Related papers: Lunar Near-Surface Volatile Sample Return
High resolution images of Mercury's surface, from the MESSENGER spacecraft, reveal many bright deposits associated with irregular, shallow, rimless depressions whose origins were attributed to volatile-related activity, but absent…
The Red Planet has fascinated humans for millennia, especially for the last few centuries, and particularly during the Space Age. The nagging suspicion of extant Martian life is both fed by, and drives the many space missions to Mars and…
The upper atmospheres of Mars and Titan, as well as those on many other planetary bodies, exhibit significant density variations vs. altitude that are interpreted as gravity waves. Such data is then used to extract vertical temperature…
A new analysis of the Lunar Prospector epithermal neutron data is presented, providing an improved map of the distribution of hydrogen near to the lunar poles. This is achieved using a specially developed pixon image reconstruction…
Free-floating planets (FFPs) can result from dynamical scattering processes happening in the first few million years of a planetary system's life. Several models predict the possibility, for these isolated planetary-mass objects, to retain…
Ever since the Apollo era, a question has remained as to the origin of the lunar swirls (high albedo regions coincident with the regions of surface magnetization). Different processes have been proposed for their origin. In this work we…
The presence and distribution of water on the Moon are fundamental to our understanding of the Earth-Moon system. Despite extensive research and remote detection, the origin and chemical form of lunar water (H2O) have remained elusive. In…
This paper shows how the exposure of the Moon to the Earth's plasmasheet is subject to decadal variations due to lunar precession. The latter is a key property of the Moon's apparent orbit around the Earth - the nodes of that orbit precess…
The lunar geological record has much to tell us about the earliest history of the Solar System, the origin and evolution of the Earth-Moon system, the geological evolution of rocky planets, and the near-Earth cosmic environment throughout…
The origin of Titan's atmospheric methane is a key issue for understanding the origin of the Saturnian satellite system. It has been proposed that serpentinization reactions in Titan's interior could lead to the formation of the observed…
Polar vortices are common in the atmospheres of rapidly rotating planets [1-4]. On Earth and Mars they are tied to the surface and their existence follows the seasonal insolation cycle [1-3]. Venus is a slowly rotating planet but it is also…
The memo is exploring possibilities to set up extraterrestrial experimental facilities to study particles physics. The Moon is considered as the most promising location for artificial particle sources outside the Earth. This natural…
Airborne dust is the main climatic agent in the Martian environment. Local dust storms play a key role in the dust cycle; yet their life cycle is poorly known. Here we use mesoscale modeling that includes the transport of radiatively active…
Above lunar crustal magnetic anomalies, large fractions of solar wind electrons and ions can be scattered and stream back towards the solar wind flow, leading to a number of interesting effects such as electrostatic instabilities and waves.…
Since the Voyager mission flybys in 1979, we have known the moon Io to be both volcanically active and the main source of plasma in the vast magnetosphere of Jupiter. Material lost from Io forms neutral clouds, the Io plasma torus and…
Long-standing unexplained Venus atmosphere observations and chemical anomalies point to unknown chemistry but also leave room for the possibility of life. The unexplained observations include several gases out of thermodynamic equilibrium…
The present Martian climate is characterized by a cold and dry environment with a thin atmosphere of carbon dioxides (CO2). In such conditions, the planetary climate and habitability are determined by the distribution of CO2 between…
Volcanism is a major and long-term source of volatile elements such as C and H to Earth's atmosphere, likely has been to Venus's atmosphere, and may be for exoplanets. Models simulating volcanic growth of atmospheres often make one of two…
Recent observations of variability in the ``atmospheric neutrino'' rate place constraints on possible explanations of the atmospheric neutrino anomaly. Many proposed solutions to the problem are static and can not be adapted to the temporal…
Planets, embedded in their natal discs, harbour hot envelopes. When pebbles are accreted by these planets, the contained volatile components may sublimate, enriching the envelope and potentially changing its thermodynamical properties.…