Caltech Archives

JPL and the Search for Life Beyond Earth

by Keith CowingAugust 18, 2026

Registration is limited to 1000 participants. Register early to reserve your spot. Free livestream | Open to the public REGISTER In September 2025, a sample named Sapphire Canyon made headlines […]

Two prototype dishes for the DSA at the Owens Valley Radio Observatory (OVRO) near Bishop, California. This generation of antenna was designed and built by Mtex Antenna Technology GmbH in Germany. Credit: Katie Jameson/Caltech/DSA Project

Astronomy & Telescopes, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Press Release

Caltech Readies To Build World’s Most Sensitive Radio Telescope

by Keith CowingJune 22, 2026June 21, 2026

Our cosmos is awash with radio waves, originating from fierce jets blasting out of distant black holes, blinking dead stars closer to home, and many other exotic objects.

Astrogeology, Callisto, Ganymede, Icy Worlds, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Jupiter, Press Release

Ganymede Might Still Be Forming Its Metal Core Today

by Keith CowingMay 18, 2026May 18, 2026

Jupiter’s moon Ganymede is the largest moon in the solar system; at over 3,200 miles across, it is larger than the planet Mercury. It is also the only moon with […]

Sedimentologic and mineralogic evidence for sedimentary rocks, clay stratigraphy and open-basin deltas along and within the detected shelf. a,b, Polar stereographic projections of the detected shelf showing 14,386 mounds interpreted to have formed by dichotomy retreat, consisting of thick-layered deposits up to 500 m in southern Chryse Planitia, Mars, along with widespread clay-bearing stratigraphy and open-basin deltas. -- Nature

Analog Studies, Astrogeology, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Caves, Craters, Mountains, Subsurface, Lava Tubes, Desert Worlds, Habitable Zones, Icy Worlds, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Mapping, Geodesy, Cartography, Bathymetry, Mars, Press Release, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

New Evidence For An Ancient Ocean On Mars

by Keith CowingApril 18, 2026April 18, 2026

Caltech researchers have identified geological features on Mars that could point to the existence of a long-dried ocean that once covered a third of the Red Planet’s surface.

Top row: coma maps of H2O, CO2, and CH4, computed as the molecular column density from a pixel-by-pixel retrieval analysis for Observations 6, 15, and 6, respectively. The sunward and target velocity directions are denoted by the white arrows. The target centroids, computed as the photocenter in the median-stacked images (Figure 1), are marked with the black points. For H2O and CO2, the white contours correspond to emission levels of 50% and 20% relative to the maximum value and illustrate the slight anti-sunward extension of the respective comae. The contours are omitted in the CH4 panel due to the poorer signal-to-noise ratio of the data. Bottom row: corresponding median-stacked images across the continuum wavelengths within each fluorescence region. The H2O coma map shows significant enhancement in emission level at large nucleocentric distances relative to the dust continuum, indicating extended H2O production within the coma. -- arxiv.org

Astrochemistry, Astrogeology, Astronomy & Telescopes, Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Comets and Asteroids, Icy Worlds, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Intelligence & Language, Interstellar, Press Release

Interstellar Comet Reveals Methane On Its Journey Through Our Solar System

by Keith CowingApril 18, 2026April 18, 2026

Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS is now on its way out of our solar system, never to return.

Astrobiology (general), Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Conferences and Meetings, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones, Status Report

2025 Sagan Summer Workshop Silver Jubilee: Exoplanet Demographics

by Keith CowingMarch 18, 2025March 18, 2025

The topic of the 2025 Sagan Summer Workshop will be the “Demographics of Exoplanets” and will address the contribution of each of the major planet-finding techniques to our overall knowledge […]

This illustration depicts a lake of water partially filling Mars’ Gale Crater, receiving runoff from snow melting on the crater’s northern rim. Evidence of ancient streams, deltas and lakes that NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover mission has found in the patterns of sedimentary deposits in Gale Crater suggests the crater held a lake such as this more than three billion years ago, filling and drying in multiple cycles over tens of millions of years. Larger image

Astrogeology, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Habitable Zones, Icy Worlds, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Mapping, Geodesy, Cartography, Bathymetry, Mars, Press Release, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Signatures of Ice-Free Ancient Ponds and Lakes Found on Mars

by Keith CowingJanuary 27, 2025January 27, 2025

Researchers have discovered two sets of ancient wave ripples on Mars, signatures of long-dried bodies of water preserved in the rock record. Wave ripples are small undulations in the sandy […]

A quarry illustrating bands of stratified limestone from the ancient seafloor in what is now Mercato San Severino in Italy. Credit: Courtesy of F. Tissot

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Extinction events, Fossils & Paleontology, Gaia - Planetary Perspectives, Mapping, Geodesy, Cartography, Bathymetry, Origin & Evolution of Life, Press Release, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Sediments Reveal The Ancient Ocean During a Mass Extinction Event

by Keith CowingJuly 15, 2024July 7, 2024

About 183 million years ago, volcanic activity in modern South Africa unleashed an estimated 20,500 gigatons of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the ocean-atmosphere system over a period of 300 to […]

Metabolism is the "beating heart of the cell". New research from ELSI retraces the history of metabolism from the primordial Earth to the modern day (left to right). The history of compound discovery over time (white line) is cyclic, almost resembling an EKG. CREDIT NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Francis Reddy/NASA/ESA

Astrochemistry, Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biophysics, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Genomics, Proteomics, Bioinformatics, Habitable Zones, Origin & Evolution of Life, Press Release

Uncovering A Multibillion-year Epic Written Into The Chemistry Of Life

by Keith CowingMay 29, 2024May 29, 2024

The origin of life on Earth has long been a mystery that has eluded scientists. A key question is how much of the history of life on Earth is lost […]

Possible relationship between strike-slip motion and jet activity at Enceladus. Lateral extension along transtensional "pull-apart zones" allows water to rise and feed material to cryovolcanic jets. Credit: James Tuttle Keane

Astrochemistry, Astrogeology, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Enceladus, Habitable Zones, Icy Worlds, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Press Release, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Water Plumes On Enceladus Caused By Strike–Slip Motion

by Keith CowingMay 1, 2024May 1, 2024

Over the course of its elliptical orbit, the moon Enceladus is squeezed unevenly by Saturn’s gravitational pull and deforms from a spherical shape into a football shape and back again. […]