Venus has long been depicted as having a hellish atmosphere. Despite that reputation, evidence increasingly suggests that our neighbor’s cloudy shroud isn’t riddled with lightning. Last month, planetary scientists proposed that most if not all of the bright flashes observed in Venus’ atmosphere could be explained by meteors (SN: 9/11/23). Now, a separate team suggests […]
Flashes in Venus’ atmosphere might be meteors, not lightning
Occasional flashes light up Venus’ shroud of clouds. Previous analyses have hinted that the bursts of light could be lightning in the hellish world’s atmosphere. But a new study suggests most of the flashes may be nothing more than the brief yet brilliant blazes of meteors. With upcoming missions planned for Venus, scientists are eager […]
NASA’s DART mission lofted a swarm of boulders into space
When a probe smashed into a small asteroid last year, the collision did more than change the asteroid’s orbit — it blasted a few dozen hefty boulders into space too. Last September, NASA steered the DART spacecraft into Dimorphos, a moonlet of the larger asteroid Didymos, to test a strategy for knocking any future Earth-bound […]