Planetary scientists sharing ideas and discoveries.

Planetary Science and Resources Discoveries (PSRD) is an educational site sharing the latest research on the nature and origin of the Moon, meteorites, asteroids, planets, and other materials in our Solar System, and on identifying potential resources on those bodies that could be tapped for the benefit of people on Earth. Original support came from the Planetary Science Division of NASA's Science Mission Directorate and Hawai'i Space Grant Consortium. This site is a vital link for what's new in planetary and space sciences, space resources exploration, and learning how science works.

Archive of PSRDpresents Slide Sets

These annotated slide sets are associated with PSRD articles, which provide the full context, additional graphics, and references. If your browser does not open the notes associated with the slides, then please download the file to view the entire presentation.

DATE POSTED	SLIDE SETS	ARTICLE LINKS
17 SEPT 2022	Detailed Microanalysis of One Lunar Rock Provides Insight into Formation of the Entire Lunar Magnesian Suite The distribution of phosphorous in olivine and sodium in plagioclase in lunar rock 76535 suggest that its formation may have involved reaction between magma ocean products and magma formed by partial melting in the lower crust.	(html), (pdf)
25 May 2021	Heating Meteorites to Understand Exoplanet Atmospheres Heating carbonaceous chondrites in a vacuum oven provides constraints on the origins of the atmospheres of Earth-like planets around other stars.	(html), (pdf)
03 May 2021	Seeing What We Have Never Seen Before: Low-Frequency Radio Astronomy from the Moon Low-frequency radio observations from the radio-quiet lunar farside will allow astronomers to probe the universe from its mysterious dark ages after the Big Bang, to the nature of the magnetospheres of planets around other stars and the outer planets in our Solar System, and to better understand the causes of explosive release of plasma from the Sun's corona.	(html), (pdf)
24 Mar 2021	The Tarnished Moon Remote sensing observations reveal the presence of ferric iron in the form of the mineral hematite at high latitudes on the Moon, possibly the product of reaction of ferrous iron on the Moon with oxygen from the Earth's upper atmosphere.	(html), (pdf)
1 May 2020	Explaining the Compositional Heterogeneities of the Martian Mantle by Late Accretion of Large Projectiles Compositional variations in the Martian mantle may be caused by addition of a few large impactors after planet construction was mostly finished.	(html), (pdf)
24 Mar 2020	Hydrogen Isotopes in Small Lunar Samples Provide Clues to the Origin of the Earth and Moon Small samples of igneous rocks from the Moon have low deuterium/hydrogen ratios, indicating that some planetary bodies involved in the formation of the Earth and Moon trapped gas from the solar nebula.	(html), (pdf)
9 Mar 2020	Greatest Show on Venus: Lavas are Hot and Fresh Out of the Mantle Spectral observations of the surface of Venus and experiments determining rates of alteration due to the hot Venusian atmosphere indicate that some basalts on the planet's hot surface formed within the past several years.	(html), (pdf)
12 July 2019	Recipe for Making H₂O in the Lunar Regolith: Implant Solar Wind Hydrogen and Heat with Micrometeorite Impacts Laboratory experiments simulating space weathering on the Moon show that water can be produced by rapid heating caused by micrometeorite impacts on grains implanted with hydrogen from the Sun.	(html), (pdf)
24 May 2019	Active Asteroids Researchers document the stunning effects of disintegrating asteroids to learn more about their dusty debris tails and the processes causing them to happen.	(html), (pdf)
24 April 2019	Volatile Elements Test Models for the Origin of the Moon Volatile elements that concentrate in metallic iron elucidate the processes that operated during formation and initial differentiation of the Moon.	(html), (pdf)
20 Dec 2018	The Complicated Origin of Earth's Water Water delivery and redistribution to Earth was a complicated business with hydrogen coming from chondritic and solar nebular sources.	(html), (pdf)
10 Aug 2018	The Oldest Volcanic Meteorite: A Silica-Rich Lava on a Geologically Complex Planetesimal A volcanic meteorite is the oldest igneous meteorite identified so far, erupting onto its parent body only about 3 million years after the Solar System began to form.	(html), (pdf)
18 July 2018	Minerals Track Chemical Reactions in Interstellar Space and in the Protoplanetary Disk Mineral intergrowths in cosmic dust and primitive meteorites reveal processes that operated in interstellar space and in the protoplanetary disk surrounding the Sun before the planets formed.	(html), (pdf)
14 June 2018	Meteorite Evidence for a Complicated Protoplanetary Disk A striking dichotomy in isotopic compositions of meteorite groups appears to be consistent with Jupiter and Saturn migrating to and fro during planet formation.	(html), (pdf)
20 Nov 2017	Volcanism and an Ancient Atmosphere on the Moon Extensive lunar volcanism around 3.5 billion years ago produced a temporary atmosphere on the Moon.	(html), (pdf)
9 Oct 2017	Accretional Layers Preserved in a Meteorite Visible sequence of layers in the Isheyevo meteorite tells a story of impact debris deposited, layer by layer, onto the surface of the surviving planetesimal.	(html), (pdf)
30 Aug 2017	Meteorite Formation Times and the Age of Jupiter Isotopic analyses of meteorites and models of planetary accretion indicate that Jupiter's solid core had accreted only one million years after the Solar System began to form.	(html), (pdf)
6 June 2017	Archaeology, Artifacts, and Cosmochemistry Iron beads, identified as pieces of the Anoka meteorite, are among a small handful of artifacts made from material from the birth of the Solar System.	(html), (pdf)
4 May 2017	Two Billion Years of Magmatism in One Place on Mars New data from a Martian meteorite extends the time of magmatic activity by 1.8 billion years in a volcanic center that provided us a coherent group of Martian meteorites.	(html), (pdf)
17 April 2017	Chondrules: Important, but Possibly Unfathomable Studies of chondrules in meteorites have revealed much about them, except how they formed and if they played a role in forming planets.	(html), (pdf)
11 Nov 2016	Searching for Ancient Solar System Materials on the Moon, Earth, and Mars The early history of the Solar System is recorded by meteorites falling now, but also by those that fell hundreds of millions to billions of years ago, preserved in lunar samples, sedimentary layers on Earth, and even sitting on the surface of Mars.	(html), (pdf)
30 Aug 2016	What Made the Doughnuts Inside Lunar Concentric Craters? Concentric ridges inside small lunar craters may have formed when intrusion of magma caused uplift of the crater floor.	(html), (pdf)
29 June 2016	Rock and Roll at the Apollo 17 Site The latest orbital images and topographic data offer new insights to the geologic context of Apollo 17 impact melt breccias.	(html), (pdf)
2 June 2016	A Sample from an Ancient Sea of Impact Melt A lunar breccia from the Apollo 16 site contains a fragment formed in a sea of impact melt 4.2 billion years ago.	(html), (pdf)
18 Mar 2016	Primordial Molecular Cloud Material in Metal-Rich Carbonaceous Chondrites Dust from the molecular cloud that gave birth to the Sun may be preserved in objects formed in the outer reaches of the Solar System.	(html), (pdf)
30 Nov 2015	Primeval Water in the Earth Hydrogen isotopes in lavas derived from the deep mantle suggest the presence of a component inside the Earth that came directly from the primordial solar nebula.	(html), (pdf)
30 Oct 2015	Age Rules Rules for determining the most reliable ages for Moon rocks shed light on what rocks formed when during construction of the ancient lunar highlands crust.	(html), (pdf)
31 July 2015	Making and Differentiating Planets A detailed study forming Earth and differentiating it into core and mantle shows that it accreted heterogeneously and most water is added after 60% of the Earth had formed.	(html), (pdf)
29 June 2015	Chondritic Asteroids—When Did Aqueous Alteration Happen? New dates determined for aqueous alteration on chondritic parent bodies, based on a new mineral standard, have big implications on the timing and location of accretion.	(html), (pdf)
17 June 2015	Tungsten Isotopes, Formation of the Moon, and Lopsided Addition to Earth and Moon A distinct difference in tungsten isotopic composition between the Moon and Earth is consistent with the Moon and Earth starting with the same isotopic composition, but then modified by late accretion of different amounts of chondritic asteroids.	(html), (pdf)
10 April 2015	Ancient Jets of Fiery Rain A new idea suggests that chondrules could have formed as the result of impact jetting caused when large planetesimals collided during planet formation.	(html), (pdf)
28 Jan 2015	Water in Asteroid 4 Vesta The big, melted asteroid 4 Vesta provides clues to the source of water to Earth and Mars.	(html), (pdf)
23 Dec 2014	Moon's Pink Mineral Remote sensing detections of pink spinel anorthosite are compared with sample analyses and experimental results to learn more about the lunar crust.	(html), (pdf)
23 June 2014	The Importance of When Isotopic analyses at the microscopic scale indicate an ancient age for an impact mixture from Mars and appear to confirm a young age for a group of basaltic lava flows.	(html), (pdf)
16 Sept 2013	Discovery of a New Garnet Mineral, Hutcheonite, in the Allende Meteorite A new titanium-rich garnet mineral discovered in a CAI in Allende is named in honor of Ian D. Hutcheon.	(html), (pdf)
30 May 2013	Magnesium-rich Basalts on Mercury Crystallization modeling using the MELTS computer code with MESSENGER-derived compositions finds Mg-rich lavas on Mercury.	(html), (pdf)
30 April 2013	Meteoritic Minerals Tell a Story of Multistage Cooling, Break-up, and Reassembly of an Asteroid Compositional variations in minerals in H-chondrites indicate at least two vastly different cooling rates at different temperatures, suggesting fragmentation, cooling of the fragments, and reassembly into a second-generation rubble pile.	(html), (pdf)
30 Jan 2013	New Martian Meteorite is Similar to Typical Martian Crust A newly-identified Martian meteorite from Northwest Africa is not like other Martian meteorites, but has a chemical composition similar to the average Martian crust.	(html), (pdf)
10 Dec 2012	Zinc Isotopes Provide Clues to Volatile Loss During Moon Formation Ratios of zinc isotopes indicate evaporation of zinc (and other volatiles) during formation of the Moon.	(html), (pdf)
16 Nov 2012	Dating Transient Heating Events in the Solar Protoplanetary Disk Startlingly precise dating of components in primitive meteorites indicate contemporaneous formation of calcium-aluminum-rich inclusions (CAIs) and chondrules.	(html), (pdf)
28 June 2012	Leftovers from Ancient Lunar Impactors A systematic search for meteorite fragments in ancient regolith breccias confirms chondritic impactors on the Moon.	(html), (pdf)
30 May 2012	Titanium Isotopes Provide Clues to Lunar Origin The titanium isotopic mix is essentially identical in Earth and Moon, important new information with implications for the origin of the planets.	(html), (pdf)
15 Mar 2012	Young Tectonic Events in Martian Chaotic Terrain Study of a faulted landslide in Aureum Chaos and its ramifications.	(html), (pdf)
21 Feb 2012	Chronicle of a Chondrule's Travels Isotopic measurements of a chondrule in a Comet Wild 2 grain tell the story of outward migration of solar nebula solids, helping to set the formation age of Jupiter.	(html), (pdf)
15 Dec 2011	Formation of Carbonate Minerals in Martian Meteorite ALH 84001 from Cool Water Near the Surface of Mars A new approach to thermometry using isotopic compositions of carbon and oxygen indicates that carbonate minerals in Martian meteorite ALH 84001 formed at 18 ± 4 ^oC.	(html), (pdf)
31 Aug 2011	Samples from Asteroid Itokawa Samples returned from asteroid Itokawa by the Hayabusa mission provide ground truth for astronomical observations and reveal that the little asteroid is eroding at a rate of tens of centimeters per million years.	(html), (pdf)
8 Aug 2011	Crystallizing the Lunar Magma Ocean Lab experiments help test ideas for the Moon's chemical composition and how its crust formed.	(html), (pdf)
22 June 2011	A Traveling CAI Oxygen isotopes show that a calcium-aluminum-rich inclusion wandered throughout the inner Solar System before being incorporated into an asteroid.	(html), (pdf)
27 May 2011	Timeline of Martian Volcanism High-resolution images allow a larger range of crater sizes to date calderas and the last major periods of volcanic activity on Mars.	(html), (pdf)
7 April 2011	Wet, Carbonaceous Asteroids: Altering Minerals, Changing Amino Acids Aqueous alteration in asteroids containing organic compounds leads to formation of hydrous minerals and changes in the mix of amino acids.	(html), (pdf)
31 Jan 2011	Mineral Abundances in Martian Soils Mineral abundances calculated from a trio of datasets reveal mixtures of unrelated igneous and alteration minerals in Martian dark soils.	(html), (pdf)
30 Nov 2010	Supernova Confetti in Meteorites Pre-solar grains carrying anomalous chromium-54 show evidence for formation in a supernova.	(html), (pdf)
30 Sept 2010	Unraveling the Origin of the Lunar Highlands Crust Lunar meteorites contain clasts that may plausibly be samples of post-magma-ocean plutons that helped build the highlands crust.	(html), (pdf)
25 Aug 2010	New View of Gas and Dust in the Solar Nebula The current view holds that gas and dust in the solar nebula began with the same oxygen isotopic composition, then changed by processes in the nebula. A new view suggests that dust and gas had vastly different mixtures of oxygen isotopes in the first place.	(html), (pdf)
1 July 2010	Damp Moon Rising Cosmochemists find more evidence for water inside the Moon, showing that it is not the bone-dry place we thought.	(html), (pdf)
10 June 2010	Formation of Stony-Iron Meteorites in Early Giant Impacts Cosmochemical studies and dynamical models of hit-and-run planetary collisions suggest a new origin for the stony-iron meteorites called pallasites.	(html), (pdf)
12 May 2010	A Younger Age for the Oldest Martian Meteorite New isotopic analyses show that famous Martian meteorite ALH 84001 formed 4.09 billion years ago, not 4.50 billion years ago as originally reported.	(html), (pdf)
30 April 2010	Asteroid, Meteor, Meteorite Detected in space less than a day before hitting Earth, the Almahata Sitta meteorite from asteroid 2008 TC₃ gives clues to the complex evolution of small asteroids.	(html), (pdf)
31 Mar 2010	Dynamics and Chemistry of Planet Construction Planetary compositions allow us to test computer models of planet formation.	(html), (pdf)
17 Feb 2010	How Young is the Lunar Crater Giordano Bruno? High-resolution images are used to determine how recently this crater formed, a mere 832 years ago or over a million years ago.	(html), (pdf)
21 Jan 2010	A Complication in Determining the Precise Age of the Solar System The presence of short-lived isotope Curium-247 in the early Solar System complicates the job of dating the earliest events in the solar nebula.	(html), (pdf)
5 Jan 2010	Violent Adolescent Planet Caught Infrared Handed Infrared telescopic observations may have observed dust from an impact between protoplanets in the disk surrounding young star HD172555.	(html), (pdf)
13 NOV 09	An Even More Precise View of Aluminum-26 in the Solar Nebula New, precise analyses of the short-lived isotope aluminum-26 indicate it was distributed uniformly throughout the early solar system, an important clue to its origin.	(html), (pdf)
26 OCT 09	Kaidun--A Meteorite with Everything but the Kitchen Sink This unique breccia is called a single-stone meteorite collection.	(html), (pdf)
18 SEPT 09	The Growing Diversity of Lunar Basalts A lunar basaltic meteorite adds complexity to the already complicated story of mare basalt volcanism on the Moon.	(html), (pdf)
10 AUG 09	Space Weathering Agent: Solar Wind Bombardment of helium ions on olivine in the laboratory simulates space weathering of asteroids and other airless bodies.	(html), (pdf)
25 JUNE 09	The Complicated Geologic History of Asteroid 4 Vesta Meteorites from asteroid 4 Vesta show that it contains patches of granite-like rock.	(html), (pdf)
8 MAY 09	Mars Crust: Made of Basalt Chemical analyses of rocks on the Martian surface indicate that the Martian crust was built of basalt lava flows not much different from those on Earth.	(html), (pdf)
25 MAR 09	Time to Solidify an Ocean of Magma A small mineral grain places limits on how long it took the lunar magma ocean to solidify.	(html), (pdf)
19 FEB 09	More Evidence for Multiple Meteorite Magmas Cosmochemists show that a pair of meteorites formed in an asteroid that erupted a newly-recognized type of asteroidal magma.	(html), (pdf)
27 JAN 09	The Crazy Mixed-Up Lunar Crust The horizontal and vertical distribution of well-mixed basin ejecta has lunar-wide geochemical ramifications.	(html), (pdf)
14 DEC 08	Wee Rocky Droplets in Comet Dust Tiny flash-melted objects in dust collected from comet Wild 2 were transported from the inner Solar System to the outer reaches where comets formed.	(html), (pdf)
20 NOV 08	Tiny Molten Droplets, Dusty Clouds, and Planet Formation Roughly constant sodium concentration during chondrule crystallization suggests that these molten droplets formed in regions of the solar nebula that were enriched in rocky dust.	(html), (pdf)
22 SEPT 08	The Bone-Dry Moon Might be Damp Cosmochemists have written in stone that the Moon is almost totally devoid of water, but new analyses of volcanic glasses suggest that they need to do some editing.	(html), (pdf)
8 JULY 08	Heating, Cooling, and Cratering: One Asteroid's Complicated Story Cooling rate data indicate that the H-chondrite parent asteroid was deeply cratered as it cooled slowly.	(html), (pdf)
30 MAY 08	Meteorites Found on Mars No surprise that there are meteorites on other planets. Now that we've seen them on Mars, what do we know about them and what does their geochemistry tell us about the environment where they landed?	(html), (pdf)
29 APRIL 08	A Farside Geochemical Window into the Moon Findings show geochemical enhancements in the Dewar region are caused by thorium-rich mare basalt fragments in the regolith.	(html), (pdf)
22 FEB 08	Compositional Balancing Before Moon Formation The identical oxygen isotopic composition of Earth and Moon might be explained by exchange of material between the proto-Earth and the surrounding proto-lunar disk.	(html), (pdf)
19 DEC 07	Chips Off an Old Lava Flow Lunar meteorite Kalahari 009 contains fragments of basalt about 4.35 billion years old, a record-breaking old age for mare basalt.	(html), (pdf)
27 NOV 07	Getting to Know Vesta Scientists are primed with geochemical data from HED meteorites for Dawn's encounter with asteroid 4 Vesta.	(html), (pdf)
30 OCT 07	Did an Impact Make the Mysterious Microscopic Magetite Crystals in ALH84001? Tiny crystals of magnetite in Martian meteorite ALH 84001 might have been made when shock waves decomposed iron carbonate.	(html), (pdf)
17 SEPT 07	Melted Crumbs from Asteroid Vesta Researchers studying some of the rarest of the smallest meteorites call them melted crumbs from asteroid Vesta.	(html), (pdf)
6 JULY 07	The Sun's Crowded Delivery Room Isotopes in meteorites suggest that the Sun formed in a dense cluster of stars.	(html), (pdf)
19 JUNE 07	Oxidants from Pulverized Minerals Laboratory measurements of hydrogen peroxide produced from crushed basaltic minerals immersed in water have important implications for Martian and lunar dust.	(html), (pdf)
18 APRIL 07	When Worlds Really Did Collide Cosmochemical studies and dynamical models of protoplanetary collisions suggest a new origin for iron meteorites.	(html), (pdf)
In April, 2007 we began creating slides to accompany PSRD articles in response to requests from our readers.

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