EurekAlert! News by Subject: Space & Planetary - News by Subject: Space & Planetary

Space & Planetary

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 2-Sep-2025 19:11 ET (2-Sep-2025 23:11 GMT/UTC)

Mars’ mantle is a preserved relic of its ancient past, seismic data reveals

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Locked beneath a single-plate crust, Mars’ mantle holds a frozen record of the red planet’s primordial past, according to a new study of Martian seismic data collected by NASA’s InSight mission. The findings reveal a highly heterogenous and disordered mantle, born from ancient impacts and chaotic convection in the planet’s early history. “Whereas Earth’s early geological records remain elusive, the identification of preserved ancient mantle heterogeneity on Mars offers an unprecedented window into the geological history and thermochemical evolution of a terrestrial planet under a stagnant lid, the prevalent tectonic regime in our Solar System,” write the authors. “This evolution holds key implications for understanding the preconditions for habitability of rocky bodies across our Solar System and beyond.” A planet’s mantle – the vast layer that lies sandwiched between its crust and core – preserves crucial evidence about planetary origin and evolution. Unlike Earth, where active plate tectonics continually stirs the mantle, Mars is a smaller planet with a single-plate surface. As such, Mars’ mantle undergoes far less mixing, meaning it may preserve a record of the planet’s early internal history, which could offer valuable insights into how rocky worlds form and evolve. Using data from NASA’s InSight lander, Constantinos Charalambous and colleagues studied the seismic signatures of marsquakes to better constrain the nature of Mars’ mantle. By analyzing eight well-recorded quakes, including those triggered by meteorite impacts, Charalambous et al. discovered that high-frequency P-wave arrivals were systematically delayed as they traversed the deeper portions of the mantle. According to the authors, these delays reveal subtle, kilometer-scale compositional variations within the planet’s mantle. Because Mars lacks plate tectonics and large-scale recycling, these small-scale irregularities must instead be remnants of its earliest history. The scaling of Mars’ mantle heterogeneity suggests an origin in highly energetic and disruptive processes, including massive impacts early in the planet’s history, which fractured the planet’s interior, mixing both foreign and crustal materials into the mantle at a planetary scale. Moreover, the crystallization of vast magma oceans generated in the aftermath likely introduced additional variations. Instead of being erased, these features became frozen in place as Mars’ crust cooled and mantle convection stalled.

Journal: Science

Mars’s interior more like Rocky Road than Millionaire’s Shortbread, scientists find

Imperial College London
Peer-Reviewed Publication

The inside of Mars isn’t smooth and uniform like familiar textbook illustrations. Instead, new research reveals it’s chunky - more like a Rocky Road brownie than a neat slice of Millionaire’s Shortbread.

Journal: Science
Funder: UK Space Agency, UK Space Agency, Johns Hopkins University, NASA InSight mission, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, ANR, CNES, IdEx Universit´e Paris Cit´e, CINES

Scientists reveal warped protoplanetary discs, reshaping ideas about how planets form

Queen Mary University of London
Peer-Reviewed Publication

The textbook picture of how planets form – serene, flat discs of cosmic dust – has just received a significant cosmic twist. New research, published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, is set to reshape this long-held view. An international team of scientists, wielding the formidable power of the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA), has found compelling evidence that many protoplanetary discs, the very birthplaces of planets, are in fact subtly warped.

Journal: The Astrophysical Journal Letters
Funder: European Union Horizon 2020, Royal Society

UAlbany chemists create new high-energy compound to fuel space flight

University at Albany, SUNY

University at Albany chemists have created a new high-energy compound — manganese diboride — that could revolutionize rocket fuel and make space flights more efficient.

Journal: Journal of the American Chemical Society

From wave energy to electricity: Functional design and performance analysis of triboelectric nanogenerators

Shanghai Jiao Tong University Journal Center
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) offer a self-sustaining power solution for marine regions abundant in resources but constrained by energy availability. Since their pioneering use in wave energy harvesting in 2014, nearly a decade of advancements has yielded nearly thousands of research articles in this domain. Researchers have developed various TENG device structures with diverse functionalities to facilitate their commercial deployment. Nonetheless, there is a gap in comprehensive summaries and performance evaluations of TENG structural designs. This paper delineates six innovative structural designs, focusing on enhancing internal device output and adapting to external environments: high space utilization, hybrid generator, mechanical gain, broadband response, multi-directional operation, and hybrid energy-harvesting systems. We summarize the prevailing trends in device structure design identified by the research community. Furthermore, we conduct a meticulous comparison of the electrical performance of these devices under motorized, simulated wave, and real marine conditions, while also assessing their sustainability in terms of device durability and mechanical robustness. In conclusion, the paper outlines future research avenues and discusses the obstacles encountered in the TENG field. This review aims to offer valuable perspectives for ongoing research and to advance the progress and application of TENG technology.

Journal: Nano-Micro Letters

Cosmic butterfly reveals clues to Earth's creation

Royal Astronomical Society
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Clues about how worlds like Earth may have formed have been found buried at the heart of a spectacular 'cosmic butterfly'. With the help of the James Webb Space Telescope, researchers say they have made a big leap forward in our understanding of how the raw material of rocky planets comes together. This cosmic dust – tiny particles of minerals and organic material which include ingredients linked to the origins of life – was studied at the core of the Butterfly Nebula, NGC 6302, which is located about 3,400 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius. From the dense, dusty torus that surrounds the star hidden at the centre of the nebula to its outflowing jets, the Webb observations reveal many new discoveries that paint a never-before-seen portrait of a dynamic and structured planetary nebula. They have been published today in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Journal: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Cardiac arrest in space: New research shows that automatic chest compressions are more effective for CPR when both rescuer and patient are floating in microgravity

European Society of Cardiology
Reports and Proceedings

New research has found that a type of automatic chest compression is more effective to carry out CPR in space than the ‘handstand method’ that is currently recommended in emergency protocols for spaceflight. Treating cardiac arrest during spaceflight is challenging because both the rescuer and the patient are floating due to microgravity, which makes doing chest compressions challenging.

The research was conducted in a ‘flying laboratory’ in a modified A310 aircraft at the CNES (French space agency). Freefalling phases of parabolic flight were used to accurately recreate microgravity so CPR could be tested by researchers on a floating mannikin.

The researchers say they hope their findings will influence future guidelines (1) about CPR in space. They suggest that space agencies will need to balance risks from cardiac arrest against space and weight constraints when deciding whether to include automatic chest compression devices on future spaceflights.

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