Many phases of the Moon ago — more than 200 — I came under the spell of earth science and wrote a lot about it for a number of years. This week, some of that ancient knowledge came back to visit as I gazed at a fantastic 28-image mosaic of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. You may see crusty cracked ice; I see the outlines of ice continents. At the American Geophysicial Union meeting in San Francisco this week, the halls are abuzz with talk of plate tectonics...

Last week , I told you we would show you a new map of Mercury based on the January MESSENGER flyby. Here it is, kindly provided by one of NASA’s master mappers, Robert Gaskell of the Planetary Science Institute in Altadena, California. This image is an anaglyph — a flat image that simulates a three-dimensional view — of the fault scarp Beagle Rupes as it cuts across the crater Sveinsdóttir. The area shown here is about 160 miles (257 kilometers) square...

NASA engineers have proposed a mission to an asteroid threatening Earth. Bruce Damer (DigitalSpace) I’m happy to report NASA may be planning to do more about the as-yet unaddressed asteroid threat to Earth than helplessly watch giant space rocks whiz by the home planet from time to time. The Guardian , a British newspaper, reported recently that some NASA scientists have written a report outlining a mission to asteroid 2000SG344. The object is about...

This just in from the hydrocarbon desk at Astronomy.com: Titan’s surface lakes and methane-ice-laden dune seas collectively hold hundreds of times Earth’s bounty of hydrocarbons (oil and gas). It’s a Texas oilman’s dream: hydrocarbons rain from the sky on Titan. To my mind, this could solve a lot of problems. Planetary scientists have been competing with NASA’s fantastically expensive manned space program for decades. Word on the aerospace street...