At the southern section of the floor of an impact crater is this stunning lobate (tongue-shaped) debris apron with surface banding showing high sinuosity.
imaging
Posted inMissions & Hardware
Planetary Recon: Interworld Slingshot Resource Surveys
[NASA] This proposal explores a new class of reconnaissance spacecraft that map minerals from orbit using Raman spectroscopy during high-speed flybys–without landing, sample return, or extended dwell. Editor’s note: for […]
Posted inBiosignatures & Paleobiology
Micropeloidal Textures – Definition, Formation And Potential As Biosignatures
[Earth-Science Reviews] Microbial biosignatures result from the interactions between microbial populations, metabolic processes, organic and mineral products, and the surrounding physicochemical environment.
![Penalty incurred when phase is unknown, with polarimetry. The true phase set is α = (150◦, 120◦, 90◦, 60◦, 30◦, 5◦). Left: known-phase radius consequence, in which trial phases are fixed to the true set. Middle: unknown-phase radius consequence, in which trial phase tuples are marginalized over the sampled grid while the normalized I400 lightcurve shape is included with the intensive observables. Right: unknown-phase to known-phase penalty ratio. -- [astro-ph.EP]](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Multiepoch.png?resize=1200%2C720&ssl=1)
Posted inAstronomy & Telescopes
Multi-epoch Ultraviolet Observables For Breaking The Radius-albedo Degeneracy In Directly Imaged Exoplanets
[astro-ph.EP] Direct imaging measures how bright a planet appears in reflected starlight, but brightness alone cannot tell whether the planet is large and dark or small and bright. This radius-albedo […]
![CAD layout of the MANTIS spacecraft showing how the instrument unit and spacecraft unit are distinct, with a single 37-pin micro-D connector between the two. This is a significant reduction in complexity to prior CU-LASP CubeSats where the instrument and spacecraft by necessity are integrated. -- [astro-ph.IM]](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Optomechanical.png?resize=1200%2C718&ssl=1)
Posted inCubesats and smallsats
Optomechanical Design of the MANTIS SmallSat: An Extreme-, Far- and Near-Ultraviolet Spectrograph for Exoplanet Host Stars
[astro-ph.IM] The MANTIS (Monitoring Activity of Nearby sTars with uv Imaging and Spectroscopy) observatory is a compact, multi-instrument small satellite designed for simultaneous extreme- (EUV; 100 – 560 Angstrom), far- […]
![Illustration of the VHS 1256 b data used in this study. (Top) Full ERS #1386 program (V2) spectrum of VHS 1256 b with overlapping wavelengths between orders shown in grey. With 12 spectral orders populating the NIRSpec and MIRI data combination we have 11 overlaps present across the global spectrum. (Middle) NIRSpec data at its native resolution and the binned spectrum used in our retrieval analysis. (Bottom) MIRI data at its native resolution and the binned spectrum used in our retrieval analysis. -- [astro-ph.EP]](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/The-JWST.png?resize=1200%2C719&ssl=1)
Posted inExoplanets, -moons, -comets
The JWST Early Release Science Program for Direct Observations of Exoplanetary Systems VIII: Patchy Forsterite and Enstatite Clouds in the Atmosphere of VHS 1256 b.
[astro-ph.EP] JWST defines a new era for the data-driven approach of retrieval modelling, which has become a cornerstone tool for the statistical inference of exoplanetary and brown dwarf properties.
Posted inStellar Cartography
Stellar Cartography: SDSS-V Releases Latest All-sky Spectra Including First Optical Spectra From The Southern Hemisphere
[Carnegie Institution for Science] The Sloan Digital Sky Survey V (SDSS-V) has announced its twentieth public data release (DR20), delivering a dramatic expansion of the Milky Way Mapper (MWM) scientific […]
Posted inBiosignatures & Paleobiology
Orbital Biosphere Assays: Lowering Barriers To Big Data
Editor’s note: When we begin to conduct Away Team visits to other worlds that host life we will need to do an assay of how everything on these worlds works […]
![Mass-radius diagram of known exoplanets together with model curves taken from A. Aguichine et al. (2021) and L. Zeng et al. (2019). Exoplanet data shown with colored dots were taken from the NASA Exoplanet Archive (J. L. Christiansen et al. 2025) on April 2, 2026. The transiting exoplanets in the HD 191939 system are highlighted with larger markers, error bars and a red outline.-- [astro-ph.EP]](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/The-SPACE.png?resize=1200%2C714&ssl=1)
Posted inExoplanets, -moons, -comets
The SPACE Program II: No Discernible Spectral Features In The Transmission Spectrum Of The sub-Neptune HD 191939 b Observed With HST/WFC3
[astro-ph.EP] The atmospheres of sub-Neptunes provide a window into their internal structure and history, shedding light on the origin of this common, but enigmatic, class of exoplanets.
Posted inMars
Getting A Closer Look Into Cerberus Fossae On Mars
[NASA/JPL/UA] Visible in this observation is a section of Cerberus Fossae (width approximately 250 meters), which are comprised of a series of rifts present located in Elysium Planitia just north […]