from the
spectrometer (MEGANE), a wide-angle pre-project phase into the development phase.
multiband camera, a near-infrared spectrometer This exciting news means that the team can
(MacrOmega) and several other cameras, sensors begin working on the spacecraft’s hardware and
Asteroids or ancient
and spectrometers. But the centrepiece of the
spacecraft will be its sample-collection suite.
software and preparing the craft for launch. “In
order to transition from a JAXA pre-project to
4 Martian rock?
Astronomers want to determine if
JAXA is aiming to take what it has learnt project,” stated the team on the official mission these moons are asteroids caught
by Martian gravity and pulled into
from Hayabusa2 – which is currently on its website, “the MMX mission team had to consider
orbit or ancient ejecta and debris
way back to Earth carrying a sample of the factors such as the importance of the scientific leftover from a huge collision which
asteroid Ryugu – and enhance it. Hayabusa2 goals, the success criteria, the implementation has coalesced to form an orbiting
was designed to collect a small sample of just system, the financial plan, schedule and identify body. The results for each of the
moons could be different.
0.1 grams (0.004 ounces), but the MMX team risks and countermeasures.”
“Astronomers have never been able

to truly understand the origins of
Phobos and Deimos”
2
A long time coming

5 JAXA first began pondering
the feasibility of a sample-return
mission to Phobos in 2015.
© Adrian Mann
65
Guide to the solar system
Instant expert
WHAT CAN WE DO WITH A
CAPTURED ASTEROID?
Asteroids could provide us with rare resources
steroids have more than enough instead came from later asteroid impacts on much fuel as the launch itself, which the rocket
A gold, plus other precious metals,

to provide a few lifetimes’ worth
of fortunes. But there are plenty
of other reasons asteroids are valuable. But
Earth’s surface.
Those asteroids are the fragmented remains
of almost-planets, but they contain all the same
mixtures of elements as their larger planetary
would have to carry as dead weight, adding to
the already-high cost of trying to set up a remote
mining operation in the first place. And once the
asteroid was mined, asteroid prospectors would
how do we get these metals from these cousins – and you don’t have to dig down into be faced with a difficult choice: They could try to
faraway asteroids? Perhaps the best way is to their cores to get it. But the main problem with refine the ore right there on the asteroid, which
bring the space rocks to Earth. Most of the asteroids is that they are far away. To launch would entail setting up an entire refining facility,
metals we use in our everyday lives are buried from Earth’s surface and go into orbit, a rocket or ship the raw ore back to Earth, with all the
deep within the Earth. And we mean deep: needs to change its velocity from zero to eight waste that would involve.
when our young planet was still molten, almost kilometres (five miles) per second. To rendezvous
all of the heavy metals sank to the core, which with an average asteroid, the rocket has to
is pretty hard to get to. The accessible veins of
gold, zinc, platinum and other valuable metals
change its velocity by another 5.5 kilometres
(3.4 miles) per second. That requires almost as AR SCAN HERE
© Adrian Mann
66
Asteroids
Bringing home the goods BIO

Instead of trying to mine a distant asteroid, how
about we bring the asteroid to Earth? NASA’s
ill-fated Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) was
Paul M.
an attempt to do just that. The goal of the
mission was to grab a four-metre (13-foot)
Sutter
Sutter is a research
boulder from a nearby asteroid and return it
to cislunar space – between the orbits of Earth professor in astrophysics at
and the Moon – where we could then study the Institute for Advanced
it at our leisure. To move the boulder, ARM Computational Science at
would use solar electric propulsion, with solar
panels absorbing sunlight and converting it Stony Brook University and
into electricity. That electricity would power an a guest researcher at the
ion engine. It wouldn’t be fast, but it would be Flatiron Institute in New
efficient – and it would eventually get the job York City. He is also the
done. Unfortunately, in 2017, NASA cancelled
ARM. Some of the critical technologies wound author of two books: Your
up in other projects, like the OSIRIS-REx mission Place in the Universe and
to the asteroid Bennu, and NASA continues to How to Die in Space.
investigate and use ion engines.
Within arms reach

A recent study found a dozen potential asteroids, ranging from 2 to
20 metres (6.6 to 66 feet) across, that could be brought into near-
Earth orbit with a change in velocity of less than 500 metres (1,640
feet) per second. The solar electric propulsion schemes cooked
up for ARM would be perfectly capable of that, although it would
x2 Images © NASA
take a while. Once an asteroid is in near-Earth space, many of the
difficulties of asteroid mining are significantly reduced. A cislunar
asteroid would be much easier to study and much easier to test
different mining strategies on.
16 Psyche
© NASA/JPL-Caltech
The asteroid 16 Psyche contains roughly 10

billion billion kilograms of nickel and iron,
which are used in everything from reinforced
concrete to mobile phones. If we maintain
our current consumption of nickel and iron,
16 Psyche alone could supply our industrial
needs for several million years.
67
Planet Profile
Jupiter
The largest planet has a lot to tell us
Reported by Ian Evenden
ifth in the eight-planet line-up Solar System, and may partially shield the inner
F of our Solar System, Jupiter also

happens to be the largest, and by
quite some distance. The mass of
this gigantic ball of gas is two-and-a-half times
planets from bombardment. Another theory,
however, is that it actively draws small bodies in
from the Kuiper Belt. Whichever is true, Jupiter
experiences 200 times more impacts than Earth.
that of all the other planets put together, and Visible with the naked eye from Earth, Jupiter
you could fit 11.2 Earths within its radius. While represented the god Marduk to the Babylonians,
there’s likely a rocky core somewhere under the and it was Phaethon to the ancient Greeks. The
enormous gaseous atmosphere, scientists can’t Romans assigned it to their king of the gods,
be sure whether it’s solid or not, but gravitational whose name it bears today, whereas to Hindu
measurements suggest it could make up as much astronomers it was Brihaspati, or Guru, which
as 15 per cent of Jupiter’s mass. means ‘heavy one’. Across Asia it was known as
What is known is that Jupiter is contracting, the Wood Star, a name taken from the Chinese
and this generates more heat than the planet theory of the five elements.
receives from the Sun, warming the huge Galileo discovered Jupiter’s four largest moons,
number of moons that orbit around it. It also known as the Galilean moons, in 1610, the first
has a faint ring system, too thin to be seen from time moons had been observed around another
Earth with any but the largest telescopes and planet. Humanity has since explored the planet
first spotted by the Voyager 1 probe in 1979. with observatories and space probes, beginning
Jupiter plays a major role in many theories of in 1973 with a flyby by Pioneer 10. Many
the formation of our Solar System. In one, known missions to the outer Solar System have used
as the grand tack hypothesis, Jupiter formed at Jupiter’s gravity as a slingshot to correct their
3.5 AU – 1 AU is the Earth-Sun distance – before course or gain speed, but the first craft to orbit
plunging inward towards the Sun until it reached the planet was the aptly named Galileo in 1995.
1.5 AU, then reversing course and moving out
again, stopping at its current distance of 5.2 AU.
It crossed the asteroid belt twice, scattering rocks
in all directions and contributing to the low mass
of the belt today. It may also have caused rocky
planets orbiting closer to the Sun to crash into
the star’s surface. This answers questions such as
why Mars is so small – Jupiter’s presence limited
the material available for its formation – and why
there are no large planets orbiting close to the
Sun, as we see in other solar systems.
Jupiter has also had a long-lasting effect on the Left: The
rest of the Solar System. It has a fleet of asteroids hazy northern
hemisphere
and comets that follow it through its orbit – over of Jupiter
2,000 have been discovered – and its great processed
mass means that the centre of gravity for it and by citizen
scientist
the Sun lies above the Sun’s surface, meaning
Gerald
they act almost like a binary system. The giant Eichstädt from
© NASA
planet’s gravity well also means it can intercept Juno camera

comets and asteroids heading into the inner data in 2020
68
planet profile: Jupiter
© NASA
Above: A
cyclonic storm
in Jupiter’s
northern
hemisphere,
captured by
Juno in 2019
Below:
Pioneer 10
was the first
human-made
probe to cross
the asteroid
belt and fly
past Jupiter
Atmospheric
Composition
Upper
atmosphere
90%
hydrogen
10%
helium
Interior
71%
hydrogen
©N
AS
A
24%
helium
5%other
© NASA
elements
69
NEWS FROM Jupiter

Wind speeds measured
able to
For the first time, scientists have been
wind s in the midd le of Jupiter’s
directly measure the
e Millimeter/
atmosphere. Using the Atacama Larg
of astronomers
submillimeter Array (ALMA), a team
eme nt of mole cules of
was able to track the mov
ogen cyan ide in the plan et’s famo usly turbulent
hydr
s of wind at up to
atmosphere, measuring narrow band
s) per hour . The hydrogen
1,448 kilometres (900 mile
is not nativ e to Jupit er, but was added to
cyanide
et Shoe mak er-Le vy 9 collided
the storms when com
then it has been
with the giant planet in 1994. Since
circling the atmosphere.
presence
“The most spectacular result is the
stron g jets, with spee ds of up to 400 metres
of
ed under the
[1,312 feet] per second, which are locat
Thib ault Cava lié of the
aurorae near the poles,” said
ratoi re d’Ast roph ysiqu e de Bord eaux in France,
Labo
very. Using 42
who led the team behind the disco
© NASA
, the team
of ALMA’s 66 high-precision antennae
the Dopp ler shift , tiny chan ges in the
measured
mole cules , from whic h they
radiation emitted by the
were able to dedu ce wind spee d.
Auroral activity
s has puzzled
Jupiter’s version of the northern light
ve like the aurorae on
scientists, because it doesn’t beha
between 60 and
Earth. Here the lights appear in a ring
sout h of the equa tor. Within that
70 degrees north or
the lights don’t
ring, an area known as the ‘polar cap’,
is no ‘polar cap’ – the
appear. On Jupiter, however, there
ay all the way to the pole.
aurora continues its displ
ge quirk of Jupiter’s
This turns out to be due to a stran
rae appear on closed
magnetic field. On Earth, the auro
ards from the planet
field lines, which extend outw
bend ing back again . Insid e the ‘polar cap’ the
before
– they exte nd out into space – and
field lines are open
nwhile, has a mixture
there are no aurorae. Jupiter, mea
approach its poles,
of open and closed field lines as you
still able to appe ar.
meaning the aurorae are
and couldn’t
“We as a community tend to polarise,
of both,” said
imagine a solution where it was a little
of spac e phys ics at the
Peter Delamere, professor
© NASA, ESA
y of Alaska Fairb anks ’ Geop hysic al Institute.

Universit
Another Jupiter
as large as Jupiter form,
Little is known about how planets
a plan et circling anot her star, and under the watchful
but
Spac e Teles cope , could give us a lot of
eye of the Hubble
the plan et orbits a very
information. Known as PDS 70b,
ge dwa rf 370 light year s away in the southern
young oran
has two actively forming
constellation of Centaurus, which
disc. PDS 70b, which
planets within its protoplanetary
at the same dista nce as Uranus orbits our
orbits the star
time s the mass of Jupiter, and
Sun, is already around five
ibly twic e as large , and at a mere 5 million years old
poss
while yet, though the
should continue to form for a little
mate rial has dwindled.
rate at which it is accreting more
syste m is so excit ing beca use we can witness the
“This
of the University
formation of a planet,” said Yifan Zhou
gest bona fide planet
of Texas at Austin. “This is the youn
ever direc tly imag ed; obse rvati ons allowed us
Hubble has .” Magnetic
plan et is gaini ng mass
to estimate how fast the
lines turn out to play a role in the formation of such
field
dust and gas that
© ESO
a planet, extending from the disc of

funn elling material onto the
surrounds the young star and
planet’s surfa ce.
70
planet profile: Jupiter
Evolution of the
Future plans Jovian giant
for Jupiter • Date: 4.6 billion years ago
While Jupiter has been heavily
Activity: The Solar System
photographed by missions such
began to form from a cloud of
as Juno, which arrived at the
gas and dust around a new star
planet in 2016, much scientific
interest has now transferred to
the planet’s moons, which are
• Date: 4.596 billion years ago
Activity: Jupiter and Saturn
thought to harbour subsurface
began to take shape
liquid oceans and possibly even
© NASA/JPL-Caltech
life. Europa, Ganymede and
Callisto, three of the Galilean
• Date: 2400 BCE
Activity: Babylonians tracked a
moons, would be the targets,
full cycle of Jupiter’s movement
but multiple missions have been Above: Europa across the skies
cancelled due to lack of budget. is the target of
In 2024 NASA’s Europa Clipper should launch, following up on studies from the Galileo probe and many space
performing multiple flybys of Europa without orbiting it, using the gravity of nearby moons to change
agencies, • Date: 270 BCE
which are keen Activity: Jupiter was part
its course. The European Space Agency will send its Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer in 2022 to study to explore its of Aristarchus of Samos’
Ganymede, Callisto and Europa, evaluating their potential to support life. Other countries also have life-hosting
potential heliocentric model of the
their eyes on the giant planet, with China’s Gan De proposed for launch in 2029 and an unnamed
Solar System
Russian proposal to use a nuclear-powered tug to travel to the planet sometime after 2030.
Further into the future, Europa is seen as a potential site for human colonisation of the Solar
System, as it is geologically stable and levels of radiation are low there. Low is a relative term,
• Date: 1610
Activity: Galileo discovered the
however, as unshielded colonists would receive 5.4 sieverts of radiation per day from Jupiter,
Galilean moons: Ganymede,
compared to 0.0024 sieverts per year on Earth. This is still enough to cause radiation poisoning.
Callisto, Io and Europa
• Date: 1892
Activity: Edward Emerson
Barnard discovered a fifth
Jupiter by 24,000°C 11.8 moon of Jupiter, Amalthea
• Date: December 1974

numbers The estimated
temperature at
Jupiter’s core
years
Jupiter’s orbit around
Activity: Pioneer 11 passed
within 42,500 kilometres
(26,400 miles) of Jupiter’s
the Sun cloud tops
• Date: January 1979
5,000km
Activity: Voyager 1 reached the
gas giant planet
79 • Date: December 1995

The thickness of Jupiter’s
1665
atmosphere, the deepest
Activity: The Galileo probe
in the Solar System
entered Jupiter orbit
Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is a • Date: July 2016

known moons circulate Activity: The Juno probe
storm known to have existed
around Jupiter
since at least 1831, and maybe entered a polar orbit around
even since 1665
the planet
14X
Jupiter’s magnetic field
is 14 times stronger than
Earth’s, and the strongest 4 th “Much scientific interest has
now transferred to the
in the Solar System except Fourth-brightest
for sunspots object in the sky as
seen from Earth
planet’s moons”
71
Moon profile
Europa
One of the Solar System’s famous ocean worlds is an
exciting prospect for further exploration
uropa is one of the four Galilean an equatorial diameter of 3,100 kilometres
E moons that orbit the Solar System’s

largest planet, Jupiter. Although
Europa is the smallest of its satellite
siblings – Io, Callisto and Ganymede, carrying
(1,940 miles), which is 90 per cent of the Moon’s
diameter. If you were to replace the Moon with
Europa in our sky, to the naked eye they would
both seem about the same size. However,
on in that order from smallest to largest – it is Europa would be much brighter on account of
certainly the one with the most potential for its surface ice reflecting 5.5-times more sunlight
exciting scientific discovery. Underneath its than the Moon.
icy, scarred surface could lie a salty ocean, just The process behind the creation of Jupiter’s
like the oceans that make up 71 per cent of the largest moons is still hotly debated, but
Earth’s surface. astronomers largely agree that they formed from
The Galilean moons were discovered in 1610 leftover debris from the formation of Jupiter
by Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei, and through roughly 4.5 billion years ago. Fast-forward
the ages astronomers have been fixating their to today and Europa is a water-ice ball with
telescopes on the speck of light that orbits Jupiter fractures criss-crossing all over the surface. The
once every three-and-a-half days. Europa is also number of craters currently found all over its
tidally locked to Jupiter, meaning that the same cracked terrain indicate that the moon is no older
face of the moon is pointing at the Jovian giant at than 90 million years old, suggesting there is
all times, much like the Moon and Earth. Another likely to be some form of surface replenishment
similarity is the two moons' sizes: Europa has that also brings salts and sulphur compounds to
the outer layer. Surrounding the icy world is a
thin atmosphere, composed of molecular oxygen.
“Underneath its icy, The core is most likely made of iron,
surrounded by a tough, rocky mantle. In between
scarred surface could that and the icy crust is a suspected body of
liquid. Some may wonder how such a small
lie a salty ocean” world, so far away from the heat of the Sun,
can maintain an ocean of salty water similar to
Earth's. The answer is that it's likely due to the
grand gravitational effects of Jupiter, pulling and
pushing the insides of Europa, causing it to heat
up and, in turn, transforming ice into water. This
process is known as ‘tidal heating’, and it can H2O layer
be observed happening with grander effect on
fellow moon Io – its interior is heated up to such
an extent that volcanoes have popped up.
This tidal heating is what maintains the ocean
and provides the energy to replenish the surface
via the outburst of plumes or a form of icy plate
tectonics. Ever since astronomers became aware
of the vitalising interior of Europa, they have
pieced together that it has the fundamental
building blocks for life to exist: liquid water, Left: This
chemical compounds shows almost-
for consumption and an energy source. For pure water
ice, shown
this reason especially, planetary scientists are
in white,
© NASA/JPL-Caltech
excited to return to the Galilean moon. There is broken up by

a high chance that life could exist in this part of contaminated
the Solar System, even if it’s just in the form of water ice,
simple microbes. shown in red
72
72
moon profile: Europa
Icy crust on
the surface
Liquid ocean
under ice
ch
lte
-Ca
/J PL
SA
NA
Rocky interior ©
Metallic core
73
73
What’s been happ ening at Europa?

the surface
Table salt found sprinkled on
, notably NASA’s Voyager
Europa has had visitors in the past
t. On their flyby s of the moon, analyses
and Galileo spacecraf
of water ice and a
showed that the icy crust consisted
originally thou ght to be mag nesium sulphate.
substance
the surfa ce using the W. M. Keck
After recently revisiting
rvato ry base d in Haw aii and the Hubble Space Telescope,
Obse
’t magnesium sulphate and
astronomers now know that it wasn
– more commonly known as table
was actually sodium chloride
salt.
infrared spectrometer to
As Voyager and Galileo had only an
was hiding in the visible light
work with, they couldn’t see what
. Keck and Hubb le were able to unveil the hidden
spectrum
be seeing sodium chlorides,
secret. “We thought that we might
in an infrared spectrum,”
but they are essentially featureless
n, the Rich ard and Barb ara Rosenberg professor
says Mike Brow
Calte ch in Pasa dena, California.
of planetary astronomy at
som e labo rator y tests by Kevi n Hand at NASA's Jet
It was
Propulsion Laboratory,
© NASA/JPL
irradiating ocean salts
also in Pasadena, that revealed that
pa-like cond ition s exhib it distinct features and a
under Euro
salt exhib its this colour on the surface
yellowish colour – table
.
of Europa, confirming its presence
Setbacks for Europa’s next exploreritious missions to
two very amb
NASA has its sights set on sending
pa, one of whic h is due to laun ch in 2023. Unfortunately the
Euro
ion, an orbit er that will spend about three years at
Europa Clipper miss
Euro pa Land er mission seem to have
the moon, and the proceeding
th investigation concluded that
come under scrutiny after a nine-mon
s that need to be addressed in order to satisfy
there are serious issue
s Cong ress.
both NASA and the United State
st early stage funding, NASA's
"Our audit found that despite robu
sche dule , a strin gent conflict-of-interest
aggressive development
an insuf ficient evaluation of
process during instrument selection, force shortages have
estim ates and tech nical work
cost and schedule development risks
n chall enge s and
increased instrument integratio ent analyst at the
ltz, a man agem
for the Clipper mission," John Schu
Gene ral, said in a state men t.
Office of Inspector
est and issues in the budget,
After finding these conflicts of inter
ion team have conc lude d that ten changes should be
the investigat
proje ct back on track, including altering the
made in order to get the
mile stones and making sure that
overall staffing regime, rescheduling
be mad e in acco rdan ce with other projects.
any estimates
© NASA
z
Struggling to find the plumes
y similarities with Saturn’s
Europa is a moon that shares man
n Ence ladu s – both are icy worl ds that exhibit signs of
moo
n that could harb our potential life. One
a subsurface ocea
Ence ladu s has been studied
major difference though is that
thoro ughl y, cour tesy of NAS A’s Cassini mission.
much more
cted plumes of material
In this close-up analysis Cassini dete
ladu s, along with a distinct
emerging from the surface of Ence
spike in the data to matc h. However, this doesn’t
temperature
appear to be the same for Euro pa.
Galileo thermal data
"We searched through the available
prop osed as the sites of potential plumes.
at the locations
from the Galileo mission does
Reanalysis of temperature data
anyt hing spec ial in the locat ions where plumes have
not show
rved . Ther e are no hots pot signatures at
possibly been obse
bun, a senio r scientist at
either of the sites," says Julie Rath
Scien ce Insti tute. "This is surp rising because the
the Planetary
al signature at their site of
Enceladus plumes have a clear therm
© NASA/ESA
the Europa plumes are very

origin, so this suggests that either
plum es are only occa sional, that they don't
different, or the
ture is too small to have been
exist or that their thermal signa
detected by curre nt data ."
74
moon profile: Europa
The past and future of exploration NASA’s

timeline
Being part of the Jovian system has
its benefits in terms of exploration.
on the way to Pluto. The future
is very exciting for the Galilean
investigation – NASA will launch its
Europa Clipper, solely focused on of Europa
Although Europa hasn’t had the
same close inspection as Enceladus,
many spacecraft have made a
moons. Two major space exploration
organisations, the European Space
Agency (ESA) and NASA, are looking
studying Europa.
After much discussion the Europa
Clipper team decided that, due to
visitors
flying visit of the moon as they use to visit. Due to launch in June 2022 Jupiter’s radiation, it would be best • Date: 3 December 1973
Spacecraft: Pioneer 10
Jupiter’s enormous mass to provide is the ESA’s JUpiter ICy moons to put the orbiter in an elliptical
a ‘gravity assist’ – when a spacecraft Explorer (JUICE), which will head orbit that makes 45 close flybys
• Date: 3 December 1974
uses a planet’s mass to slingshot it to the system in order to study over the course of roughly three Spacecraft: Pioneer 11
to a faster speed. Ganymede, Callisto and Europa. The years. In a separate mission there
The first of these visits began with following year – assuming there are will be a Europa Lander that will • Date: 5 March 1979
NASA’s Pioneer 10 and 11 in 1973 and no delays from the aforementioned complement the Europa Clipper. Spacecraft: Voyager 1
1974 respectively. Afterwards came
the two Voyager spacecraft in 1979, • Date: 9 July 1979
sending back pictures of Europa’s icy Spacecraft: Voyager 2
surface in stunning resolution.
This began speculation that the
• Date: 8 December 1995 to
21 September 2003
moon had a subsurface ocean, Spacecraft: Galileo
gathering traction when NASA’s
Galileo spacecraft spent eight years • Date: 28 February 2007
at the Jovian system, starting in Spacecraft: New Horizons
1995. This long-duration study
revealed a host of exciting new
discoveries about Europa and its
fellow moons. The last spacecraft
to visit Europa was NASA’s New
Horizons in 2007 when it tested Europa is one of the most reflective objects in
its equipment at the Jovian system the Solar System because of its icy surface
Europa facts
671,100 km
Europa orbits Jupiter at a Hydrothermal vents could exist
distance of 671,100 kilometres Europa is the smoothest object on the seabed of Europa, similar
(417,000 miles), almost in the Solar System, lacking to what is seen on the floor of
double that of the Earth- more craters and mountains Earth’s oceans – a region
Moon distance. than any other object. where extremophiles
thrive.
Europa is stuck in an orbital

resonance with two fellow
Galilean moons; for every
orbit Ganymede completes,
Europa’s surface temperature Europa does two and Io
The cracks on the completes four.
at the equator never reaches surface of the moon
higher than -160 degrees Celsius are thought to be
All of Jupiter’s moons are
(-260 degrees Fahrenheit). from the constant
named after the lovers
© NASA; XXXXXXXXXXXXX
of Zeus from Greek movement of the

subsurface sea when
-160°
mythology; Europa
was the queen it gets too close
of Crete. to Jupiter.
75
planet profile
Saturn
Saturn is famous for its rings, but there is more to
it than meets the eye
he Ringed Planet is not only a Saturn’s rings are made up of mostly water-ice
T fan favourite among astronomers

because of its consistent visibility
in the night sky, but also because
it offers an enticing uniqueness. Along with
particles and some rocky meteoroids, sized from
tiny grains of sand to as large as mountains and
extending up to 282,000 kilometres (175,000
miles) from the planet.
Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune, Saturn is one of the There is much more to Saturn than just its
gas giants – also known as Jovian planets – that rings though. It has 53 confirmed moons, with
sit in the outer regions of the Solar System. What a further 29 provisional moons that are just
is most intriguing about the two largest planets awaiting confirmation. The most intriguing
in our Solar System, Jupiter and Saturn, is that moons are Titan and Enceladus, which exhibit
they are the bridge to understanding stars like exciting astrobiological prospects. Titan shows
our Sun. Although they are classified as planets, Earth-like weather cycles and lakes, but with
they have a more similar composition to the Sun hydrocarbons, and Enceladus has a subsurface
than they do to Earth. ocean of liquid salty water. Saturn in itself is an
Saturn is one of the brightest objects in the enormous and fascinating structure that has
night sky, with an apparent magnitude that become more and more understood since the
swings from -0.55 to +1.17. Magnitude varies with days of Galileo and Huygens.
the distances between Saturn, Earth and the Sun. As mentioned previously, Saturn is more
The ringed gas giant is nine-times further away similar to the Sun than it is the Earth. The
from the Sun than Earth is, as well as over nine planet’s composition is 94 per cent hydrogen
times the Earth’s diameter. As the second-largest and six per cent helium, with trace amounts
planet Saturn also has an enormous volume of methane and ammonia. While astronomers
capacity, which is capable of fitting 764 Earths can’t physically dig down into Saturn and see
inside it. its internal structure, they can build computer
As it is an extremely bright celestial object, models showing how the planet formed 4.6
Saturn has been observed for centuries, and as billion years ago. These models show that as
such its discovery date can’t be pinned down. temperatures and pressures rise as you get closer
However, the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei to the core, gaseous hydrogen is squashed into
observed Saturn through his telescope in 1610, at liquid metallic hydrogen. At the core of Saturn
first believing that Saturn’s rings were actually is a rocky ball of denser elements, including iron
moons. Over years of observation the moons and nickel.
would change shape and sometimes disappear,
which was due to the planet’s inclination with
respect to Earth. Galileo’s error wasn’t realised
until 45 years later when Dutch astronomer
Christiaan Huygens used a telescope with a
higher resolution to resolve the rings.
In modern times space probes have been able
to get a much closer look at the planet and its
ring structure, the most prominent example
being NASA’s Cassini spacecraft.
Cassini’s flybys showed that
76
planet profile: Saturn
© NASA/JPL-Caltech
The Cassini
space probe
“Space probes have been able to get a spent 13

glorious years
scrutinising
much closer look at the planet and its the Saturnian
system
ring structure”
Metallic hydrogen
Rocky iron core Saturn

composition
94%
Hydrogen
6%Helium
Molecular
hydrogen
+
Traces of
ammonia and
methane
This is the
famous
image
© NASA/JPL-Caltech
titled
‘The Day
the Earth
Smiled’
77
The latesturn’sne ws from Saturn

ancient
Titan survived Sat
feeding frenzy
its younger years, it
It’s likely that when Saturn was in
ting what ever mass it could to become the
was accre
. In this prim ordia l feeding frenzy,
enormous size it is now
the surfa ce were
natural satellites orbiting close to
on acco unt of Satu rn’s grav ity. Yet Titan,
likely engulfed System
satel lite in the Solar
the second-largest natural
nd Jupit er’s Gany med e, has rema ined in orbit.
behi
ssor at Nagoya
Yuri Fujii, a designated assistant profe
ara, a proje ct assistant
University, and Masahiro Ogih
at the Natio nal Astro nom ical Observatory of
professor
that Titan was
Japan (NAOJ) have recently proposed
ty zone’ created by
spared from this frenzy due to a ‘safe
scenario, the inner gas
the warmer and closer gas. In this
from Satu rn and stops it from
pushes a large moon away
bein g cons ume d.
that a system
“We demonstrated for the first time
planet can
© Nagoya University
nd a giant
with only one large moon arou
Fujii. “This is an impo rtant mile stone to
form,” said
n of Titan .” Not only does it help
understand the origi
helps explain why
explain the origin of Titan, but it also
huge moon. The next
Saturn only has the one relatively
is Rhea , whic h is less than a
biggest Saturnian moon
third the size of Titan .
What happens to Saturn when the Sun

turns into a white dwarf?
Sun will have swallowed the
In approximately 5 billion years our
l plan ets, inclu ding Earth , as it entered the red
rocky terrestria
me. Afte r a furth er 3 billion years the
supergiant phase of its lifeti
t star will have shed its oute r layers and left behind a
supergian
scorching-hot remnant of the
white dwarf star. This is the dense,
star we know now.
hias Schreiber, an
Recent research conducted by Matt
ersid ad de Valp araíso in Chile, suggests
astrophysicist at the Univ
ed into a white dwarf, it
that once a Sun-like star has transform
to accre te the evap orate d layer s of its surrounding
would be able
arch has very intrig uing implications for
gas giant planets. This rese particular the ability
m, and in
the future evolution of the Solar Syste
rn in a whit e dwa rf star.
to spot signs of Satu
rf will accrete a fraction of the
As Schreiber said, “The white dwa
d mate rial, and this will resu lt in detectable signatures,
evaporate
alien astro nom ers, if they exist, can
so future generations of
com position of Jupiter, Saturn,
potentially investigate the chemical
Neptune and Uran us.”
© ESO
Lord of the rings: the two explanatio ns

constant debate since
subject to
The origin of Saturn’s rings has been
e som e belie ve they formed during the formation
their discovery. Whil
othe rs think they could have arisen
of the planet 4.6 billion years ago,
n years. Recent research
within the last couple of hundred millio
Obse rvato ire de la Côte d’Azur argues that
by Aurélien Crida of the
on data taken during the Cassini
they are most likely ancient, based
d Final e’, whic h cons isted of a series of dives through
mission’s ‘Gran
in the atmo sphere. During this time
Saturn’s rings before vaporising
ring system as about 15.4 million
Cassini measured the mass of the
’s equi valen t to about 40 per cent the mass of
billion tonnes. That
400 kilometres (250 miles) wide.
Saturn’s moon Mimas, which is
e that beca use the rings are more than 95 per cent water
Some argu
cont amin ated if they are ancient. However,
ice, they should be more
the mass of Saturn’s rings
© NASA/JPL-Caltech
ests
Crida has provided evidence that sugg mic evolution. “I think
4.6 billio n year s of very dyna
is consistent with consistent picture,
ry] form s a muc h more
that, objectively, [this theo same time as Saturn,
ation at the
with a convincing model of their form lites in agreement
outw ard migr ation of the satel
plus formation and
with the observations”, said Crida.
78
planet profile: Saturn
A timeline of
The history of Saturnian exploration Cassini-Huygens’
Saturn has been extensively studied across centuries. When Galileo used his telescope in the early 17th
century, the rings of Saturn became apparent. Fast forward to 2020 and there is a host of commercially
voyage to Saturn
available telescopes to see the planet in amazing clarity. There is also a team of ground- and space-based • Date: 15 October 1997
observatories that frequently capture observations of the planet to provide regular updates. Activity: Cassini-Huygens was
In regards to space probe missions to Saturn, it has had a handful of human-made mechanical visitors launched from Cape Canaveral.
over the last few decades. The first interplanetary investigator was NASA’s Pioneer 11 spacecraft; it
became the first probe to encounter Saturn on 1 September 1979. After that were NASA’s two Voyager • Date: 30 December 2000
probes, which returned historic images of the outer Solar System, discovering moons and revealing Activity: The spacecraft passed
surface features that had never been seen before. Voyager 1 flew past Saturn on 12 November 1980 and Jupiter to conduct a gravity-
Below: The
Voyager 2 followed suit on 26 August 1981. Dragonfly assist manoeuvre.
The most fruitful mission to Saturn arrived there on 1 July 2004. The Cassini space probe – created mission will
in a collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Agenzia Spaziale Italiana examine • Date: 1 July 2004
Saturn’s
(ASI) – stayed in orbit around the Ringed Planet for 13 years, and the ESA-built Huygens lander arrived Activity: The Cassini-Huygens
largest moon,
on the surface of Titan on 14 January 2005. For over a decade this probe took magnificent images, Titan space probe arrived at Saturn.
collected pivotal data and even took the first
dive through the planet’s rings. During this • Date: 14 January 2005
‘Grand Finale’, as it was known, the space probe Activity: The Huygens probe
was able to collect unprecedented data on the separated from Cassini and
Cassini Division, which is the wide gap between landed on the surface of the
rings A and B. moon Titan.
This mission is still fresh in the memory of
astronomers, as they are still examining heaps • Date: 19 July 2013
of data collected during Cassini’s stay at Saturn. Activity: Cassini took the
This means that we’re unlikely to see a Saturn- historic picture of Earth from
specific mission in the foreseeable future. Do Saturn titled ‘The Day the
not give up hope though, as there are certainly Earth Smiled’.
© Adrian Mann
talks of returning to its moons. For example,
NASA’s Dragonfly mission is hoping to launch a • Date: 29 November 2016
drone to the surface of Titan by 2026. Activity: The Grand Finale
began as Cassini dove into
There Saturn’s rings.
are seven
Saturn facts sections to Saturn’s

rings, with A, B and C
being the main rings,
and D, E, F and G the
• Date: 15 September 2017
Activity: The Cassini mission
reached its conclusion in
A fainter rings. Saturn’s atmosphere.
day on
Saturn is about Saturn
ten hours and 40 is tilted nearly
minutes, but a year 27 degrees with
takes 29.5 Earth respect to the Solar
years. System’s orbital plane. This
means the Ringed Planet
experiences seasons This
similar to Earth, which planet is
has a tilt of 23.5 named after
degrees. the Roman god of
agriculture and wealth,
but also the father of
Jupiter, Neptune,
Pluto, Juno, Ceres
and Vesta.
On The
15 September magnetic field
2017 the Cassini Due to of Saturn is 578
space probe performed the perceived times more powerful
a controlled entry into inclination of Saturn than Earth’s and is
Saturn’s atmosphere as in relation to Earth, the theoretically powered
© Tobias Roetsch
astronomers did not want rings ‘disappear’ twice by the planet’s liquid
to contaminate every 29-and-a-half metallic hydrogen
its moons. years. layer.
79
moon Profile
Mimas
This small, oddly shaped and icy moon
continues to baffle scientists
ou could be mistaken in thinking Mimas is not the only icy moon in the Saturnian
Y this strange satellite is something

pulled straight out of the Star Wars
universe. Commonly referred to
as the ‘Death Star’ moon, Mimas has only been
system. It is joined by Tethys, Rhea and Dione,
as well as Saturn’s sixth-largest moon Enceladus,
which is thought to possess a liquid ocean below
its icy crust.
visited a few times, and could be harbouring However, unlike these other icy bodies, Mimas
secrets below its surface. is much closer to Saturn and has a far more
Discovered on 17 September 1789 by William eccentric orbit. Compared to Enceladus, Mimas
Herschel, and later named by his son John should experience more tidal heating due to its
Herschel, Mimas is Saturn’s smallest and position and orbit. However, it’s Enceladus that
innermost major moon. Orbiting just 185,539 boasts geysers of water that suggest the presence
kilometres (115,300 miles) above the gas of internal heat, while Mimas remains both
giant, the icy moon zips along at high speeds, frozen and heavily cratered, suggesting that the
completing an orbit in just 22 hours and 36 surface has persisted in this frozen state for a
minutes. Akin to our own Moon, Mimas is tidally very long time. This paradox has led astronomers
locked with its host, meaning it keeps the same to develop the ‘Mimas test’, by which any theory
face towards Saturn as it orbits the planet. used to explain the partially thawed water of
The dinky moon has a mean radius of less Enceladus must also explain the entirely frozen
than 198 kilometres (123 miles), and as such it water of Mimas.
is not quite large enough to hold a classic round With its strange dimensions, peculiar
moon shape. Instead Mimas displays rather odd composition and quirky appearance earning it
dimensions of 207 by 197 by 191 kilometres (129 a revered place in pop culture, this enigmatic
by 122 by 119 miles). The surface of the icy moon little moon undoubtedly has many more secrets
is peppered with craters of varying size, with to spill.
some measuring over 40 kilometres (25 miles)
in diameter. The most conspicuous is Herschel,
named after Mimas’ discoverer, a substantial
feature that dominates the landscape and
stretches for over 130 kilometres (80 miles).
Some of the moon’s formation history can
be inferred by the heavily cratered landscape,
particularly at the south pole region. Here the
craters are generally half the size of anywhere
else on Mimas, which would suggest the moon
experienced some melting or other resurfacing
processes that occurred in this region later than
the rest of the celestial body. However, due to
limited data and observations of the icy satellite,
scientists cannot yet determine the cause of the
possible resurfacing. Left: This image
x2 Images © NASA/JPL
Mimas continues to perplex scientists with its was taken by

Cassini in 2008
rather strange composition, as the frozen moon is shows Mimas
primarily made from water ice. However, at first against the ring
glance this composition in itself is not strange, as of Saturn
80
moon profile: Mimas
composition
100%
water ice and small
amounts of silicate
rock
“Mimas continues to perplex

scientists with its rather
strange composition”
81
NEWS FROM Mimas

Mimas ploughs through
Saturn’s rings
rn’s major moons,
Mimas may be the smallest of Satu
tiny, icy body has cleared
but it sure is mighty. The
gh mate rial to creat e a 4,80 0-kil ometre (2,980-
enou
largest rings.
mile) wide gap between Saturn’s two
Cass ini Divis ion after its
This void is known as the
vere r Giov anni Cass ini, who obse rved it in 1675,
disco
een Satu rn’s A and B rings.
and is located betw
had been
The formation of the Cassini Division
rstoo d until scien tists sugg este d that
poorly unde
plou gh, clear ing the ice
Mimas acted as a snow
its path and
particles that make up the rings from
gap.
paving the way for the substantial
inwards towards
Mimas is thought to have migrated
rn by appr oxim ately 9,00 0 kilom etres (5,600
Satu
millio n year s – relat ively recently in
miles) over a few
wide ning of the original
cosmic terms – leading to the
© NASA/JPL
the esta blish men t of the Cass ini Division.
gap and
as has begun to
This rift will not last forever, as Mim
million years the
migrate outwards, and in about 40
again.
Cassini Division will have closed up
What’s behind Mimas’ wobble?

cted from Cassini
In 2014, scientists analysing data colle
bles) arou nd its polar
noticed the moon librates (wob
e this isn’t unus ual, with libra tion being
axis. Whil
ns, the surp rise came when
observed in many moo
wobble is double
the libration was measured. Mimas’
ed in one spot,
than expected and is more pronounc
inter ior is not uniform. Scientists
suggesting that Mimas’
este d the heav ily crate red surfa ce is masking one
sugg
is that the moon
of two interesting possibilities. One
y ball- shap ed core, and the
contains a rather odd, rugb
that there are diffe rent mate rials or densities of
other is
icy shell , such as a subs urface ocean.
material below the
have been unable to
Since the discovery, scientists
deny any of thes e poss ibilit ies, and many
confirm or
as has an oval-
questions remain unanswered. If Mim
ed core , we’d expe ct the moo n to take on a slightly
shap
And if there’s a
different shape to the one we see.
Mim as source the heat
subsurface ocean, how does
© NASA/JPL
energy to main tain such an ocea n?
Peculiar surface temperatures

give rise to a ‘Pac-Man’ moon
on 13 February 2010,
During the Cassini flyby of Mimas
pect ed patte rn of dayt ime temperatures was
an unex
moo n’s surfa ce. When the Composite
observed on the little
was analysed and then
Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) data
a visib le-lig ht imag e of Mim as, a strange Pac-
mapped onto
ente d acro ss the moo n’s surface.
Man like scene was pres
to see a uniform
This baffled scientists, who expected
that were highest
distribution of surface temperatures
ar to what we see on Earth.
in the early afternoon, simil
Mim as appe ars to be divid ed into a warm part (left)
Instead
t), with a V-sh aped boun dary between
and a cold part (righ n were
the warm er regio
them. Typical temperatures in
degr ees Celsi us (-294 degr ees Fahrenheit),
around -181
res drop to -196
while the colder region saw temperatu
ees Celsius (-320 degr ees Fahr enheit). The stark
degr
be due to thermal
difference between the regions could
© NASA/JPL
mate rial. If the colder region

conductivity of the surface
e up of surfa ce mate rials with a higher thermal
is mad
heat will be soaked
conductivity, then more of the Sun’s
warm ing the material itself.
into the subsurface instead of
82
moon profile: Mimas
Exploration of
That’s no moon… Below: Cassini Saturn’s system
Mimas owes its pop culture fame to its large crater collected
Herschel, which covers one-third of the diameter of plenty of data • Date: 31 August 1979
about Saturn
the moon itself and gives Mimas its infamous ‘Death Activity: Pioneer 11 detected
and its moons
Star’ appearance. The massive crater – named after the Saturn’s bow shock – the first
moon’s discoverer William Herschel – is encompassed conclusive evidence that Saturn
by towering outer walls standing five kilometres (three has a magnetic field.
miles) high. At the centre of the crater lies Mimas’
mountain, an imposing peak around six kilometres (3.7 • Date: 1 September 1979
miles) high – slightly taller than Mount Kilimanjaro in Activity: Pioneer 11 was the
Tanzania, Africa. first spacecraft to fly past
Mimas was lucky not to have been completely torn Saturn. The spacecraft made its
apart by the colossal impact that spawned this vast closest approach at just 20,900
crater. Evidence that Mimas was close to breaking point kilometres (13,000 miles) away.
comes from fractures – also known as chasmata – that
lie on the opposite side of Mimas. These fissures are • Date: 12 November 1980
thought to have been created by the shock waves Activity: Voyager 1 became
generated from a sizable impact, such as the one that the second spacecraft to fly
created Herschel crater. past Saturn. During its flyby
Despite the uncanny similarities between Mimas and Voyager 1 discovered three new
the Death Star, their resemblance is purely coincidental. Saturnian moons: Prometheus,
While the Death Star first appeared on our screens Pandora and Atlas.
in the late 1970s, Mimas was not observed in great
detail until 1980, when NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft • Date: 26 August 1981
photographed the satellite from a distance of 550,000 Activity: Voyager 2 became
© NASA
kilometres (340,000 miles). the third spacecraft to fly
past Saturn. Data collected
by Voyager 2 suggested that
Saturn’s A ring was only about
300 metres (984 feet) thick.
mimas by 22.5 185,539 • Date: 1 July 2004
numbers hours
The time it takes Mimas kilometres
The distance between
Activity: NASA’s Cassini
became the first spacecraft to
complete an orbit of Saturn.
to complete one orbit
of Saturn Mimas and Saturn
• Date: 26 October 2004
Activity: NASA’s Cassini
achieved its first close
encounter with Saturn’s moon
198km
Titan. The spacecraft came
8.8
within 1,200 kilometres (750
Mean radius of the

icy moon
32,038
miles per hour
miles) of the moon’s surface.
• Date: 14 January 2005

How many times smaller Activity: The ESA’s Huygens
Speed at which Mimas
Mimas is compared to probe successfully landed on
orbits Saturn
Earth’s Moon
the surface of Titan, making it
the first spacecraft to make a
soft landing on the surface of
another planet’s moon.
Four
The number of spacecraft
that have visited Mimas: 1789 493,647.75
• Date: 15 September 2017
Activity: Cassini’s mission
comes to a dramatic end when
it performs a planned plunge
Pioneer 11, Voyager 1, The year Mimas was
square kilometres into Saturn’s atmosphere,
Voyager 2 and Cassini- discovered by William The surface area of Mimas,
Huygens slightly less than the land beaming back valuable data to
Herschel
area of Spain the last second.
83
SIGNALS
SIGNALS
SIGNALS
SIGNALS
SIGNALS
SIGNALS
SIGNALS
FROM SATURN
© Alamy
84
Signals from saturn
An unusual signal from the ringed planet’s

moon Rhea now has a possible explanation
Reported by Nigel Watson
W
hen NASA’s Cassini spacecraft flew
past Rhea, Saturn’s second-largest
moon, it detected an unexpected
Since then scientists have researched this
information to investigate the atmosphere
of Titan and its geology. They made several
RHEA
BY NUMBERS
and puzzling change in the important discoveries, including the fact that
1672
ultraviolet radiation reflected from its surface. the levels of methane increased as the craft
The data from Cassini’s flybys has led to a range descended, whereas the amount of nitrogen
of speculation and possibilities. Dr Amanda remained constant. The presence of methane
Hendrix, an expert in ultraviolet spectroscopy is exciting because it could be produced by
of planetary surfaces at the Planetary Science micro-organic life, but ESA scientists think it is Year Giovanni Cassini
Institute in California, said that they noticed more likely large amounts of liquid methane are discovered Rhea
a dip in the spectrum and wondered if it trapped under the surface ice and released into
was caused by some type of water ice. It was
certainly an intriguing puzzle.
The signal was detected by the Cassini craft
that was launched from Cape Canaveral on
the atmosphere by cryovolcanism.
Besides the ill-fated Huygens, Cassini carried
a large array of instruments to study Saturn
and its moons. Some of these measured its
1847
Year it was named by
John Herschel
15 October 1997. After seven years of travel it magnetosphere and the presence of dust
reached Saturn on 1 July 2004, and in total
it orbited the planet for over 13 years. When
it became very low on fuel it was decided
particles, and infrared, visible and ultraviolet
images were captured using cameras and
spectrographs. It was the Ultraviolet Imaging 1,528
kM
to end the mission, and to avoid biological Spectrograph (UVIS) science package that
contamination of the planet or its moons it was detected the puzzling findings sent back from
deliberately sent into Saturn’s atmosphere, where Rhea. The UVIS included a two-channel system
it burnt up on 15 September 2017. for studying far and extreme ultraviolet light in
Diameter of Rhea
Cassini is one of the largest ever interplanetary wavelengths of 55.8 to 190 nanometres (nm).
probes to be built, weighing 2,150 kilograms. The light reflected from planetary objects
It carried the European Space Agency’s (ESA)
Huygens lander probe, which it sent towards
Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, on 25 December
2004. After 21 days of travel Huygens finally
passed through the four UVIS telescopes into
a spectrograph, where it was split into its
component wavelengths. These wavelengths,
invisible to the human eye, were able to show
-174°C
Maximum surface
temperature
entered Titan’s atmosphere on 14 January 2005, information and images of the night side
and once on its frozen surface it transmitted data atmospheres of Saturn and Titan. Hendrix, who
for 72 minutes until Cassini went out of range. analysed this data, said that this ability meant it
could ‘see’ gases that were not seen by Cassini’s
visible-light cameras. This ultraviolet light also
showed patterns that revealed the chemical
-220°C
Minimum surface
temperature
elements and compounds in the Saturn system.
As an example, it identified a plume of material
erupting from the south pole of Enceladus as
being composed of water.
UVIS could also use an occultation technique
to obtain ten times more detail of Saturn’s
1.233
times denser than
liquid water
rings than Cassini’s visible-light cameras. This
4.518
Days it takes to orbit Saturn
527,068KM
Average distance from Saturn
THE WONDERS
OF SATURN AR SCAN HERE
85
Saturn’s family portrait

The sixth planet from the Sun has a distinctive ring system and at least 82 moons
Titan Rhea Dione
1 The giant of the Saturn family, it is bigger
than our own Moon and a little bigger than the
2 The second-largest moon. The surface is mainly
composed of water ice and it has an ice mantle. Its
3 Although it’s smaller than Rhea, it has a
higher mass density, which is 1.48 times that of
planet Mercury, having a diameter of 5,149.46 chemical composition and evolutionary history are liquid water, indicating it has a silicate rock core
kilometres (3,200 miles). It takes roughly 16 days very like that of Dione. They both have ice cliffs surrounded by ice. It might even have a liquid salt
to orbit Saturn and permanently presents one that are caused mainly by tectonic strains that water ocean beneath its surface. An outstanding
side towards the planet. fractured the moons’ surfaces. The side of Rhea that feature of the moon is a bright pattern of icy cliffs
There is the exciting possibility that primitive always faces away from Saturn has two large impact that were seen as long, wispy streaks in the images
life forms might exist in the liquid water ocean craters: the 500-kilometre (311-mile) diameter from the Voyager probes.
that lies beneath the moon’s surface. Unlike Mamaldi basin and the 360-kilometre (224-mile) It has a landscape of craters, tectonic fractures
any other moon in the Solar System it has a diameter Tirawa basin. The impact scar of Tirawa and a tenuous exosphere. Some of the craters are
x4 Images © NASA/JPL-Caltech
substantial atmosphere that is mostly composed overlaps Mamaldi, indicating that it is geologically 100 kilometres (62 miles) across, and there is a
of nitrogen and methane. younger. The unusual far-ultraviolet radiation variety of heavily and lightly cratered plains.
from Rhea detected by Cassini, centred near 184
nanometres in the electromagnetic spectrum, was
probably caused by hydrazine. How or where it
1 comes from still remains a mystery. 3
What is hydrazine?
Hydrazine is a colourless, inorganic liquid that
is highly combustible and smells like ammonia.
It has similar properties to water in terms of
density, surface tension, viscosity and freezing
point. It is very toxic and can cause burns and
serious damage to vital organs. It is often used
2 to propel thruster motors on spacecraft. They
work by hydrazine being exposed to a catalyst,
causing the release of heat and gas that is
directed out of the engine’s nozzle.
involved UVIS locking onto a bright star and filled the moon’s surface and provided the highest could migrate upwards through tiny cracks or
recording how the ultraviolet light changed when signal-to-noise spectra. Elowitz, who was one of the fissures over hundreds of kilometres to the surface.”
the rings of Saturn or a planetary body passed team members, says: “Over 20 modelled spectra of The only other possible source of chlorine is
between them. different chemical species of interest to studies of via exogenic delivery by chondritic asteroids or
The perplexing dip in the far-ultraviolet from icy moons in the outer Solar System were compared micrometeoroids throughout the history of Rhea.
Rhea, centred near 184nm, is outlined in Dr R. Mark with the Cassini observational data, with only two If these simple chloromethane compounds were
Elowitz’ PhD thesis Far-Ultraviolet Spectroscopy chemical species representing a good fit to the scattered over Rhea in this manner, they would
of Saturn’s Moons Rhea and Dione. In it he notes observed reflectance spectra. Those two chemical produce by-products on the surface ice of Rhea.
that data from Rhea and Dione showed a weak species included simple chloromethane molecules These chemical by-products were not found, so this
absorption feature near 184nm, and that as early as and hydrazine monohydrate. To determine the possibility had to be ruled out.
2008 it was found that Phoebe presented similar most likely of these two chemical species to exist That left the researchers having to explain
readings. At the time, various ice mixtures of in the upper surface ice layer on Rhea, the different why hydrazine monohydrate was detected. One
water, tholins, carbon, kerogen and poly-HCN could sources and sinks of each chemical compound were immediate possibility was that the Cassini craft
not explain this feature. Observations of Mimas, explored, including the various chemical pathways itself produced the hydrazine, as it was equipped
Enceladus and Tethys have also revealed absorption that could lead to their production.” with a 132-kilogram tank of hydrazine that fuelled
spectra in the same region of the spectrum. Considering the two possible chemical its 16 attitude and small trajectory thruster motors.
To explain the Rhea signal, scientists decided the compounds, it was determined that simple Professor Nigel Mason, head of the School of
best route to an answer was to compare the spectra chloromethane compounds are least likely to be Physical Sciences at the University of Kent and a
collected by Cassini to the spectra of thin-ice the answer. As Elowitz notes: “It would require the co-author, along with Elowitz and Hendrix, of the
measurements in the laboratory. The far-ultraviolet presence of a deep subsurface ocean under the science paper Possible Detection of Hydrazine on
data was extracted from targeted flybys of Rhea in ice shell of Rhea. It is unlikely the chloromethane Saturn’s Moon Rhea, says: “We looked at spectra
2007, 2010 and 2011 using datasets that completely compounds or salt derivatives of these compounds of other moons, like Dione and Tethys, since if the
86
Signals from saturn
atmosphere and is deposited over geologically long

timescales on Rhea’s upper ice layer.”
Hydrazine therefore remains the prime candidate
to explain the absorption signature seen in the
© Alamy
Cassini far-ultraviolet spectral data, though Hendrix
says we still need to figure out why this feature
has been observed on some of the other moons
of Saturn. In her view it indicates that this process
is happening throughout the Saturn system, and
possibly elsewhere.
Regarding future studies, Mason says: “In future
work we are looking at spectra of other moons, not
only to search for hydrazine, but to look for other
compounds. The UV spectral database is used
to look at other planets and moons, so we
are exploring the chemistry of Jovian moons
in preparation for the JUICE mission, and
hopefully data from the Juno mission now
4 it has been extended. Due to their volcanic
nature, sulphur compounds are expected to be
formed on those moons, so we are looking for these.
Tethys
4 It is an irregular ball of ice with a diameter of
1,066 kilometres (662 miles). It has a high level
Below: A
mosaic view
Hendrix is also on the New Horizons team with the
UV spectrometer, so data from Pluto and Kuiper Belt
of the moon objects is being analysed as well.”
of reflectivity, indicating it is mainly composed of
Enceladus The New Horizons space probe was launched on
water ice. It is similar to Dione and Rhea, except it is
using spectral
less cratered. The crater floors reflect a lot of light, 19 January 2006 to explore Pluto and the Kuiper
filters, taken
suggesting the presence of water ice, and further Belt. It swung past Jupiter in February 2007 and
by Cassini’s
reflectivity is caused by water-ice particles from
narrow-angle made its closest approach to Pluto on 14 July 2015.
Saturn’s E-ring that erupt from geysers on Enceladus
camera NASA’s Juno space probe has been orbiting Jupiter
and end up showering Tethys. It has two noteworthy
features: the Ithaca Chasma, a 1,930-kilometre since 5 July 2016, where it has been studying the
(1,200-mile) long crack along its surface that
composition of the planet. The ESA’s JUICE (JUpiter
covers 75 per cent of its circumference, and the
445-kilometre (276-mile) Odysseus crater that ICy moons Explorer) is scheduled for launch in 2022
dominates the western hemisphere. It’s possible to search for possible habitable environments for
that its impact helped create the Ithaca Chasma. organic molecules in the icy crusts and ocean layers
of Jupiter’s moons Ganymede, Callisto and Europa.
signal was present on all moons it might suggest

we should look for a common source, for example
spacecraft fuel contamination of the spectrometer.
THE LAUNCH
OF CASSINI AR SCAN HERE
The data from Tethys showed no signal, and we
looked at other spectra to check for contamination
and if the spacecraft motors were firing during or
before observation to leave a ‘plume’ of hydrazine.”
The spacecraft’s own thrusters seemed a very
likely culprit, but they had to be ruled out because
they were never fired while Cassini made its flybys
of Rhea. And, as Mason points out, hydrazine fuel
would have contaminated data gained from other
moons and not just showed up when it looked
at Rhea.
Elowitz explains that if there is ammonia on the
icy surface of Rhea, it could produce hydrazine “by
irradiation from high-energy particles originating
from Saturn’s magnetosphere”. However, he
continues: “An alternative explanation is that
hydrazine is produced on Titan from irradiation of
ammonia present on its surface and/or atmosphere.
© ESA
The hydrazine then escapes from Titan’s
87
Cassini
spacecraft
High-gain antenna
1 The four-metre (13-foot) wide
antenna sent data back to Earth,
and variations in the signal helped
to study Saturn’s atmosphere.
The central low-gain antenna had
a wider, less powerful range.
2 Magnetometer
(MAG)
© NASA/JPL-Caltech
Two magnetometers were
mounted on a boom to detect
the strength and distribution of
© NASA
Saturn’s magnetic field and its
influence on its moons. A mosaic of images taken by Cassini’s
wide-angle camera – using red, green
and blue spectral filters – showing
The data from these missions might well help us
further with the study of Saturn’s system and the
Above:
Technicians
were
3 Radio and Plasma
Wave Science (RPWS)
Three ten-metre (33-foot) long
Saturn, its rings and Titan.
mysterious presence of hydrazine.

dwarfed by antennae were used to detect
To investigate the matter further, Elowitz, in the huge radio waves and plasma in
his PhD thesis, proposes that future space probes Cassini- Saturn’s magnetosphere.
should be equipped with infrared and ultraviolet Huygens
craft as they
Remote-sensing pallet
spectrometers to examine the surface of Rhea and
the similar icy moons of Saturn. Cassini’s UVIS
instrument could be improved by employing a
tested it
in 1996 4 Included wide-angle and
narrow-angle cameras along with
instruments to study Saturn’s
hyperspectral imaging system. Each pixel in the
electromagnetic spectrum.
multi-layered sensor would obtain spatial and
spectral information. The far-ultraviolet spectrum Engines
data received by each pixel would identify chemical
compounds by reference to their reflective
5 One main engine and an
unused back-up engine were
properties, and the whole instrument would be able used for velocity and trajectory
to create detailed geochemical maps of selected changes. 16 thrusters were used
for smaller manoeuvres.
areas of interest. “The detailed spectral maps would
be used to characterise the spatial variability of
Radioisotope
the abundance of hydrazine monohydrate or
chloromethane molecules, which could not be
6generators
thermoelectric
(RTGs)
performed using the previous Cassini UVIS data Through the decay of
due to limitations resulting from low signal-to- plutonium-238, the three RTGs
noise,” notes Elowitz. supplied electrical power to the
spacecraft and its instruments. A combination of infrared, green and
The use of advanced spectrometers with ultraviolet filters were used to show
higher sensitivities could be used to examine the the subtle colour differences over the
Huygens Titan probe
upper layers of Rhea, Dione and Tethys for the
presence of hydrazine monohydrate or chlorine
7 The 318-kilogram craft carried
six scientific instruments to
heavily cratered surface of Tethys.
molecules, and it would be great to send landing the surface of Titan, where it
craft to these moons. The Curiosity rover carried transmitted data back to the
orbiting Cassini craft.
mass spectrometers and gas chromatographs
that detected dichloromethane on Mars, so any
future surface landers on the icy moons should be
equipped with similar equipment to help verify the
8 Fields and
Particles pallet
Featured instruments to study
existence of hydrazine or chloromethane. Certainly cosmic dust, magnetic fields,
there is plenty more to learn and understand about plasma and gaseous components
this fascinating signal. surrounding Saturn.
Radar bay
9
© NASA/JPL-Caltech
Nigel Watson Using a multi-beam sensor,

Space science writer
Nigel has written extensively about this was designed to map the
science and technology, in particular surface of Titan and other
about extraterrestrial contact. He is moons of Saturn and study
the author of four books on alien life. Saturn’s rings.
88
Signals from saturn
Caught in a
single frame from
left to right are
Janus, Pandora,
Enceladus, Mimas
and Rhea, taken by
Cassini’s narrow-
angle camera.
© NASA/JPL-Caltech
5
6 3
4
7
8 This is a composite
infrared view of Titan,
taken at a distance
of 10,000 kilometres
(6,200 miles), that
penetrates the hazy
1 atmosphere to reveal
surface details.
© NASA/JPL-Caltech
Near the south pole of

Saturn’s moon Enceladus,
huge plumes spray water
vapour and ice grains from
cracks called tiger stripes on
the surface. There are four
AR SCAN HERE
prominent stripes, each 135
©NASA/JPL/
kilometres (84 miles) long.
89
Moon Profile
Titan
Saturn’s moon is a harsh, uninhabitable world,
yet has uncanny similarities to our home planet
itan is one of the most intriguing moons liquid on the surface with a rain cycle replenishing
T in our Solar System. From the outside

astronomers see a ball of golden-orange
haze, but it's what’s hiding beneath this
them. All of this happens on a moon that has a
surface temperature of minus 179 degrees Celsius
(minus 290 degrees Fahrenheit); there obviously
atmosphere that intrigues – a freezing world with isn’t water on Titan as that would have been frozen.
bodies of liquid. Planetary scientists are fascinated by These lakes, rivers and seas are filled with liquid
Titan and its unusual contents. hydrocarbons such as methane and ethane. These
Titan, the largest moon of Saturn and second- complex molecules are capable of existing as a liquid
largest moon in the Solar System behind Jupiter’s in such a cold temperature.
Ganymede, is an icy ball that stretches out to As for the atmosphere – in fact, Titan is the only
almost 5,150 kilometres (3,200 miles) in diameter, moon with a thick atmosphere in the Solar System –
nearly 50 per cent wider than the Earth's Moon. it has an atmospheric pressure 60 per cent greater
Due to Saturn’s position, which is around 1.4 billion than that of the Earth. This would feel the same as
kilometres (870 million miles) from the Sun, nine- swimming 15 metres (50 feet) below the surface in
times farther than Earth's average distance, its an ocean on Earth. This atmosphere is comprised
satellite Titan receives sunlight that is 100-times mostly of nitrogen, with a whopping 95 per cent.
fainter than the light on Earth. This freezing world Around five per cent is methane and the extremely
may be one that is inhospitable for humans, but small remainder is carbon-rich compounds. This
there are bodies of liquid present on the surface. provides the orange haze that is seen from afar.
These observations have been the subject of many The presence of an atmosphere and surface
studies throughout the decades. liquid means there is a cycle of evaporation and
Although there are many interesting moons in the condensation, creating clouds of methane ice and
Solar System, Titan is the most Earth-like: it has an cyanide gas and precipitation in the form of methane
atmosphere and it is rocky, but also has bodies of rain. A moon with a weather cycle is unusual, and Global
astronomers are amazed at how the Earth’s water
cycle can be applied to a distant, alien world.
subsurface
There is a mystery about Titan that astronomers ocean
can’t seem to explain with any conviction, and that’s
what is replenishing Titan’s atmosphere. It is known
that sunlight breaks up methane at the top of the
moon’s atmosphere, and scientists are wondering
what is bringing more methane into the atmosphere
in its place. One suggestion has been volcanic
activity. The presence of volcanoes would be yet
another amazing similarity between Titan and our
home planet.
“Titan has bodies of

liquid on the surface
with a rain cycle
replenishing them”
Huygens sent back
images of the Titanian
surface to Cassini
90
90
moon profile: Titan
Organic-rich
atmosphere
and surface
Hydrous silicate core
High-pressure
ice shell
Decoupled outer Atmospheric
shell (water-ice composition
and clathrates)
95%
Nitrogen
5%
Methane
© ESA/NASA/JPL; A. D. Fortes/UCL
+
Traces of
carbon-rich
compounds
91
91
What’s been haeppening at Mercury?

Understanding the atmospher
since its
Titan’s atmosphere is an enigma. Ever
ers have been tryin g to explain
discovery astronom
surface liquid arose
how such a dense atmosphere and
years. “Because
and were preserved for millions of
in our Solar System with a
Titan is the only moon
tantial atmo sphe re, scien tists have wondered
subs
” says Dr Kelly
for a long time what its source was,
t Research
Miller, a research scientist at Southwes
in San Anto nio, Texa s, Unite d States. “The
Institute
that amm onia ice from comets
main theory has been
ochemistry, into
was converted, by impacts or phot
re. While that may
nitrogen to form Titan’s atmosphe
ess, it negl ects the effects
still be an important proc
what we now know is a very subs tantial portion of
of
comets: complex orga nic mate rial.”
r believes
But how is it replenished? Well, Mille
be explained by ‘cook ing’ orga nic materials
this can
r primitive objects
brought to Titan via comets or othe
n these materials
during the moon’s conception. Whe
© ESA
gase s are relea sed, and this is what is
are cooked,
of meth ane on Titan.
maintaining the levels
Changing seasons
ge from summer to winter on
Much like seeing the seasons chan
tists have spot ted signs of the changing seasons on Titan
Earth, scien
from NAS A’s now -deceased Cassini spacecraft.
using valuable data
hern hemisphere, Rajani Dhingra –
Using pictures of the moon’s nort
University of Idaho in Moscow,
a doctoral student in physics at the
team have seen rainfall on the north pole.
United States – and her
ation of the beginning of a
The rainfall also provides the first indic
summer season.
looking forward to
“The whole Titan community has been
cloud s and rains on Titan ’s nort h pole, indicating the start
seeing
ite what the climate models had
of the northern summer, but desp
g any clouds,” said Rajani Dhingra.
predicted, we weren’t even seein
d it the curio us case of missing clouds.”
“People calle
es have been acquired and analysed the case
Now that these imag
bit clearer, courtesy of Cassini
of Titan’s seasons has become a little
Infra red Map ping Spec trometer instrument. The
and its Visual and
biliti es allow it to peer inside the
spacecraft’s near-infrared capa
re and obse rve this rainf all. Com pared to Earth’s yearly
atmosphe
Titan lasts seven Earth years.
cycle of four seasons, a season on
© NASA
Dust storms sweeping the surfaceh enough

was a hars
If you didn’t already think that Titan
onm ent, Cass ini also spot ted giant dust storms
envir
This observation raises
sweeping across the moon’s surface.
work out what is generating
intrigue as astronomers try to
erful gust arou nd the equa toria l region.
this pow
e moo n," says Séba stien Rodriguez,
"Titan is a very activ
Paris Dide rot, France. "We
an astronomer at the Université
that abou t its geol ogy and exot ic hydrocarbon
already know and
her analo gy with Earth
cycle. Now we can add anot
: the activ e dust cycle in whic h organic dust can be
Mars
Titan's equator.”
raised from large dune fields around
her chan ges with the seasons
In the same way the weat
, the same occu rs on Titan . In this case, when the
on Earth
x3 images © NASA/JPL-Caltech
equa tor mass ive cloud s are formed in

Sun crosses Titan’s
erful meth ane storms.
these tropical regions, creating pow
astro nom ers look ing at this featu re thought
This is what
be something completely
was occurring, but it turned out to
tists discovered that
different. After more modelling scien
cloud s of orga nic mole cules raised from
these are actually
first obse rvati on of a dust
the dune, and therefore the
storm on Titan .
92
moon profile: Titan
Huygens'
Mission to Titan descent
Titan isn’t exactly a nearby neighbour
we can pop to and see how it's
batteries died and communication
ceased with Cassini. All observations
idea that is in advanced discussion
is the ‘Dragonfly’ lander, as part of
to Titan
doing, like Mars. When Earth and of Titan after the fact were made by NASA’s New Frontiers program. The
Saturn are closest to each other they Cassini before it ended its mission by Dragonfly lander will not just sit on
• Time*: 14 January 2005
10:13am UTC (11:13am CET)
are still 1.2 billion kilometres (746 crashing into Saturn’s atmosphere in the surface like Huygens, it will be
Activity: Huygens reaches the
million miles) apart. This means visits September 2017. The data collected a dual-quadcopter drone capable
top of Titan’s atmosphere.
to Titan in the past have been few by Cassini is still providing new of moving around Titan’s thick and
and far between. The first probe discoveries over a year after the nitrogen-rich atmosphere. This would
to visit the Saturnian system was mission’s end. allow astronomers to get a closer
• Time: 10:17am UTC (11:17am CET)
Activity: Pilot parachute
NASA’s Pioneer 11 in 1979, followed There have been talks of sending look at different surface features
deploys, and a minute later
by Voyager 1 and 2 in 1980 and more probes to the exciting moon and would allow more freedom in
the front shield is released and
1981 respectively. NASA’s Voyager using new and innovative ways. One movement than a rover.
transmission to Cassini begins.
spacecraft were pivotal in making
initial measurements of its physical
properties such as mass, density,
• Time: 10:32am (11:32am CET)
Activity: Main parachute
composition and so on. These
separates and drogue parachute
observations caught the attention of
deploys to guide Huygens to
many because of their irregularity.
the right spot.
The best spy sent to the Saturnian
system, and in particular Titan,
was the Cassini spacecraft and its
• Time: 11:57am UTC
(12:57pm CET)
accompanying Huygens lander, a
Activity: The Gas
collaborative mission between NASA,
Chromatograph Mass
the ESA and ASI. Cassini-Huygens
Spectrometer begins sampling
arrived at Saturn in July 2004 and
the atmosphere before it
made many observations of the
touches the ground.
moon before Huygens was released
with the intention to burst through
the hazy atmosphere of Titan and
• Time: 12:34pm UTC
NASA’s Dragonfly
© Adrian Mann
(1:34pm CET)
land on its surface. On 14 January probe will revolutionise Activity: Huygens makes a
2005 Huygens made its successful planetary exploration successful touchdown on Titan.
descent onto Titan before its
• Time: 2:44pm UTC (3:44pm CET)
Activity: Cassini stops collecting
Titan’s facts and stats Huygens data, thus concluding its

work, and at 3:14pm UTC the first
data is sent to Earth.
*All times above are Earth

Received Time - i.e. 67 minutes
after the event has happened at
the spacecraft
600
KM
Titan’s atmosphere extends Data suggests there could The conditions on Titan could
about 600 kilometres be the presence of a become more hospitable when
(370 miles) above liquid ocean beneath the temperature of the Sun
2%
its surface. the surface. increases 6 billion years
from now.
Jupiter’s Ganymede is only

two per cent larger, meaning
there isn’t much size between
the two largest moons in the
Solar System.
Titan is tidally locked to

ESA’s Huygens holds Saturn, much like the Moon The ‘sand’ on Titan’s dunes is
the record for most distant is to Earth, meaning only composed of dark hydrocarbon
landing of a one side of Titan is facing grains that resemble
human-made probe. Saturn at all times. coffee grounds.
93
OLDEST SOLAR SYSTEM MYSTERY SOLVED
WHAT HIT
URANUS?
Astronomers are beginning to
understand how the ice giant came to be
the weirdest planet in the Solar System
Reported by Kelly Oakes
94
What hit Uranus?
he eight major planets in our Solar
T System are all mysterious in their

own ways, but Uranus, seventh from
the Sun, is particularly weird. The ice
giant is tilted, its north and south poles where
you would expect the planet’s equator to be. Its
magnetic field is off-centre. And though you’d
expect an ice giant to be cold, Uranus is even
colder than scientists think it should be. Now
researchers are starting to unravel how it came to
be this way.
Just like Saturn and Neptune, Uranus has a
ring system. However, because the planet is tilted
98 degrees, its rings orbit the ice giant vertically
instead of around its middle – for comparison,
Earth is tilted 23 degrees, and Jupiter a mere three
degrees. It also has plenty of moons, including five
major ones and at least 22 other known satellites,
which orbit the same way.
Aside from the moons and rings, Uranus’ tilt also
dramatically affects the conditions on the planet
itself. The length of a day on Uranus changes a lot
over the ice giant’s orbit around the Sun. Each pole
of Uranus spends around 42 Earth years pointing
towards the Sun, while the other faces away, before
they switch.
When one of the planet’s poles is most directly
pointing towards the Sun, called a solstice,
only a small part of the planet near the equator
experiences a day-night cycle, while that pole is
bathed in light and the other in dark. As it orbits
the Sun the planet gradually spins until eventually
the other pole faces the Sun. In the middle, at the
planet’s equinoxes, the equator of the planet faces
“Aside from the moons and

the rings, Uranus' tilt also
dramatically affects the
conditions on the planet itself”
© Tobias Roetch
95
the Sun, and its day-night cycles are more similar to a PhD student in computational astrophysics at the Perhaps the strangest thing Voyager 2 discovered
what we are used to on Earth. University of Durham. about Uranus was its strangely wonky magnetic
The planet itself looks pretty blank and Voyager 2 sent back thousands of images and field, tilted not at the same angle as the planet but
featureless from a distance. When the Voyager 2 plenty of scientific data from Uranus. The spacecraft instead at 59 degrees, and not appearing to originate
spacecraft came within 81,500 kilometres (50,600 pinned down the length of time the planet takes from the planet’s centre. This means the strength
miles) of the top of Uranus’ atmosphere in January to rotate as 17 hours, 14 minutes. It revealed the of the magnetic field in each hemisphere of the
1986 – the only time we have visited the planet – it spectacular detail of the previously known rings planet is different – compare that to the magnetic
saw a smooth, turquoise expanse. But this calm around the planet, and discovered two new ones. field strength on Earth, which is strongest at the
exterior belies stranger things underneath. As well as this the spacecraft spotted 11 previously north and south poles and weakest at the equator,
The planet’s atmosphere is mostly made up of unknown moons orbiting the planet and found and you start to understand how peculiar it is.
hydrogen, helium and methane, with some other evidence of geological activity on the five largest: Another as yet unexplained mystery of the planet
hydrocarbons, too. The methane is what gives the Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Oberon and Titania. is how cold it is. The lowest temperature recorded
planet its bluish-green hue, because the gas absorbs
red wavelengths of light. Though it looks calm,
the Hubble Space Telescope revealed that Uranus
has an active weather system with strong winds,
“Hubble revealed that Uranus has an active
bright clouds and even aurorae. “It's very hard to
see them because the exterior is so boring; it's
weather system with strong winds, bright
hard to tell what's going on,” says Jacob Kegerreis, clouds and even aurorae”
How an ice giant is made

Uranus formed in a similar way to the other Solar
System planets before something hit it
1Atmosphere
Uranus looks bluish-green
through a telescope thanks to
the methane in its atmosphere. It
also contains hydrogen, helium,
acetylene and other hydrocarbons.
Cloud of gas and dust
collapses
An interstellar cloud of gas and dust,
known as a solar nebula, collapsed in on
itself and began to spin. Our Sun began
Material comes together
Heavier material in the spinning disc of gas
to shine in the centre of this spinning
and dust starts to form into clumps. Closer to
disc as the temperature and pressure
triggered thermonuclear fusion.
the Sun these materials include rock and iron,
but beyond the frost line, which lies between
the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, there are solid
2Icy mantle
This isn’t ice as we
know it. Uranus’ mantle
‘ices’ like water, methane and ammonia. is made up of a hot,
dense fluid scientists
refer to as a water-
ammonia ocean.
3Planetary core
© Jacob Kegerreis; Tobias Roetsch;
Uranus’ core extends to

about a fifth of the planet’s
diameter, and is made of
rock, ice and silicates. Its
temperature is thought to be
around 5,000°C (9,032°F), but
could be hotter.
96
What hit Uranus?
on Uranus is −224.2 degrees Celsius (-371.56 degrees Right: High-

Fahrenheit). Other planets in our Solar System resolution
simulations
radiate more heat from their centres than they get
of a giant
from the Sun, but Uranus barely gives out any.
impact on
The answer to both of these mysteries might Uranus, tilting
lie in what happened when Uranus became tilted. the planet to
Planets are born out of discs of debris that circle the angle we
nascent stars. When Uranus was formed it was see today
likely spinning not too far off centre in much the
same way as other planets in the Solar System.
But new star systems in the process of forming
are violent, hectic places. As well as the bodies
that we know as planets today, there would have
been potentially tens or hundreds of protoplanets –
planets in a very early stage of formation, typically
made of ice and rock – flying around the early
Solar System. Once the initial debris disc around
the Sun had disappeared, blown away by solar
wind or cobbled together into other planets, these
Clumps collide and merge Planets get in formation

Clumps combine through collisions and start to
become planetesimals, the building blocks of
4Potential
layer
heat-trapping
Scientists have not confirmed
Uranus and Neptune might have formed further
in between Jupiter and Saturn and later migrated
planets. Over millions of years these planetesimals the existence of a layer around out to their final positions today over hundreds of
increase in size through more collisions. The Uranus’ ice layer trapping heat and millions of years. It was likely hit by the impactor
four giant planets beyond the frost line grow big making it appear cooler, but one when its moons and rings were still forming.
enough to amass hydrogen and helium. could have formed.
1 Planets take shape

Solar wind from the Sun disperses any remaining
gas from the Solar System, and planet formation is
almost done. Uranus and Neptune are thought to
have formed after the dust is swept away from the
inner Solar System towards its outer regions.
3
4
5Upper-atmosphere haze
The highest parts of Uranus’
atmosphere are thought to contain haze
made up of hydrocarbons that obscures
features lower in the atmosphere.
97
Embedded in
The impactor the planet
The rock and ice
from the impactor is
Simulations mean we can make an likely to have become
educated guess at what hit Uranus part of the planet
itself, or its moons,
after the collision.
Not quite a planet
Uranus’ impactor was likely
a protoplanet that never
accumulated enough mass to
form into a planet in its own right.
Twice the size

of Earth
Simulations show
that an object would
need to be twice Rock and ice
the size of Earth, if it The impactor that hit
struck Uranus with Uranus was probably
a glancing blow, to made up of rock and
cause the tilt. ice, some of which
would have become
incorporated into the
planet on impact.
protoplanets would have become less stable and machine to go back to the early Solar System to the simulation does,” says Kegerreis, “and see where
potentially ended up on collision paths with their check the hypothesis. Instead, researchers are they go.”
fully grown siblings. using supercomputers to simulate these sorts of The latest simulations, presented in a talk at the
A protoplanetary hit job is the leading theory. collisions and get to the bottom of what might have American Geophysical Union’s annual conference
“The giant-impact scenario is still the leading happened to Uranus. “We have millions of particles last year, show that the impactor could have been
hypothesis to explain the high obliquity of Uranus,” that we put down in our computer and we tell the an object twice the size of Earth. The object – likely
says Nadine Nettelman, a planetary scientist at computer simulation how those particles behave,” a protoplanet left over from the formation of the
the University of Rostock in Germany. Scientists says Kegerreis, who is part of a project using the Solar System – striking a grazing blow on Uranus
think that as well as being responsible for the tilt of technique, called smoothed-particle hydrodynamics, would have been enough to knock it off-kilter, but
Uranus, giant impacts are to blame for other Solar to investigate the giant planet. The researchers input not so violent as to make it lose the atmosphere that
System phenomena, including Earth’s own Moon information about how gravity works, what pressure we still see surrounding the planet today.
and Saturn’s rings. the materials would be under, their density and Another finding from the simulations might
The trouble is we’ve never seen one of these temperature. “And then we just let those particles explain why Uranus is so cold all of the time: debris
impacts first hand, and we can’t invent a time smash into each other and evolve the physics as from the impactor could have made a thin shell
around the planet’s ice layer, sealing in the inner
heat. Nettelman, who published a paper suggesting
Puck Titania Uranus' moons the existence of such a ‘thermal boundary layer’ in
2016, says that this layer “prevents heat flow from
Ariel escaping the deep interior”. But it’s too early on to
rule out all other options when it comes to what hit
Uranus; there’s a chance the impactor could have
been a smaller object in certain circumstances, for
instance. If the planet was already tilted by the time
an Earth-sized protoplanet hit it, this could have
been enough of an extra push to give it the extreme
tilt we see today.
The mass could have been bigger as well. “That
Umbriel would obviously be able to knock it over just as
easily,” says Kegerreis. “But the bigger you make the
Miranda Oberon impact, the less likely it is for that to exist in terms
of what would have been flying around the early
98
What hit Uranus?
Hubble watches the

ice giant’s weather
Words by Meghan Bartels
IN COOPERATION WITH
If you don't like your local weather, perhaps
you would prefer the atmosphere on Uranus or
Neptune – and the Hubble Space Telescope has
an update on each planet's current conditions.
The telescope regularly checks in on the two outer
planets to see what's happening in their atmospheres, and
last autumn Hubble captured incredible images of clouds on
both worlds.
Uranus is currently deep into its summer season, and that
shows in the giant, white cloud covering the planet's north
pole, which currently points towards the Sun. As scientists
have watched the Uranian summer progress – a season on
this distant, giant world lasts 21 Earth years – they have seen
this massive cloud grow even bigger. The large polar cap is
accompanied by a smaller, bright cloud of methane ice.
On Neptune, where seasons last for 41 Earth years, it's
winter in the northern hemisphere. That hemisphere is
currently sporting a massive dark storm that stretches about
11,000 kilometres (6,800 miles) across.
Scientists aren't sure what phenomenon creates Neptune's
dark storms, although the tempests seem to pop up about twice
a decade and disperses within about two years. Researchers
suspect that the storms creep upwards through the planet's
atmosphere, lifting the ingredients of deeper layers of the
atmosphere to the top.
Near the dark storm currently on Neptune, Hubble spotted
another atmospheric feature: sparkling white ‘companion
clouds’, which scientists have spotted around dark storms in the
past. Astronomers suspect that these bright clouds are full of
methane ice that's been rapidly pushed upwards and frozen.
“The bigger you make the impact, the less Below: Uranus
likely it is for that to exist in terms of and Neptune
as observed
what would have been flying around” through
Hubblea
acob Kegerreis
Solar System.” There may be remnants of whatever Above: This
hit Uranus embedded within the planet itself. In the false-colour
simulations the researchers saw that an impactor image by
could have left lumps of rock inside the planet. Hubble shows
bright clouds
These might even be what’s causing the ice giant’s
in the planet’s
magnetic field to be tilted strangely and off-centre.
atmosphere
The moons could also provide clues about the in orange
impactor. The fact that the major moons of Uranus
orbit around the planet’s equator suggest that they Below: An
were either formed from the debris left over after infrared
the impact or, if they were already in the process of image of
forming when Uranus was hit, were dragged over Uranus taken
when the planet was destabilised. by the Keck
For his part, Kegerreis says the team is spoilt II telescope
shows storm-
for choice about what to use the simulations to
like features
investigate next. They may look in more detail and clouds
into what could have caused Uranus’ lumpy,
© NASA; ESA; Tobias Roetch
lopsided magnetic field, or probe how giant impacts

can mix up and change the atmosphere of ice
giant planets in general. “We've only just scratched
the surface of what we can do with these big
simulations,” he says.
99
This false-
colour view
“We really need to figure out if our understanding of
of the rings
combines Uranus would benefit from a dedicated mission”
images taken
by Voyager 2 Nadine Nettelman
during its 1986
flyby
Despite the progress made in recent years, an incredible 715 new worlds in one go, roughly half
there are still many things left unexplained about of them were similar in size to Neptune. Learning
Uranus. We still don’t know how hot or cold the more about the giant planets on our doorstep will
core of the planet is because we haven’t pinned make figuring out the details of faraway alien
down the details of the possible thermal boundary planets much easier.
layer that could be trapping in the heat. We know Some researchers think the only way to really
that Uranus and Neptune have similar magnetic get to grips with Uranus will be a dedicated
fields, but we don’t know why they have such mission, and in recent years there have been
different heat flows. Its icy sibling Neptune is also several proposed missions to the ice giant. “I think
largely a mystery, having similarly only been visited the time is right, but the planning should not be
by the Voyager 2 spacecraft in the summer of 1989. hasted,” says Nettelman. “We really need to figure
“Compared with pretty much all the other planets, out if our understanding of Uranus would benefit
apart from Neptune which is in the same position, from a dedicated mission, or maybe more from a
an awful lot of the details we really don't know very combined mission to both Uranus and Neptune.”
well,” confirms Kegerreis. Combining theory and simulations with actual
Thrusting Uranus and Neptune into the spotlight observations will help us get to the bottom of the
recently is the fact that a lot of the exoplanets mysteries hiding underneath Uranus’ deceivingly
astronomers have been finding outside of the Solar calm exterior. Maybe it’ll even teach us something
System are similar, at least in size, to the ice giants. about the whole universe of planets outside our
In 2014 when Kepler announced the discovery of Solar System, too.
What if Uranus hadn’t A warmer exterior

The ice giant’s cool appearance
could be caused by a layer that was
been tipped over? deposited by the impactor, trapping

heat in a potentially warm core.
If it hadn’t been hit, the planet might now

be missing what makes it unique
More atmosphere
Though Uranus retained an
atmosphere after its collision, it
might have had even more before
that could have been lost in the
violent impact.
© NASA/JPL; Science Photo Library / Alamy Stock Photo
Boring magnetic field

Upright tilt The impactor being incorporated
Astronomers expect Uranus started into Uranus is one hypothesis
off with a much more slight tilt, if it to explain its wonky magnetic
had one at all. If it hadn’t been hit it field. If it hadn’t hit, would the
would have stayed that way. magnetic field be less strange?
100
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Planet Profile
Neptune
The isolated azure giant remains a relative mystery
eptune is the eighth planet from Neptune’s cloud cover has an especially
N the Sun. It was the first planet to

have its existence predicted by
mathematical calculations before
it was actually seen through a telescope on 23
vivid blue tint that is partly due to an as-yet-
unidentified compound and the result of the
absorption of red light by methane in the
planet’s mostly hydrogen-helium atmosphere.
September 1846. Irregularities in the orbit of Photos of Neptune reveal a blue planet, and it’s
Uranus led French astronomer Alexis Bouvard often dubbed an ice giant, since it possesses a
to suggest that the gravitational pull from thick, slushy fluid mix of water, ammonia and
another celestial body might be responsible. methane ices under its atmosphere. It is roughly
German astronomer Johann Galle then relied on 17 times Earth’s mass and nearly 58 times its
subsequent calculations to help spot Neptune via volume. Neptune’s rocky core alone is thought to
telescope. Previously, astronomer Galileo Galilei be roughly equal to Earth’s mass.
sketched the planet, but he mistook it for a star Despite its great distance from the Sun, which
due to its slow motion. In accordance with all the means it gets little sunlight to help warm and
other planets seen in the sky, this new world was drive its atmosphere, Neptune’s winds can
given a name from Greek and Roman mythology: reach up to 2,400 kilometres (1,500 miles)
Neptune, after the Roman god of the sea. per hour – the fastest detected yet in the Solar
Only one mission has flown by Neptune System. These winds were linked with a large,
– Voyager 2 in August 1989 – meaning that dark storm that Voyager 2 tracked in Neptune’s
astronomers have done most studies using southern hemisphere in 1989. This oval-shaped,
ground-based telescopes. Today there are still counterclockwise-spinning ‘Great Dark Spot’
many mysteries about the cool, blue planet, was large enough to contain the entire Earth,
such as why its winds are so speedy and why and moved westward at nearly 1,200 kilometres
its magnetic field is offset. While Neptune is of (750 miles) per hour. This storm seemed to have
interest because it is in our own Solar System, vanished when the Hubble Space Telescope
astronomers are also interested in learning more later searched for it. Hubble has also revealed
about the planet to assist with exoplanet studies. the appearance and then fading of other dark
Specifically, some astronomers are interested in spots over the past decade, and a new one was
learning about the habitability of worlds that are observed in 2016. It doesn’t look like Neptune is
somewhat bigger than Earth. finished with surprising scientists just yet.
Those that are closer to Earth’s size are called
‘super-Earths’, while those that are closer to
Neptune’s size are ‘mini-Neptunes’. However,
there’s some debate about those terms given
that today’s telescope technology doesn’t make
it possible to view how much atmosphere is on
those planet types, making it difficult to make
a distinction. Like Earth, Neptune has a rocky
core, but it has a much thicker atmosphere that
prohibits the existence of life as we know it.
© NASA/JPL-Caltech
Astronomers are still trying to figure out at what

point a planet becomes so large that it may pick
Left: A
up a lot of gas from the area, making it difficult Voyager 2 view
or impossible for life to exist.
AR SCAN HERE of Neptune
102
planet profile: Neptune
“today there are still many

mysteries about the cool, blue
planet, such as why its winds
are so speedy”
Atmospheric
Composition
80%
Hydrogen
19%
Helium
1.5%
Methane
Overall
Composition
25%Rock
60-70%Ice
5-15%
Hydrogen and
helium
© Getty
103
NEWS FROM Neptune

A dark storm on Neptune
mysteriously reversed
switched direction
A dark storm on Neptune abruptly
from almo st certain
and started moving away
h, puzz ling astro nom ers. NAS A’s Hubble Space
deat
in 2018. A year
Telescope first spotted the vortex
hward towards
later, the storm began drifting sout
une’s equa tor, follo wing the path of several
Nept
Usua lly thes e dark spot s on Neptune
storms before it.
hing or fading
live for a few years before either vanis
sly stopped
away. However, the storm mysteriou
e a shar p U-tu rn, drifting back
moving south and mad
nomers spotted a
northwards. At the same time, astro
et. They theorise
second, smaller dark spot on the plan
be a piece of the original
that this smaller ‘cousin’ may
x that broke off and drifted away .
vorte
ar storms
Although Hubble has tracked simil
astronomers
on Neptune over the past 30 years,
© NASA/ESA
atmospheric
have never seen such unpredictable
storm , whic h was 7,403
behaviour. The 2018
the fourth-darkest
kilometres (4,600 miles) across, is
.
spot Hubble has tracked since 1993
Neptune’s smallest moon

has a violent past
eter
Hippocamp is believed to have a diam
of abou t 34 kilom etres (21 mile s). The
ral
tiny moon circles in the same gene
vered
neighbourhood as six moons disco
2 durin g the prob e’s flyby of
by Voyager
12,000
Neptune in 1989. Hippocamp is just
the largest
kilometres (7,450 miles) inland to
of thes e othe r six, Prot eus.
and outermost
Like Earth’s Moon, Proteus has been
nt planet.
slowly spiralling away from its pare
thou gh at a muc h slower
So has Hippocamp,
eus was
rate. About 4 billion years ago, Prot
and would
probably right next to Hippocamp
Scientists
have gobbled the smaller moon up.
ve that Hipp ocam p was once part of its
belie
from
larger neighbour and likely coalesced
into
pieces of Proteus that were blasted
© NASA/ESA
space by a long-ago comet impact.
Neptune’s moon Triton

has a rare kind of ice
ts an uncommon icy
Neptune’s largest moon Triton boas
of carb on mon oxid e and nitro gen, which could
mixture
r unde rstan d the conditions of
help astronomers bette
other distant alien worlds.
and a high-
Using the Gemini Observatory in Chile
calle d the Imm ersio n Grating
resolution spectrograph
red Spec trom eter (IGR INS), a visiting instrument for
Infra
nct infrared signature
Gemini, astronomers detected a disti
of carb on monoxide and
on Triton, revealing a mixture
froze n as solid ice. This findi ng helps explain
nitrogen
ric chan ges on Trito n and how material
seasonal atmosphe
surfa ce via geysers.
is transported across the moon’s
mixt ure dete cted on Trito n could help
The icy
c geys ers, whic h are the dark,
explain the moon’s iconi
blow n streaks first obse rved by NASA’s Voyager
wind
r region. These
2 spacecraft in the moon’s south pola
© NASA/JPL
to be erup ted material from

distinct streaks are believed
nal ocea n, or an icy mixt ure that migrates around
an inter
onse to chan ging seas onal patterns
the surface in resp
of sunlight.
104
planet profile: Neptune
Evolution
When triton crashed of Neptune
the party at Neptune • Date: 23 September 1846
Neptune’s original satellites may have been destroyed Activity: Astronomer Johann
when its largest moon, Triton, entered the picture. The Gottfried Galle viewed
massive moon may have tossed some of the original Neptune through a telescope
satellites into the ice giant, kicked others out of orbit for the first time
and swallowed up the rest, creating a new family that
doesn’t look much like those of other giant planets. • Date: 10 October 1846
For years scientists have suspected that Triton Activity: Neptune’s largest
wasn’t part of Neptune’s original collection of moons. moon Triton was discovered
The massive moon has a backward orbit and makes
up over 99 per cent of all the mass orbiting the • Date: 25 August 1989
planet. They think it’s a captured object whose orbit Activity: NASA’s Voyager 2 flew
was circularised by debris discs created by impacts. by Neptune and came within
The moons of Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus are all just 3,000 kilometres (1,860
well-behaved compared with Neptune’s. The other miles) of the planet’s north pole
three gas giants have a wealth of satellites – Jupiter
has 79 to Neptune’s 14 – travelling in nearly circular • Date: 1 July 2013
paths around their equators. While Triton’s path Activity: Neptune’s smallest
is circular, it travels backwards compared with moon S/2004 N1 was
Neptune’s rotation, and spins backwards too. discovered during an analysis of
older Hubble images
© NASA
• Date: 8 October 2013
Neptune by Activity: Neptune’s ‘lost’ moon

Naiad was spotted for the first
time in 20 years. The tiny moon
numbers 165
had remained unseen since the
Earth years
How long Neptune takes
-214°C
Average temperature
on Neptune
cameras on NASA’s Voyager 2
spacecraft first discovered it
in 1989.
to complete an orbit of
the Sun
14
© SETI Institute
The number of known
28.3°
moons of Neptune
The angle of Neptune’s tilt

4.5
billion
as it orbits the Sun
kilometres
How far Neptune is
from our Sun
7.6
billion square “scientists suspected
kilometres
The surface area
of Neptune
27X
How many times more
powerful Neptune’s
magnetic field is than
16
hours
Triton wasn’t part
of Neptune’s original
collection of moons”
The length of a day
Earth’s.
on Neptune
105
Dwarf Planet Profile

Pluto
The dwarf planet in the realms of the Kuiper Belt
is not just a barren ball of rock and ice
luto is arguably the most famous of astronomer Charles Messier would have still
P all the dwarf planets, with many still

fighting in its corner to get back its
status as a planet. It resides in the
been in the process of constructing the famous
Messier Catalogue of deep-sky objects.
Pluto saw its declassification to a dwarf planet
darkest depths of the Solar System, the Kuiper in 2006 when the International Astronomical
Belt, 5.9 billion kilometres (3.7 billion miles) Union defined the criteria of a planet, with Pluto
away from the Sun, which is roughly 40-times just falling short. It is only a small world: it is
the Earth-Sun distance. The original member roughly 2,400 kilometres (1,500 miles) wide,
of the nine planets of the Solar System was making it about two-thirds the size of the Moon
discovered in 1930 by an American astronomer and half the width of the United States. Although
by the name of Clyde Tombaugh. Although Pluto had been observed by many ground-
Tombaugh discovered the dwarf planet, the based telescopes, and even NASA/ESA’s Hubble
credit for naming Pluto goes to an 11-year-old girl Space Telescope, its true form and physical
from Oxford, England, called Venetia Burney. characteristics weren’t apparent until it had its
She suggested that the then-planet be named one-and-only flyby by NASA’s New Horizons
after the Roman god of the underworld, which spacecraft, launched in 2006.
can’t be far off the same conditions as the Kuiper After the flyby in 2015 the surface of Pluto
Belt – dark, lonely and unbearably cold, with came into marvellous resolution, and many
temperatures reaching as low as -240 degrees people of Earth marvelled at its beauty. “The
Celsius (-400 degrees Fahrenheit). complexity of the Pluto system – from its geology
Its enormous distance from the Sun leads to to its satellite system to its atmosphere – has
Pluto having an equally enormous year – it takes been beyond our wildest imagination,” says Alan
248 Earth years to complete one orbit. To put Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from
that into context, if Pluto completed an orbit the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder,
this year, then when it started that orbit no one Colorado, United States. “Everywhere we turn are
would have had a clue about Pluto, and French new mysteries.”
When astronomers first observed the surface
they noticed a host of mountains, valleys, plains
and craters, but the plains of frozen nitrogen
gas exhibit very few craters, meaning that there
must be some sort of surface replenishment –
possibly material spraying from a subsurface
ocean. All of this was possible to see with
Pluto's virtually nonexistent atmosphere
that consists of molecular nitrogen,
with traces of methane and carbon
monoxide also having been detected.
Pluto has five known moons:
Charon, Nix, Hydra, Kerberos and
Styx. These moons were likely
formed as the result of a collision
between Pluto and an object of
similar size billions of years ago.
Charon is the largest of these moons
and is about half the size of Pluto,
Left: Pluto
making it the largest moon relative to its
and its main
host. In fact, the Pluto-Charon double act moon Charon
can sometimes be referred to as a double compared
planet system. against Earth
106
106
dwarf planet profile: Pluto
Outer crust
Frozen nitrogen (N)
Frozen layer
Water (H20)
Core
Solid rock
Atmospheric
composition
90%
Nitrogen
10%
© NASA; Tobias Roetsch
other complex
molecules including
methane, carbon
monoxide and more
107
107
Pluto catch-up
Warming the heart of Pluto
in 2015, it
When New Horizons flew past Pluto
ns of a dull, rock y ball and instead
shattered perceptio
this could be
opened astronomers’ eyes to the idea
d. On its flyby the spac ecraf t revealed
an active worl
the nort hern hem isphere of
a heart-shaped region in
dwa rf plan et know n as Tom baug h Regio. After
the
nomers have found
studying data on this region, astro
n exist ing under the
evidence for a subsurface ocea
layer of nitro gen ice.
ns in the
"This could mean there are more ocea
making the
universe than previously thought,
plausible," says
existence of extraterrestrial life more
aido Univ ersit y in Japan. This
Shunichi Kamata of Hokk
y sugg ests that there is a layer of gas hydrates –
stud
ed in molecular
ice-like solids composed of gases trapp
regio n of Pluto , which
water – that insulates that
freez ing with in its inter ior. Ocea n worlds
prevents
of rese arch in the Solar System
are an exciting area
© NASA
amental needs
because it means that one of the fund
e planet. It could
for life is abundant beyond our hom
l life could exist elsewhere in
mean that extraterrestria
the Solar Syste m.
Re-opening the planetary discussion

ther Pluto should be
about whe
29 April 2019 saw an informal vote
tated as a plan et or rema in a dwarf planet. This vote saw the
reins
including NASA’s New Horizons
inclusion of experts on the matter,
and the former president of the
principal investigator Alan Stern
nal Astro nom ical Unio n (IAU ) Ron Ekers.
Internatio
strip ped Pluto of its planetary status in
It was the IAU that
deno tes a planet was it
2006. One of the main criteria that
the neig hbou rhoo d arou nd its orbit”, but as Pluto
having “cleared
it did not mee t this requirement. This
crosses the orbit of Neptune of deciding what
ded proc ess
decision was made after a long-win did not reach
et by the IAU, but sadly Pluto
should define a plan
said criteria, argued Ekers.
ed that Pluto is much
When Stern took to the stage, he argu
ocea ns, mou ntain s and glaciers just to
more of a world – with
is muc h harder to clear an orbit
name some features – and that it
beyo nd Nept une than it is close r to the Sun. After
in the region in favour of keeping
n; 30 peop le vote d
the debate a vote was take
© Tobias Roetsch
who ppin g 130 voted in favour

Pluto as a dwarf planet, whereas a
of Pluto being a plan et.
Ammonia makes Pluto look younger atoms branching

hydrogen
Ammonia – a nitrogen atom with three
– is a building block of life and a welcome sight to astronomers. As
off
as we know it, when it is seen on
ammonia is a key compound for life
it ticks an important box when looking
other planets or other bodies,
Obviously Pluto has many things
for what makes a world habitable.
s of habi tability – its tiny size, its huge distance
going against it in term
sphe re and so on – but ammonia is
from the Sun, relatively no atmo
the atten tion of man y astrobiologists.
enough to gain
ever , is shor t-live d on such an exposed body.
This compound, how
a plan etary scientist at NASA's
In the words of Cristina Dalle Ore, , United States,
Center in Moff ett Field , Calif ornia
Ames Research d by ultraviolet
and gets dest roye
ammonia "is a fragile molecule n found on a surface
efore , whe
irradiation as well as cosmic rays. Ther ively recently, some
been emp laced there relat
it implies that it had
million years before.”
of geological activity
Therefore there must be some form
the surfa ce. Whe ther there is recent
depositing ammonia onto way there may
ever gate
volcanic activity, active vents or what
© NASA
surfa ce and the pote ntial subs urface ocean,

be between the
to find out how ammonia is getting
astronomers are now determined
ger.
to the surface to make Pluto look youn
108
Pluto
Exploring the past and future of Pluto

Due to the enormous distance to
Pluto, exploration has been minimal.
more interested in Pluto and are
desperate to learn as much about
this, however, is that Pluto has an
incredibly thin atmosphere. It also New Horizons
For a long time any observations
relied on Earth-based telescopes,
it as possible. This has laid down
another challenge at NASA’s feet
has a low surface gravity – only
six per cent of Earth’s – and the and Pluto: a
particularly Hubble, which produced
the highest resolution maps of the
which could soon be picked up by
the aerospace engineering company
spacecraft would have to slow down
a lot as it arrives at high speeds.
brief encounter
dwarf planet in 2002 to 2003. Global Aerospace Corporation (GAC), Although these are hard obstacles • Date: 19 January 2006
NASA, however, deemed this not who are interested in creating the to overcome when trying to place Activity: New Horizons was
launched on top of an Atlas V
quite good enough, choosing to ‘Pluto Hopper’. a lander on the surface of the tiny
rocket from Cape Canaveral Air
send a space probe to Pluto and see The idea behind this hopper is to dwarf planet, they are doable,
Force Station, Florida.
what it was all about. New Horizons drop a lander onto the surface of and scientists and engineers are
was the project chosen to do so Pluto using an inflatable balloon to continuing to work out how to get • Date: 28 February 2007
and was launched on 19 January slow down the craft. One issue with back to Pluto one day. Activity: Had a ‘gravity assist’
2006, beginning its nine-year from Jupiter to gather more
journey to Pluto. When it arrived in The ‘Pluto Hopper’ is still speed, which reduced its journey
July of 2015, New Horizons flew as in the designing phase of time by three years.
close as 12,500 kilometres (7,800 its mission
miles) to the planet and revealed an
• Date: 28 June 2007
Activity: New Horizons went into
incredibly interesting surface. Upon
hibernation for the long journey.
closer inspection of the data the
New Horizons team found potential • Date: 6 December 2014
evidence of a subsurface ocean, Activity: Engineers woke New
not just water-ice frozen under the Horizons up ahead of its flyby to
face of the dwarf planet. This could test equipment.
have amazing repercussions in
understanding how water exists in • Date: 15 May 2015
© Adrian Mann;
the Solar System. Activity: New Horizons had
officially imaged Pluto in a better
After the New Horizons flyby,
resolution than Hubble.
planetary scientists have become
• Date: 14 July 2015
Activity: The day of the flyby
had arrived; a historic moment
Pluto’s facts and stats that returned unbelievable data

about the dwarf planet.
153
One day on Pluto takes 153
hours. It has a retrograde
rotation, meaning it spins
NASA’s New Horizons was
the fastest man-made object
launched from Earth at
16.26 kilometres (10.10 miles)
Charon, Pluto’s largest moon,
also takes 153 hours to
complete one orbit around
Pluto, meaning this moon
from east to west. per second.
never rises or sets.
It takes 5.5 hours for sunlight

to reach Pluto, as light has to
travel 40-times as far than
1/900
The Sun would be 1/900 the Pluto’s mountains can reach as
There is no evidence to suggest
it does to Earth.
brightness on Pluto than it high as two to three kilometres

(6,500 to 9,800 feet) and Pluto has a magnetosphere,
is on Earth, equal to
are essentially composed but its small size and
300-times the brightness
of water ice. slow rotation suggests
of a full Moon.
it is unlikely.
109
Moon profile
Charon
The secrets of Pluto’s largest moon
obody knew it was there until 1978. in 2006 to reclassify the pair as a double planet,
N For almost 50 years after Pluto’s

discovery in 1930, the dwarf planet
had no known companions out
there on the edge of the Solar System. Today,
but despite it being spherical, it wasn’t clear
Charon was in hydrostatic equilibrium, a state in
which the force of gravity is balanced by outward
pressure from the body. This state is necessary to
of course, in the wake of the New Horizons give it dwarf planet status.
mission and a myriad of discoveries since the Charon’s name, which it shares with the
first inklings of the Kuiper Belt came in 1992, we ferryman who takes souls over the River Styx to
know it positively teems out there. Charon is one Hades in Greek mythology – pronounced with a
of a system of five moons, and Pluto is the largest hard ‘K’ sound at the beginning – where they’re
member of a huge collection of objects orbiting guarded by the three-headed dog Cerberus,
beyond Neptune. The ongoing hunt for a large comes from its discoverer James Christy, whose
planet in the extreme reaches of the Solar System wife is named Charlene – he pronounces Charon
has so far come to nothing, and this is the with a ‘sh’ sound, as does the New Horizons
domain of the small, with Pluto’s reclassification team. But a 1940 novel by Edmond Hamilton,
as a dwarf planet just the first in a whole raft of Calling Captain Future, names three Plutonian
triumphantly tiny accolades. moons as Charon, Styx and Cerberus. Whatever
Pluto’s largest moon, however, has some the origin, the name was officially announced
remarkable features of its own, despite only in January 1986, replacing the temporary
having a diameter of 1,212 kilometres (753 miles) designation S/1978 P 1. As more moons were
– about 10.5 per cent that of Earth’s. One-eighth discovered around Pluto, they were named Styx;
the mass of its co-orbitee Pluto, and half the Nix, the Greek goddess of the night; Kerberos –
Below: Charon diameter, it’s tidally locked to the larger body, but Cerberus was already taken by an asteroid – and
is half the size
large enough that the two orbit a centre of mass Hydra, a nine-headed water monster.
of its parent
body, dwarf between them. The International Astronomical Charon orbits so close to Pluto that when
planet Pluto Union’s general assembly considered a proposal examining photographic plates of the erstwhile
planet, taken using the 1.55-metre (61-inch)
telescope at United States Naval Observatory
Flagstaff Station, all he saw was a bulge in the
shape of the tiny disc. By revolving around the
disc with time, it revealed itself to be a moon.
It wasn’t until the development of adaptive
optics for Earth-based telescopes that it became
possible to resolve the pair as separate discs. The
bodies whip around each other once every 6.4
days at an average distance of 19,640 kilometres
(12,203 miles), and take 248 years to complete a
trip around the Sun.
We had to wait until the New Horizons probe
entered the system in 2015 to get a really good
look at Charon. A largely grey world of rock and
© NASA/ESA/ESO
water ice with a reddish cap at its north pole, it

remains a fascinating part of the Solar System
with more secrets to be discovered.
110
moon profile: Charon
Moon
composition
55%
rock
45%ice
“A fascinating part of the

Solar System with more
secrets to be discovered”
© NASA
111
NEWS FROM Charon

Fantasy features
Charon, imaged
Various features on the surface of
prob e, have been given official
by the New Horizons
ical Union
names by the International Astronom
m Nomenclature.
Working Group for Planetary Syste
llers and expl orers, especially
The names reflect trave
e with myst eriou s dest inations. Dorothy Crater,
thos
agonist from
for example, is named after the prot
ma is named
The Wizard of Oz, while Caleuche Chas
olog ical ghos t ship that trave ls the seas
for the myth
d of Chilo é off the coas t of
around the small islan
one of the boats
Chile. Mandjet Chasma is named for
the Sun god Ra
in Egyptian mythology that carried
and Nem o Crater honours the
across the sky each day,
of the Naut ilus, the subm arine in Jules Verne’s
capt ain
Thou sand Leag ues Unde r the Sea and
novels Twenty
New Hori zons team had
The Mysterious Island. The
own nam es for distin ctive area s of the moon,
their
land region,
including Oz Terra, Charon’s only high
© NASA
affrey Dorsum,
named after the land of Oz, and McC
science-fiction
the moon’s only ridge, named after
author Anne McCaffre y.
What’s in the cap?

colour to the
Charon’s north polar cap is a different
be a fascinating
rest of its surface, and there might
its atmosphere with
explanation: Pluto may be sharing
stud y from the Lowell Observatory
its largest moon. A
Charon over the past
in Arizona modelled conditions on
year s and disco vere d that radiation had been
few billion
from froze n meth ane on the
stripping the hydrogen
f plan et’s surfa ce. This left behi nd carbon, which
dwar
heavier materials
joined with other molecules to make
ce rathe r than be lost to
more able to stick to the surfa
Thes e beca me orga nic mole cules called tholins,
space.
red hue. Ther e was spec ulation after
which produce the
pole that the cap
New Horizons revealed Charon’s red
have gotten
was enriched with tholins, which could
fer. Pluto ’s grav ity isn’t high
there via atmosphere trans
gh to hold onto its thin atmo sphe re, but Charon’s
enou
e of the lost gases.
is powerful enough to capture som
ane, but it evaporates in
Charon’s poles freeze the meth
er, leavi ng the heav ier, redd er molecules behind.
© NASA
summ
Maps made
than take
The New Horizons spacecraft did more
ogra phs whe n it pass ed thro ugh the system
phot
back is still
in 2015. The wealth of data it sent
e moved on to
being analysed, years after the prob
deep er in the Kuip er Belt. New Horizons
targets
45 perc ent of the surfa ce
only directly imaged
are still
of Charon in daylight, meaning there
ions, but
secrets left to uncover for future miss
a pair of New
by stitching together images from
Universities
Horizons’ cameras, a team from the
Asso ciatio n’s Luna r and Planetary
Space Research
e a height
Institute in Texas was able to creat
the size of
map of the surveyed areas. From this,
be calcu lated , inclu ding the
surface features could
Montes, the
six-kilometre (3.7-mile) high Tenzing
ht also allows
moon’s highest mountains. This heig
posit ion – meth ane ice isn’t
an insight into their com
to supp ort peak s of that height,
© NASA
stron g enou gh
r ice, frozen
meaning they must be made of wate
eratures of -250
harder than rock in the chilling temp
enheit).
degrees Celsius (-418 degrees Fahr
112
moon profile: Charon
The evolution
Future exploration of Charon of Charon
New Horizons passed through the Pluto system without stopping, and is continuing to speed through
the Kuiper Belt on its way out of the Solar System as one of the fastest human-made objects ever • Date: 4.5 billion years ago
launched. Another probe could hypothetically spend much more time investigating Pluto and its Activity: Two Kuiper Belt
moons, using Charon as a source of momentum. objects collide and go into orbit
The mission – which is purely theoretical at this point, having been demonstrated by New Horizons’ Below: Artist’s around a shared barycentre.
software lead Tiffany Finley – could explore each of the moons in the Pluto system, passing each at impression
of the New
least five times, returning to Charon after each one for a course-correcting gravity assist. Using an
Horizons
• Date: 1930
electric propulsion system similar to that on the Dawn mission to Vesta and Ceres, the tour would probe flying Activity: Discovery of Pluto by
only use fuel for ‘clean-up manoeuvres’ designed to make sure it was going in exactly the right by Pluto and Clyde Tombaugh.
direction, making it an efficient way to Charon
visit the moons. The Cassini probe did • Date: 1978
something similar using Titan while Activity: Discovery of Charon
touring the moons of Saturn. by James Christy.
The mission could even be extended
y/Southwest Research Institute.

so that with one final gravity assist • Date: 1980s
the probe would enter the Kuiper Belt Activity: Pluto and Charon
and enter orbit around a second dwarf eclipse one another several
planet. New Horizons’ visit to Pluto was times, allowing astronomers to
a big success, but it was necessarily study their spectra and work
limited by the speed at which it passed out their surface composition.
© Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laborator

the system. A second probe spending
more time there would perhaps be • Date: 1994
able to answer many of the remaining Activity: Hubble images
questions about Pluto, Charon and its Pluto and Charon from 4.4
scattering of small moons. billion kilometres (2.7 billion
miles) away.
• Date: 2007
Activity: Observations by the
Gemini Observatory suggest
there are active cryogeysers on
Charon’s surface.
Charon by numbers
7.5
• Date: 2015
Activity: New Horizons arrives
in the system, gathers data and
40 billion kilometres then leaves.

The distance from Earth
to Pluto when they’re on • Date: 2017
19,640
kilometres
kilometres
Diameter of Kubrick Mons,
opposite sides of
the Sun
Activity: NASA’s Ames
Research Center confirms
Charon once had active plate
a strange mountain in a tectonics like Earth.
The average distance moat on Charon
between Charon
and Pluto
-258°C
Winter temperature in
Charon’s north
• Date: 2019
Activity: A geomorphological
map of Charon’s surface is
polar region published, dividing the surface
into 16 types.
-213°C 14
kilometres Six
Summer temperature The depth of Charon’s
in Charon’s north
polar region
Caleuche Chasma, roughly
seven-times deeper than
kilometres
Height of Tenzing
© NASA
the Grand Canyon

Montes, Charon’s
highest peaks
113
IS THERE
A PLANET
NINE?
Mike Brown is the man who
killed Pluto, but have the tables
turned to leave his own theory
of a ninth world in doubt?
Reported by David Crookes
© Tobias Roetsch
114
Planet Nine
Mic o
ike Brown is a professor of planetary What’s more, it’s not alone. Brown and
M astronomy at the California Institute

of Technology (Caltech), but he is
also known as the ‘Pluto killer’. It
was 2006 when the International Astronomical
Batygin observed a cluster of six other ETNOs
with similar orbits, and they tilt on their axis in
the same direction. They don’t appear to be as
affected by the known giant planets in our Solar
Union downgraded Pluto’s planetary status to System as other trans-Neptunian objects, so the
that of a dwarf. Brown led the charge following two scientists came up with an explanation.
his discovery of Eris in January the previous According to Brown and Batygin’s calculations
year, and it meant the Solar System was back to and modelling, the unexpected clustering of
having just eight planets. For some, the move objects is due to the gravitational pull of an
was unthinkable. Dr Alan Stern, who headed up as-yet-undiscovered ninth planet that is between
the New Horizons mission that sent a spacecraft 13 and 26 times farther out than Neptune.
to Pluto, was particularly angry. Yet it had been This hypothetical celestial body would have a
coming since 1992, when a new object was predicted mass between five and ten times that
discovered in what became known as the Kuiper of Earth. Its orbit would be elongated, ranging
Belt beyond the orbit of Neptune. between 400 and 800 AU.
What few saw coming, however, was the It’s an exciting proposition, yet one that has
emergence of a new candidate for the ninth not gone unchallenged. A study led by Kevin
planet. As if to rub salt in the wounds of those Napier at the University of Michigan has cast
who felt Pluto’s status should be reinstated, it doubt on the theory. By observing 14 far-off
was Brown – along with a fellow professor of rocky bodies discovered by three surveys – five
planetary science at Caltech, Konstantin Batygin each from the Dark Energy Survey and the Outer
– who put the theory forward ten years later Solar System Origins Survey and a further four
based on observations of six extreme trans- picked up by astronomers Scott Sheppard, Chad
Neptunian objects, or ETNOs. Trujillo and David Tholen – they say there is no
One of them, Sedna, is 40 per cent the size
of Pluto, and it behaves in an odd way. Rather
than forming an elliptical ring around the Sun
as expected, this large planetoid in the outer
reaches of the Solar System – some three-times
farther away than Neptune – has an exceptionally “It would have been more exciting
long and elongated orbit. Taking about 11,400
years to complete its orbit, it will at some point if our findings showed strong
be 76 astronomical units (AU) from the centre of
our Solar System – that’s 76 times the distance evidence for clustering, and thus
between Earth and the Sun – but it will swing out
to more than 900 AU. for Planet Nine” Kevin Napier
115
PLANET
NINE
BY THE NUMBERS
5-10
times the mass of Earth
2-4
times the radius of Earth
400-
800
times farther from the
Sun than Earth
0
Number of observations
Source: Wikipedia Commons © Tomruen
“Because the ETNOs are on exceptionally long,

skinny orbits, they can only be seen for a very
short segment, when they are closest to the Sun.
6
Number of extreme trans-
Neptunian objects which
This makes the observational biases present in their
discovery rather severe. Until our study, nobody
had performed a meta-analysis on all of the ETNOs
discovered by surveys with calculable biases. It
turns out that when you properly account for these
appear affected by Planet Nine
observational biases, the population of ETNOs we
10,000-
Top: An artist’s evidence of ETNO clustering that would firmly observe is fully consistent with a uniform – rather
concept of indicate the existence of an extra planet. than a clustered – underlying distribution.”
Planet Nine in
Instead, they say the findings by Brown and In carrying out their research, Napier and his
orbit far from
20,000
the Sun Batygin are due to observational bias. In other team decided to look at ETNOs that were not
words, the new research reckons that Planet Nine’s studied by Brown and Batygin. Those original six
Above: The apparent existence is mainly based on the direction were discovered by surveys with unknown biases,
original six
Years to make a full orbit of in which the two scientists’ telescopes looked. Since “so we were unable to properly analyse them,”
ETNOs used
the Sun Brown and Batygin observed just a small section of explains Napier. “We wanted to test an independent
by Brown and
20
Batylin to sky, the selection of ETNOs was limited. This, says sample because in a larger, better controlled sample,
hypothesise Napier, weakens the case. you would expect the significance of the clustering
about Planet
Nine, along “Simulations have shown that Planet Nine causes to either stay the same or to increase. We found the
with the the orientations of the ETNOs’ orbits to cluster significance decreased.”
years
Time Mike Brown estimates
it would take for a probe to
planet’s
theorised orbit
(in green) and
eight other
ETNOs
on timescales comparable to the age of our Solar
System,” Napier explains to All About Space. “There
are now on the order of a dozen known ETNOs that
appear to exhibit this clustering, and if you look at
the data, the clustering appears to be rather robust.
Napier’s team did include two of the original
six objects after their main analysis, however,
giving them a total of 16. “We still found that the
observations were consistent with a uniform
underlying distribution,” he adds. But does that
reach the planet
“But you cannot simply look at the data and draw mean talk of a Planet Nine is off the table?
0.2-0.5
robust conclusions because of this effect called Causing some confusion about the conclusion
observational bias. It takes into account factors is the title of Napier’s academic paper, entitled:
such as where you pointed the telescope, when you No Evidence for Orbital Clustering in the Extreme
The hypothesised eccentricity took the observation and how faint of an object the Trans-Neptunian Objects. It jars with the content
of Planet Nine’s orbit telescope was able to see. of the work itself, and Batygin has not been slow
116
Planet Nine
© Caltech
“The survey-simulation
approach cannot be used Orbits in the
to distinguish clustered
or unclustered orbits”
outer Solar
Konstantin Batygin
System
The behaviour of a set of Kuiper Belt
Objects is fuelling the thinking
behind the existence of Planet Nine
Orbit of Neptune
1 Here in the centre is the orbit
of Neptune, which takes 165
Earth years to complete a single
rotation around the Sun.
Planet Nine’s orbit

2 As you can see, the orbit of
Planet Nine is much farther away
than Neptune. Indeed, the highly
© Caltech
elongated orbit is far beyond

Pluto, and it could be about 20
times farther from the Sun on
3
average than Neptune.
2
Effect on 1
to seize on this. “The Napier et al study does not
3 other objects
Six distant trans-Neptunian
actually draw the conclusion in the title,” he tells us.
objects have orbits that line up
“The work demonstrates that the survey-simulation in a peculiar way. According to
approach cannot be used to distinguish between Brown and Batygin, only the
clustered or unclustered orbits, and this is not gravity of a massive unknown
planet exerting a gravitational
particularly surprising. Heavily biased surveys like
pull can explain this.
the Outer Solar System Origins Survey or Dark 4
Energy Survey are very hard to de-bias, and given
Perpendicular orbits
the limited number of detections in each survey,
the fact that survey-simulation cannot rule out any
4 Brown and Batygin’s
simulations predicted there
distribution is not perplexing.” would be objects in the Kuiper
Brown agrees wholeheartedly. “If you read the Belt with orbits inclined
perpendicular to the plane of
paper really carefully, then the correct statement the planets. Observations have
from the Napier analysis would be something like: identified objects tracing such Atmosphere
‘Our survey was very biased, and this could not perpendicular lines.
detect clustering at the level previously detected.’
It’s a big leap that there is no clustering, and it’s one
they don’t make in the paper, but do in interviews.
In fact, if we add their new objects to our full
Silicate
mantle
dataset instead of using their much more limited Ices
dataset, the clustering actually improves.”
In our interview, Napier admits that the work Iron core
doesn’t rule out the existence of Planet Nine, saying
only that it has “certainly weakened the case for it”.
He says he would have preferred the conclusion to
have backed the original hypothesis. “It would have
Gas layer
been more exciting if our findings showed strong
evidence for clustering in the ETNOs, and thus for
Planet Nine,” he says.
© Tobias Roetsch
“That being said, we still find our results

exciting,“ he adds. “Even if it turns out that Planet
Nine doesn’t exist, there must be some explanation
117
for the orbital behaviour of some of the strangest gravitational pull from a body such as Planet
objects in our Solar System. Examples of such Nine is extremely slim. What’s more, as well as
Furthering anomalies include Kuiper Belt Objects on highly the clustering of orbits, the ETNOs with perihelia
the case for inclined orbits and objects that never come closer
to the Sun than twice the distance of Neptune.
beyond 50 AU are too sufficiently distanced from
Neptune to experience significant gravitational
Planet Nine Mysteries like this are what keep us going.” perturbations from it, so it points to something
As far as Batygin is concerned, the mystery having an effect.
American astronomer surrounding Planet Nine is still in favour of it being “An important point to understand is that the
Mike Brown has worked out there somewhere. He says it has been clear for a Planet Nine hypothesis is not just one thing,”
on the hypothesis of long time that individual surveys cannot overcome Batygin says. “There is a collection of lines of
another world for the last their own biases to rigorously determine clustering evidence that all paint the same picture: clustering
five years one way or another. “In fact, this has already been of the apsidal lines, grouping of the angular
pointed out multiple times, and the Napier et al momentum vectors, detached perihelia of long-
Some scientists have been
analysis combines the well-characterised surveys, period Kuiper Belt Objects, excitation of distant
unable to create a computer
but still finds the same answer,” he says. “For this Kuiper Belt Objects to high inclinations and
simulation that accounts for
reason, in order to determine the ‘false-alarm generation of the retrograde centaur population of
the clustered trans-Neptunian
probability’ of the clustering, it makes sense to the outer Solar System. The fact Planet Nine ties all
objects which form the basis
instead do an observability analysis which takes these outer Solar System anomalies together gives
of the theory of Planet Nine.
advantage of the full dataset to determine statistical me some confidence that we are on the right track.”
Does this cast doubt over its
significance.” Batygin says he did exactly this in a In that sense, he doesn’t perceive the study by
existence in your mind?
paper with Brown published in 2019: “The analysis Napier to have much of an effect on the original
Many groups have reproduced
demonstrates that the chances that the data are not hypothesis. “There is one more very important
computer simulations that make
clustered is only 0.2 per cent.” point to understand, which routinely gets lost in
the Planet Nine cluster. The
By this, Batygin is theorising that the chance translation,” he continues. “The distant Kuiper Belt
physics is well understood. It is
of clustering happening naturally without any is made up of stable as well as unstable objects, and
neither difficult nor mysterious.
Would you say the suggestion

that you observed a small
portion of the sky during a Right: An
specific part of the year at a artist’s
impression of
specific time of day is valid?
Planet Nine
I haven't heard that suggestion. with the Sun
Our survey is the only one that in the very
doesn't do that. The others are far distance,
circled by
much more limited.
the orbit of
Neptune
How strong is the evidence for
a Planet Nine in light of the Below: Brown
bears the
recent study? nickname of
The Napier paper neither adds ‘Pluto killer’
nor subtracts to the Planet Nine
hypothesis, though adding in the
new objects would strengthen
the hypothesis if we combined
it with our full dataset – we
haven't done this thoroughly
yet, though. I would
say the Planet Nine
hypothesis is as
strong as it used
to be.
118
Planet Nine
in the Planet Nine story, it doesn’t matter what the

unstable objects do.
Certainly, the hypothesis of a Planet Nine is not
going away any time soon. “I’m still quite optimistic
The theories
“If you look at the data, the stable, high-perihelion that Planet Nine exists,” says Batygin, with the What could be affecting
objects cluster very well, while the unstable objects use of the word ‘quite’ being notable. Napier, on the extreme trans-
are all over the place. That’s what the theoretical the other hand, concludes: “I’m hopeful, but not Neptunian objects?
model predicts too. You can imagine a whole range optimistic. It might be there; it might not.” Its
of observational biases that can cause clustering,
but it’s impossible to bias based on dynamical
existence would make life easier, but only one thing
would really nail it. “Direct detection would be best,”
1 Planet Nine
Modelling in 2016 by
Brown and Batygin at Caltech
stability. Because the Napier et al dataset is roughly says Batygin, “and the answer to anything short of hypothesised that six ETNOs had
half stable, it’s not a huge surprise they cannot that is basically more data.” similar orbits because a large
prove that it’s clustered.” But does that still mean Napier agrees, and both are pinning their hopes planet well beyond Neptune was
exerting a massive gravitational
it has to be a planet causing the clustering? With on the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile, which is
pull on them. The scientists are
the theory suggesting that gravity is at play, planets coming online soon. The Legacy Survey of Space sticking to this theory, and 19
are not the only objects able to exert a gravitational and Time at the observatory means the census of ETNOs are now shown to exhibit
pull. Dark matter or a primordial black hole are trans-Neptunian objects will expand substantially. a similar tilt and eccentric orbital
pattern. This theory has yet to be
among the alternative suggestions. One of the reasons why sufficient data has been
proved or disproved.
Napier reckons a planet would be the most likely hard to come by so far is access to telescopes and
explanation, so long as it’s one day proved that a focus on ETNOs in particular. Estimates are that
the clustering is persistent. “It’s hard to imagine it the survey will discover more ETNOs, and with that
being caused by a dynamical mechanism other data we’ll be able to make a compelling statement.
than Planet Nine if the clustering is persistent and One thing’s for sure, there’s a willingness for
not transient,” he says. But recent work has shown a discovery. In truth, most scientists would love
© Getty
that it’s possible we are observing a temporary to actually find Planet Nine. “A new planet would
clustering of the ETNOs. It’s clear more work needs be extremely cool, and it would solve a lot of
There’s no clustering
to be done. anomalies that we don’t understand about our Solar
System,” Napier says. “But we have to entertain the
2 According to a recent study
headed by Napier, it is possible
possibility that there is no Planet Nine and continue that there is no clustering in the
searching for alternate explanations of those first place. Other work suggests
anomalies.” We can only wait with bated breath. that any clustering could be
Source: Wikipedia Commons © nagualdesign; Tom Ruen
temporary, and if either of these

are the case then the likelihood
of any gravitational pull being
exerted is ruled out, thereby
David Crookes leaving any case for a Planet Nine
Science and technology journalist severely dented.
David has been reporting on space,
science and technology for many
years, has contributed to many books
and is a producer for BBC Radio 5 Live.
© NASA
Left: The
Vera C. Rubin
Observatory
3 Something
is at play
else
If the ETNOs are indeed being

will be able to
affected by something in the
provide new
Solar System, does it have to be
data on ETNOs
a planet? Some scientists are
looking into the possibility of a
primordial black hole – a black
hole which formed soon after
the Big Bang – but these are
still hypothetical. Dark matter
is another potential theory,
but again it’s one hypothetical
© LSST Corp
explaining another.
© NASA
119
‘FARFAROUT’ OFFICIALLY
THE SOLAR SYSTEM’S
MOST DISTANT OBJECT
This recently discovered trans-Neptunian object
lies some 140 astronomical units from the Sun
he planetoid dubbed ‘Farfarout’ Astronomers spotted Farfarout using the
T was first detected in 2018 at

an estimated distance of 140
astronomical units (AU) from the
Sun – farther away than any object had ever
Subaru Telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii
and traced its orbit using the Gemini North
and Magellan telescopes. “Only with the
advancements in the last few years of large
been observed. One AU is the average Earth-Sun digital cameras on very large telescopes has it
distance – about 93 million miles, or 150 million been possible to efficiently discover very distant
kilometres. For perspective, Pluto orbits at an objects like Farfarout,” co-discoverer Scott “Farfarout was
average distance of about 39 AU. Sheppard, a Solar System small bodies scientist
Farfarout’s inherent brightness suggests a at the Carnegie Institution for Science, said. likely thrown
world roughly 400 kilometres (250 miles) wide, Farfarout is currently about 132 AU from the
barely enough to qualify for dwarf planet status. Sun, the researchers determined. And its orbit into the outer
But the size estimate assumes the world is is now known to be very elliptical, swinging
largely made of ice, and that assumption could between extremes of 27 and 175 AU, thanks to Solar System by
change with more observations. gravitational sculpting by Neptune. “Farfarout
Speaking of more observations, the detection was likely thrown into the outer Solar System by getting too close
team has now collected enough additional data getting too close to Neptune in the distant past.
to confirm the existence of Farfarout and nail Farfarout will likely interact with Neptune again to Neptune in the
down its orbit. As a result, the planetoid just in the future, since their orbits still intersect,”
received an official designation from the Minor Chad Trujillo, an exoplanet astronomer at distant past”
Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Northern Arizona University from the National
Chad Trujillo
which identifies, designates and computes orbits Science Foundation’s NOIRLab, said.
for small objects in the Solar System. Because Neptune plays such a large role in The team that spotted Farfarout is well known
That new designation, announced on 10 Farfarout’s life, the planetoid likely cannot help for peering deep into the dark and frigid outer
February in a Minor Planet Center electronic astronomers in the hunt for Planet Nine, the Solar System. In 2018 the researchers also found
circular, is 2018 AG37. Farfarout will also receive big hypothetical world that some astronomers distant object Farout and a faraway dwarf planet
a catchier official moniker down the road. “A think lurks unseen in the far outer Solar System. nicknamed ‘the Goblin’. Farfarout’s distance
single orbit of Farfarout around the Sun takes Planet Nine’s existence has been inferred from its record refers to its current location. There are a
a millennium,” discovery team member David putative gravitational influence on small bodies number of other objects, such as the dwarf planet
Tholen, an astronomer at the University of very far from the Sun, whose orbits cluster in Sedna, whose orbits take them much farther
Hawaii, said. “Because of this long orbital period, odd and interesting ways. But the small worlds away from the Sun than Farfarout’s maximum
it moves very slowly across the sky, requiring that astronomers look to as breadcrumbs in orbit. And scientists think there are trillions of
several years of observations to precisely the Planet Nine search are free of Neptune’s comets in our Solar System’s Oort Cloud, which
determine its trajectory.” influence, unlike Farfarout. begins about 5,000 AU from the Sun.
120
Farfarout
Right: The
small, far-
flung world is
thought to be
comprised of
ice and rock,
© NOIRLab
like a comet
121
NEMESIS
THE SUN’S EVIL TWIN?
Since the 1980s, astronomers have explored the
possibility that our star was not born alone
Reported by David Crookes
122
Nemesis
hat do you get if you cross the dinosaurs They had analysed the extinction rates of 27,000
W with millions of comets and an evil twin

of our Sun that has not only wreaked
havoc on Earth multiple times but has
long been hidden from view? Anxious? Fearful?
marine animals which perished during the past
250 million years and pointed towards five mass
wipeouts since the Late Permian era, in which
more than 75 per cent of species disappeared.
Maybe both? For while it may sound like a terrible They went on to suggest that these catastrophic
joke. The intriguing punchline once caused some extinction events were uniformly spaced, taking
alarm – and raised a mystery that had astronomers place every 26 million years, but scientists could
hooked for quite some time. not quite fathom why.
Welcome to Nemesis, the Sun's hypothetical long- Various studies emerged looking at phenomena
lost companion which has been speculated to be on Earth, but the belief that a large asteroid wiped
circling in the edges of the Solar System. Proposed out the dinosaurs – a hypothesis by Luis and
by Richard A. Muller, an American physicist and Walter Alvarez in 1980 – suggested extraterrestrial
professor of physics at the University of California, forces could be at play. It was on this basis that
Berkeley, it gained some ground in the 1980s with Muller came up with the idea that the comet
the suggestion that it was behind a series of mass which smashed into Earth 66 million years ago
extinction events here on Earth. had been among a humongous group of bodies
The theory grew from a 1983 study by two disrupted by a theoretical red dwarf star. He said it
palaeontologists, David Raup and Jack Sepkoski. affected the orbits of these objects and sent them
Illustration © Tobais Roetsch
123
hurtling towards our Sun, smashing into whatever When Muller presented his hypothesis in 1984, it during the 1980s, while the Two Micron All-Sky
they encountered. caused international controversy. The scientist was Survey, or 2MASS, which surveyed the sky between
That in itself would have been rather eye- suggesting that the companion star was born at the 1997 and 2001, couldn't detect an additional star in
catching, but here is where things became even same time as the Sun, and so was part of a binary the Solar System either.
more interesting. Muller's theory postulated that star system – that is, one gravitationally bound and The best shot was thought to be NASA's Wide-
this star was the Sun's undetected companion – the orbiting a common centre of mass. Yet in the last field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), which
‘evil twin’ that we alluded to at the start. He also 35 years there has never been any sighting, even spotted a brown dwarf 7.2 light years away in 2014.
reckoned the reason why there may have been though it's not been for a lack of trying. But it wasn't Nemesis. In actual fact, when Kevin
this notable cycle of mass extinction events was In many ways this is rather odd. Muller said Luhman, an astronomer at Pennsylvania State
because the red dwarf star was regularly putting Nemesis was likely to have a magnitude between University's Center for Exoplanets and Habitable
itself among the set of icy rocks that make up the seven and 12 and that it should be possible to view Worlds, analysed images from WISE a year earlier in
equally theoretical Oort Cloud in the outermost it through a small or medium telescope. But the the outer Solar System, there was simply no sign of
reaches of the Solar System. Infrared Astronomical Satellite – the first space the companion star that Muller had proposed.
It would do so every 26 million years, he says, telescope to perform a survey of the night sky at Instead, evidence kept stacking up against it. For
neatly accounting for the calculated apocalyptic infrared wavelengths – did not see any signs of it starters, some astronomers questioned the inherent
timeframe on Earth. But in order to do this the red
dwarf star needed to be in a 1.5 light year elliptical
orbit, periodically bringing it closer to the Oort
Cloud and sending comets hurtling our way. What's
“Stars generally do not form in isolation but are
more, the theory continued, there was enough of a
gravitational pull on the ‘death star’ by the Sun to
born together in groups within clouds of gas and
prevent it from drifting away. dust or nebulae” Pavel Kroupa
Where is Nemesis located? 4

rs
ea
Nemesis has never been seen, but some astronomers have theorised its
ty
igh
potential orbit in relation to the Solar System

4l
© Jcpag2012
1Elliptical orbit
The Nemesis theory says
a hypothetical red dwarf
takes a highly elliptical orbit 1
around our Sun some 1.5
rs
light years away.

ea
ty
igh
2l
ud
Clo
2 Oort Cloud
4 Boundary
rt
of the Solar
Oo
Every 26 million
years, Nemesis System
approaches and passes 2 If proven to be true,
though the hypothetical Nemesis would be
n
Su
Oort Cloud where icy closer than Alpha

planetesimals reside in Centauri, which is
the far reaches of the accepted as the Sun's
trans-Neptunian region. nearest neighbour.
5
3
3 Past Pluto
To put this into
perspective, the Oort Cloud
is way past the Kuiper Belt
where Pluto orbits and also
5 Disrupting influence
When Nemesis passes through the
Oort Cloud, it is said to have a disruptive
effect on the bodies there, sending
beyond the scattered disc,
comets – which are ordinarily a light
home to Eris.
year away – hurtling towards the Sun.
124
Nemesis
© Tobias Roetsch
The Sun Nemesis The theories

After a million
Is there really
Many stars years after something big and
in the Solar
System are
their birth, influential somewhere
born with a
60 per cent out there causing
of companion
companion stars split up;
mass extinctions?
star including the rest move
our nearest
neighbour,
closer to each The Nemesis theory
other.
Alpha Centauri, Richard A. Muller's theory
which is a suggests the Sun has a
triplet star companion red dwarf star
system. named Nemesis which
has an unusual orbit and
causes mass extinctions
on Earth every 26 million
years or so by having a
chaotic impact on bodies
in the Oort Cloud.
Our dangerous Sun

Red dwarf stars In 2008, a computer
are the most simulation by researchers
common type at Cardiff University
Sun-like stars of star in the
outshine 90 suggested our Solar
universe. They System bounces up
per cent of are smaller and
other stars in and down through the
less massive plane of the galaxy.
the Milky Way. than the Sun. Gravitational forces may
dislodge comets from
the Oort Cloud and send
them cascading inwards.
A brown dwarf
Nemesis may not be a
red dwarf, but a brown
one. If that was the case
then it would go some
way towards explaining
why astronomers have
struggled to see it:
brown dwarfs have a
low intrinsic brightness,
making them harder
© NASA/ESA
to discover.
© Alamy
Other planets
There is an acceptance
that there are other
Above left: planets in the outer
stability of Nemesis' proposed orbit. They said the would wish to be true, and yet in reality it sounds
An infrared region of the Solar
star would come within the gravitational pull of merely fantastical, with evidence that is flaky
sky survey System. These have never
other stars moving through the galaxy. Others cast at best. by WISE been found, although
doubt that extinction events follow a set cycle. But that isn't telling the full story, and there has failed to computer simulations
“There is a tendency for people to find patterns in been a little matter of a dwarf planet called Sedna discover continue to rule in the
nature that do not exist,” said Coryn Bailer-Jones to consider, which some astronomers reckoned evidence of possibility that they are
from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in was additional proof of a twin for the Sun. It is, at 8 Nemesis out there exerting a
2011. “Unfortunately, in certain situations traditional billion miles away, one of the most distant bodies gravitational influence.
statistics plays to that particular weakness.” in the Solar System, and it pursues an extremely Above right:
Bailer-Jones said the impact rate of asteroids and elongated orbit. Discovered in 2003 by a team led Binary star Gas giant Tyche
systems
comets had been judged to be steadily increasing by Mike Brown, an astronomer at the California Scientific analyses
are not
over the past 250 million years on the basis of the Institute of Technology, it has certainly caught the suggest extinctions
uncommon –
number of craters of different ages. But he argued imagination, but what does it really prove? on Earth don't happen
the closest to
that periodic variations could be ruled out: “From Well, there has been a theory that Sedna's at regular, repeating
us is Alpha
the crater record, there is no evidence for Nemesis,” wonky orbit could only be the result of a large and intervals. Some
Centauri A
astrophysicists propose a
he concluded. “What remains is the intriguing distant binary companion to the Sun pulling it and B, along
less disruptive gas giant
© Tyrogthekreeper
question of whether or not impacts have become out to such a distance. What else, scientists argue, with faint
in the Oort Cloud instead,
ever more frequent over the past 250 million years.” could take the dwarf some 200-times further from red dwarf C
dubbed Tyche – a Greek
On that basis it is surely a matter of ‘case closed’. the Sun than Neptune every 11,400 years? A study goddess who was the
Here we have an intriguing idea that many of us in 2015 seemed to lend credence to this argument ‘good sister’ of Nemesis.
125
Evidence
for Nemesis'
existence
Although yet to
be proven, there
are signs pointing
towards a twin star
Companion stars do exist
We know that many stars have
a companion, but in 2017 it was
suggested that pretty much every
star like the Sun had one. Indeed,
Sarah Sadavoy and Steven Stahler
argued the case for our Sun's
companion, but said the partner
separated shortly after formation.
Other binaries
have similar effects
In 2006, debris discs around
two nearby stars were seen by
researchers at the University of
California, Berkeley, to resemble
the Kuiper Belt with a sharp outer
edge. It was proposed that a
companion star causes this effect.
The presence of Sedna

© NASA/JPL-Caltech
A trans-Neptunian object called

Sedna has an unusual elliptical
orbit around the Sun, and some
say this is due to the influence of a
potential binary companion. Sedna,
with an orbit of 12,000 years, has
been heralded as strong proof of a
companion star for the Sun. “We think the Sun's companion drifted away billions
It is just too far away
of years ago, within a million years after the Sun
It's not evidence per se, but the
Sun's companion star – at least
and its companion formed” Steven Stahler
following Sadavoy and Stahler's when Lucie Jílková of Leiden Observatory in the remains a firm belief in some quarters that the Sun
model – could now be thousands
Netherlands suggested a passing star flung it into was not born alone.
of light years away, which accounts
interstellar space when the Sun was very young. In 2017, Sarah Sadavoy and Steven Stahler carried
for why it has never been seen.
Yet today Brown tells us that he's not too certain out a study called ‘Embedded Binaries and their
about such theories. “Sedna's orbit is most likely Dense Cores’. Sadavoy, then a radio astronomer
caused by Planet Nine,” he says, referencing a from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy and
hypothetical planet in the outer region of the Solar Stahler, a theoretical physicist from the University
System. In that sense, he believes there simply is of California, Berkeley, discussed how radio surveys
no Nemesis. of a giant molecular cloud filled with recently
“Very sensitive searches have failed to discover formed stars in the constellation Perseus led them
it,” he affirms. “And, more importantly, the idea to theorise that all Sun-like stars are likely to have
that there was periodic extinction appears to have been born with companions.
been a misinterpretation of the data. So I think “I do believe this,” Stahler tells All About Space.
there is both no Nemesis and no need to explain “The fact was already known for massive stars,
the data! I'm also pretty sure that Nemesis and in 2017 Sarah Sadavoy and I provided strong
hasn't been a viable hypothesis for more than evidence that low-mass stars like the Sun also tend
a decade.” to form with a companion.” In the case of the Sun,
Even so, the case remains open because this happened 4.5 billion years ago and meant
the hypothesis of a companion star has it was born along the same lines as our nearest
© Tobais Roetsch
actually moved on in recent years. While the neighbour, Alpha Centauri, which is a triplet system.
original theory of Nemesis is perhaps not as “I believe there was probably a Nemesis a long
strong today as it previously has been, there time ago,” he says, explaining that the mathematical
126
Nemesis
© NASA/JPL-Caltech
Left: model explaining the Perseus says. “It could now be on the
Sarah Sadavoy observations would only other side of the galaxy."
and Steven be possible if Sun-like stars Such findings have wide
Stahler say are born with a companion. implications, and they go
low-mass stars
“We showed that probably to the heart of the origins
are always
born with a all stars like ours form with of galaxies. In the case of
companion companions,” he tells us, “but Perseus there were 45 single-
but are likely that most, including the Sun, then star systems, yet all but five of
to split, like lose those companions within the the 55 young stars in 24 multiple-
the Sun next million years.” star systems were binary. More than that,
The work built on that of Pavel Kroupa of all of the widely separated binary systems – which
Right: the University of Bonn, whose computer are those with stars separated by more than 500
The cold dwarf simulations in 2011 led him to conclude that all AU – were young systems.
planet Sedna
stars are born as binaries. “Stars generally do not “Our finding that most stars are born with
is said reside
form in isolation but are born together in groups companions is interesting for those of us who think
at the outer
edges of the within clouds of gas and dust or nebulae,” Kroupa about stellar birth,” Stahler says. “Apparently our
known Solar wrote. “These stellar labour rooms produce binary Sun, and also the Solar System, was born from an
System from star systems, which means that virtually all elongated gas cloud that formed another star – and
where the Sun newborn stars have a companion. Most of these perhaps another planetary system – as well. We see
appears as groups of stars disperse quickly so that their lots of such clouds, so studying them will tell us the
an extremely members become part of the galaxy.” conditions under which we formed.”
bright star In the case of Nemesis – or at least in the case It's the most compelling evidence that our Sun
of Sadavoy and Stahler's version of a companion was once part of a binary star system, but the
Below:
Sun – the Sun's sibling escaped and mingled with emphasis on ‘once’ cannot be stressed enough.
It was thought
that the Sun's other stars in the Milky Way. Stahler says he doesn't As for the figure of 26 million years, well, that
hypothesised subscribe to the view that it then caused strong too is in doubt, with Adrian Melott and Richard
twin, Nemesis, comet activity in the Oort Cloud. “20 years ago Bambach having argued in their paper, Nemesis
caused astronomers thought so, but few people believe that Reconsidered, that “the orbit of a distant companion
disruption now,” he affirms. Neither does he believe that the to the Sun is expected to be perturbed by the
to icy rocks Sun has any influence over its companion. galactic tidal field and encounters with passing
in the Oort “Muller's theory is different,” he explains. “He stars, which will induce variation in the period”.
Cloud, causing postulated that the Sun currently has a companion What all of this means is that the Sun's potential
chaos on Earth
on an eccentric orbit but, despite a lot of effort, twin is off the hook with regards to it being a
this companion has never been found.” Stahler is mass-murderer, but there is great weight to Muller's
unsurprised that a form of Nemesis has never been assertion that the Sun was born with a companion.
discovered, though. “We think the Sun's companion Unfortunately it'll be so far away now that we're
drifted away billions of years ago, within a million unlikely to ever see it, it's history perhaps forever
years after the Sun and its companion formed,” he keeping us in the dark.
© Getty
127
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SATURN

PLANETS, COMETS, ASTEROIDS & MORE

Future plc is a public Chief executive Zillah Byng-Thorne

08 Everything you need to know 68 Planet profile: Jupiter

16 Our Sun is getting hotter 80 Moon profile: Mimas

34 What’s new at Mercury? 102 Planet profile: Neptune

42 22 things you didn’t know 106 Dwarf planet profile: Pluto

64 Martian moons exploration

An evolving Origins farther out incorporated substantial amounts of ice,

Although today’s Solar System

“As the Sun became

Source: Wikipedia Commons © Justin Cowart

Mercury Left: Our

Giants of gas and ice

broadly divided into two pairs: the inner gas giants

Life in the Right: There

in a deep-frozen state” that lie between the stars.

AR SCAN HERE from the Sun.

The eight major planets Scan here for

Mercury Venus Earth Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune

WHAT DID OUR

N a disc of gas and dust from which

about a day after ultraviolet light. They Catherine Espaillat

As our nearest star enters its next solar

s a life-giver that warms and lights up

A our world, it is easy to forget the true,

“[The Sun] is very

“A strike today could bring down radio communications

What’s going to happen to the Sun?

Sun’s effect on the planets

1941 and 1972 that may have

“A lot of satellite operators choose not to Astronauts take refuge

sufficient accuracy” Professor Chris Scott be asked to set themselves up

The greatest light

space agencies have sent up a

1Parker Solar Probe

Solar surveyors up close before the 'outburst'

S Sun’s magnetic field and associated

calculate the 11-year cycle and a mathematical

being observed. Many distinguished astronomers Below

A DECADE OF THE SUN, FROM NASA

future behaviour besides sunspots. Other tried-

sunspots. Dr Robert Leamon of the University

“The Sun really wants to be 3

“Whatever happens with

on Cycle 25 that it’ll be a larger-than-average cycle, perhaps

Are you seeing longer term trends?

M not only our scientific understanding

“Astronomers now believe that Mercury is the

Solid inner core 22%

What’s been happ ening at Mercury?

Searching for water ice on Mercurym has

They have com e to the conc lusio n that on

Exploring the past and future of the swift planet

observations of the surface and far-away observations of craters

• Date: 11 August 2021

Mercury facts • Date: 2 October 2021

• Date: 9 January 2025

not have its own moon.