We love answering questions about the mysteries of our Solar System!
This week Astronomy Magazine called on PSI's William Hartmann to help answer the question "Why does 1 side of the Moon have a lot of craters, while the other side does not?" Click through to read his answer!
Happy Friday! 🪐 🐾
This week's #PlanetaryPet is playful Stella who is NOT going to give up her pink stuffed toy! Adorable and stubborn Stella lives and plays with PSI’s Senior Scientist Pamela Gay.
"I am extremely excited to be working on the science team for the first landed Artemis mission... I anticipate spending much of the next year analyzing potential landing sites & taking a deeper dive into lunar highlands regolith structure."
More: buff.ly/V7DDrTp
This morning, PSI's Amanda Hendrix, Roger Clark, Morgan Cable and Tom McCord snapped a picture at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
PSI in the News:
PSI's Shawn Wright discussed his recent publication on shocked soil on the Geology Letter Substack. Watch/listen here:
Happy Friday! 🌌 🎨
This week's #SciArt features a painting from our art collection. This piece, Coronagraph from the Moon, was painted by PSI cofounder William K. Hartmann in 2025. A coronagraph is a device that blocks out direct light from the Sun so the corona can be studied.
They've gathered with other mission science and operations folks for the annual Europa Clipper Project Science Group meeting, where they will plan for all aspects of the Europa encounters during the tour of the Jovian system.
However, coronagraphs can’t be used effectively on Earth due to scattered light in the atmosphere. The Moon, on the other hand, lacks an atmosphere, so astronauts could create a handheld coronagraph for use on the surface.
Learn more about the collection: buff.ly/M9qipVt
PSI's Kirby Runyon was featured on the HELLO FUTURE podcast! Catch it here: buff.ly/IqWsx8b
#JunoCam: This rendering of the Juno spacecraft flying over Jupiter and it's Great Red Spot was rendered using actual mission data.
Interested in processing your own images? Visit: buff.ly/puVFvXq
Data and image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/SwRI/Kevin M. Gill
Juno Model: NASA/JPL-Caltech