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It is a picture perfect Christmas card image from another planet. The European Space Agency's Mars Express has returned an incredible new series of images showing a giant crater on the red planet. It shows the Korolev crater, a 50 mile (82 km) wide feature in in the northern lowlands of Mars. Just south of a large patch of dune-filled terrain that encircles part of the planet's northern polar cap (known as Olympia Undae), ESA says it is 'an especially well-preserved example of a martian crater.' It is filled not by snow but ice, with its center hosting a mound...

When is a discovery not a discovery? When it’s just plain wrong. or decades, the idea of useable caves on the Moon has been studied and discussed at various venues and science gatherings. Our fascination with the availability of underground planetary structures stems from the possible benefits such features may afford humans trying to live in an off-world, hostile environment. Humans are vulnerable on the Moon because it lacks the protective atmosphere and magnetosphere that we enjoy here on Earth. A thick layer of solid rock provides protection for people and equipment from galactic cosmic rays and solar particle events,...

New observations by the MESSENGER spacecraft provide compelling support for the long-held hypothesis that Mercury harbors abundant water ice and other frozen volatile materials in its permanently shadowed polar craters. Three independent lines of evidence support this conclusion: the first measurements of excess hydrogen at Mercury's north pole with MESSENGER's Neutron Spectrometer, the first measurements of the reflectance of Mercury's polar deposits at near-infrared wavelengths with the Mercury Laser Altimeter (MLA), and the first detailed models of the surface and near-surface temperatures of Mercury's north polar regions that utilize the actual topography of Mercury's surface measured by the MLA. These...

At the south pole of the moon, a row of peaks juts from the gently sloping rim of Shackleton Crater, named for the early 20th-century Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton. The 15-mile-wide crater and its rugged surroundings, including a vast depression created by the impact of an ancient asteroid or comet, starkly show the drama that marked the early history of Earth's companion. Overlooked as a half-dozen Apollo expeditions landed on the moon two generations ago, the lunar south pole could figure prominently in NASA's plans to return to the moon with explorers. Satellite photos reveal that parts of...