Centaurs are mysterious icy small-bodies that are neither purely comets nor purely inactive asteroids, but they all orbit the Sun between Jupiter and Neptune in unstable orbits. They’re relatively ...

Ancient river valleys carved less than 3 billion years ago during Mars’ Early Amazonian Epoch dissect the flanks of the Martian volcano Alba Mons. To understand Mars’ more recent geologic and ...

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Planetary Science Institute scientists have converged in the lab, trying to decipher the mineral composition of dust. Not just any dust, but rather a simulated sample of Mercury’s surface, created as ...

May 1, 2025, TUCSON, Ariz. – Today, Amanda Hendrix begins as the next director and CEO of the Planetary Science Institute. She succeeds Mark V. Sykes, who oversaw tremendous growth at the Institute ...

Secondary craters – you know, the kind that are created by the falling debris that follows an initial impact – are what scientists call… annoying. This is because they can muddy up crater counts, ...

Mishal K T was awarded the 2025 Pierazzo International Student Travel Award at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference at The Woodlands, Texas, along with a check for $2,000 from PSI Director and ...

March 27, 2025, TUCSON, Ariz. – Planetary Science Institute Senior Scientist Roger Clark was named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a distinguished lifetime honor ...

Mar. 18, 2025, TUCSON, Ariz. – Between Hawaii and California, trash swirls in giant ocean currents, caught up in the infamous, Texas-sized Great Pacific Garbage Patch. This is just one of many found ...

In 2022, the Planetary Science Institute hosted a virtual workshop titled “Mercury’s Surface Response to the Interplanetary Environment: Identifying Needed Studies in Laboratory Astrophysics.” From ...

PSI is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) corporation, and an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer, including disability/veterans.

The Moon’s South Pole−Aitken basin, or SPA for short, is one of the oldest and largest impact structures in the Solar System. The more scientists learn about it, the more they can piece together lunar ...