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Mars Gullies Aren't Made by Water: The Surprising Dry Ice Answer

Mars Gullies Aren't Made by Water: The Surprising Dry Ice Answer

Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries vor 1 Woche

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32:51

Perseverance drove to the edge of an ancient Martian lake expecting
a beach and found the inside of a volcano — rock that water has
been through at least three separate times. Europe's Jupiter probe
comes home on Monday night and crosses Australia in a fully dark
sky. Two teams, using two completely different techniques, both
find something hiding inside the most famous planetary system we
have ever photographed — and an Australian instrument is in the
middle of one of them. Plus: heavy water in an interstellar comet,
and what it says about the star that made it. In this
episode ·         LEAD
— Three floods at the crater's edge. Candice Bedford (Purdue) and
colleagues publish in Communications Earth & Environment: the
Margin Unit at Jezero is igneous, not sedimentary, and records at
least three distinct episodes of water — CO₂-rich groundwater
making carbonate ridges, then silica associated with the lake, then
a later hot-water event leaving fluorite veins. Habitability
context, not a biosignature.
·         Juice returns.
ESA confirms the third Earth gravity assist for 28 September —
closest approach 11:45 UTC over the Indian Ocean, bending the
trajectory ~20° and adding ~3.5 km/s. The spacecraft crosses
Australia north-east to north-west 15–30 minutes earlier, in full
darkness. ·         HR
8799. Two preprints in two weeks point at a fifth, inner planet —
one from archival JWST aperture-masking data (~7 au, a few Jupiter
masses), one from Gaia astrometry (2–3 au, 10–14 Jupiter masses).
They do not obviously describe the same object. Neither is
peer-reviewed. ·
3I/ATLAS. A modelling paper explains the high deuterium-to-hydrogen
ratio measured in March as consistent with formation around a
low-metallicity — meaning old — star.
·         Quick hit:
Starship Flight 14 still targeting 28 September; Crew-13 still 'no
earlier than early October' on NASA's own page; Albania signs the
Artemis Accords as the 73rd country.
·         Skywatch: the
equinox as an instant rather than a date, the Juice pass over
Australia, Venus and Mercury for the south, Mars and Jupiter before
dawn for the north, and Saturn heading into opposition. Sources
and further reading
·         Bedford, C. C. et
al., 'Lake- and groundwater-associated alteration of the
olivine-rich Margin unit in Jezero crater, Mars', Communications
Earth & Environment (2026). DOI 10.1038/s43247-026-03997-9
·         NASA/JPL, 'NASA
Discovery Reveals Complex Water Systems on Early Mars', 21
September 2026. ·
ESA, 'Juice to fly past Earth for third gravity assist', 21
September 2026. ·
Nguyen, J. S. et al., 'A Candidate Innermost Fifth Planet In the HR
8799 System Revealed By JWST NIRISS Aperture Masking
Interferometry', arXiv:2609.10507.
·         Lagrange, A.-M.
et al., 'A fifth companion in the HR 8799 system revealed by Gaia',
arXiv:2609.20996 (submitted to Nature Astronomy).
·         Furuya, K.,
Cordiner, M., Bockelée-Morvan, D. et al., arXiv:2609.12370.
·         NASA OIIR, 'NASA
Welcomes Albania as Newest Artemis Accords Signatory', 21 September
2026. Skywatch figures computed in-session with PyEphem 4.2.1
for Sydney, Los Angeles, New York and London. Times are local
unless marked UTC.

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