Space Photos This Week: Falcon 9, Jupiter Impact, More

Map of Mars's Lakes

Image courtesy USGS

A suite of Mars orbiters combined forces to create a new geologic map of Mars, released June 7, that adds to evidence the red planet once hosted expansive lakes.

Using data from the Viking, Mars Odyssey, and Mars Global Surveyor orbiters, scientists created a false-color picture of rocks and minerals in the Hellas Planitia region in Mars's southern hemisphere.

The map reveals sedimentary deposits that match what would be found as material gets washed downhill into standing bodies of water. These deposits date back to between 4.5 and 3.5 billion years ago, to a period when scientists think Mars could have hosted liquid water.

Published June 8, 2010

Jupiter + Fireball

Image courtesy Anthony Wesley

Jupiter's had it tough lately: Almost a year after an asteroid impact had left a dark scar on the planet, another fireball was spotted smacking the planet's bottom. In the picture above, taken from Australia, the Earth-size fireball appears as a bright spot at right.

On June 3 backyard astronomers in both Australia and the Philippines saw the white flash—evidence of an as yet unidentified object slamming into Jupiter. (Get the full story and watch video.)

Published June 8, 2010

TRAPPIST Sees a Tarantula

Image courtesy E. Jehin, TRAPPIST/ESO

The star-spangled swirls of the Tarantula Nebula feature in one of the first pictures, released June 8, from a new remote control telescope.

TRAPPIST, or the TRAnsiting Planets and PlanetesImals Small Telescope, sits at the European Southern Observatory's La Silla site in northern Chile. But it's operated from a control room in Liège, Belgium—about 7,500 miles (12,000 kilometers) away.

The telescope will look for planets outside our solar system by watching for periodic dips in a star's brightness as a planet passes in front of its host. A low amount of dust between Earth and the Tarantula make the nearby nebula a promising target for planet hunting, according to the TRAPPIST team.

Published June 8, 2010

The Voyage Home

Photograph courtesy Bill Ingalls, NASA

A deployed parachute creates a huge, round shadow over Kazahkstan on June 2 as a Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying crew members from the International Space Station returns to Earth.

NASA astronaut T.J. Creamer, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kotov, and Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi made a successful landing after spending six months aboard the orbiting laboratory. (See pictures of Earth from space Noguchi posted via Twitter.)

Published June 8, 2010

Mount Cleveland Plume

Image courtesy NASA Earth Observatory

Seen by a NASA satellite June 1, the clouds part to reveal a dark plume rising from Mount Cleveland, a volcano in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska. The false-color thermal image shows white snow, pink clouds, red vegetation, and black waters.

The Alaska Volcano Observatory reported ash rising above Mount Cleveland up to 16,000 feet (4,900 meters) on May 30. This particular peak is frequently restless, and the current activity is not unusual, according to the NASA Earth Observatory.

Published June 8, 2010