Although ordinary chondrites are stony meteorites they still contain significant amount of metals (up to 18.6wt%), mainly occurring as FeNi alloy grains. This makes ordinary chondrites and their parent rocks very important in extra-terrestrial metallic resource considerations, crucial for ISRU concept (In Situ Resource Utilization). S-type asteroids both belonging to Near Earth Asteroids...
A group of Polish physicists and mineralogists has been studying meteorites using Mössbauer spectroscopy for over 30 years [1].
Since Fe-57 is the isotope commonly used in Mössbauer spectroscopy, it is not surprising that this method is widely applied in the study of meteorites that often contain iron. For many years, our group has focused on ordinary chondrites. The Mössbauer spectra of...
Modeling the internal structure of self-gravitating solid and liquid bodies presents a challenge, as existing approaches are often limited to either overly simplistic constant-density approximations or more complex numerical equations of state. We present a detailed analysis of a tractable and physically motivated model for perfectly elastic, spherically symmetric self-gravitating bodies in...
Proximal ejecta blankets of very small (<200 m in diameter) impact craters can contain fragments of charcoal (Losiak et al. 2022). Those charcoals can be used to: precisely and accurately date impact structures, determine environmental effects of impacts of small asteroids, and potentially, better understand the energy distribution during formation of very small impact craters or identify...
Meteorites that have impacted the Earth's surface in the past have created impact craters. Most of these craters have not been preserved in a form that allows for their contemporary identification, but some, especially in Central and Northern Europe, have been described and classified as geological structures formed by meteorite impacts. When a celestial body strikes the Earth's surface, it...
BepiColombo is the joint European Space Agency ESA and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency JAXA mission to Mercury, launched in 2018. Of the two orbiters, the Mercury Planetary Orbiter has two infrared spectrometers onboard. Centrum Badań Kosmicznych PAN (CBK PAN) provided the pointing unit to the Mercury Radiometer and Thermal Infrared Spectrometer (MERTIS). In December 2024, MERTIS obtained...
The homogeneity of the chemical and isotopic compositions of the Earth and the Moon facilitates the identification of potential mineral resources present and exploitable on the Moon. The current knowledge on the geological structure of the Earth's natural satellite also allows us to state that due to the greatest geochemical and geophysical activity of the surface layer of the Moon's crust -...
The presentation will introduce a recently proposed approach for analyzing the irregular geometries of lava tubes and assessing their impact on cave stability. It is shown that irregularities can significantly influence predicted collapses and the safety conditions inside the caves. This enables preliminary estimates of lava tube dimensions on the Moon (and other planetary bodies) and allows...
Phosphine (PH3) has emerged as a potential biosignature gas, particularly in high-pressure, CO2-dominated exoplanetary atmospheres analogous to Venus. This research explores the feasibility of detecting trace amounts of phosphine using simulated transmission spectra from petitRADTRANS (pRT). The central research question investigates how varying phosphine mixing ratios influence the...
The TOI-201 system, featuring a young F-type star approximately 870 million years old, has emerged as one of the most intriguing planetary laboratories discovered so far. Our recent studies have unveiled a remarkable planetary architecture, including the detection of TOI-201 c - an additional massive gas giant with a 7.7-year orbital period. This discovery was facilitated by the analysis of...
Understanding star and planet formation in extreme environments is crucial for uncovering the origins of our solar system. While most knowledge comes from nearby, isolated regions such as Taurus and Lupus, over half of all stars and planetary systems form in environments exposed to strong far-ultraviolet (FUV) radiation, emitted by massive OB stars, with energies below the Lyman limit (E <...
The sounding radar operating from the orbiting platforms for studying the surfaces and subsurface of planets began to be applied, systematically, in the early 2000s with the Japanese Selene mission to the moon and MARSIS and SHARAD for Mars. These radars work, by transmitting a low frequency pulse, in the altimetric mode and some SAR processing is implemented on board or on the received data...
The Martian crust shows a magnetic contrast between the northern and southern hemispheres. Data from MGS and MAVEN reveal strong magnetization and E-W anomalies in the southern one whereas weak in both the northern one and within major impact basins. The origin of this magnetization remains uncertain. Exogenic (impacts) or endogenic (degree-1 convection or mantle plume) process could be the...
Just after the Moon, Mars is among the most pioneering research areas, as it constitutes a critical step forward in planetary exploration. Nevertheless, high-resolution insights into Martian magmatic evolution remain limited and largely biased towards large-scale landforms. For decades, the narrative on Martian volcanism emphasized a global decline in explosive volcanism in favor of dominant...
The paper presents the progress made on the concept of a swarm of rovers assisted by a drone for mapping the surface of Mars. The concept we presented a year ago is still being developed and improved. This year's work focused on implementing and integrating a drone built specifically for our project and positioning aspects.
Positioning for Mars exploration is particularly challenging...
Space weathering is a fundamental process that alters the surfaces of airless planetary bodies, modifying their optical, structural and chemical properties, complicating remote compositional interpretation. To support optimized spectral band selection, especially for low-cost CubeSat instruments, the influence of instrumental resolution and irradiation on peak detectability in meteorite...
Citizen science is a form of participation and collaboration that actively involves non-scientists in scientific research. It is used in a wide range of areas, including ecology, medicine, and astronomy. In recent years, citizen science has emerged as a powerful tool in astronomical research, enabling people from all over the world, regardless of their age, nationality, faith or gender, to...
Earth Observation has undergone a significant transformation, progressing from the first temporally consistent satellite archives (e.g. Copernicus) into cloud-native, AI–ready ecosystems that now underpin climate research, disaster response and policy frameworks. Planetary science, driven by renewed lunar exploration, appears to be approaching a similar paradigm shift. The central challenge is...
Rocky exoplanets, defined by their predominantly silicate and metal composition, represent a fascinating frontier in contemporary astrobiology, as their study allows us to explore conditions that could sustain life forms beyond our solar system. Complementary to this, those rocky planets that orbit in the habitable zone, which refers to the region around a star where the temperature allows for...
Asteroid 2024 BX1 was discovered just 3 hours before it entered the Earth's atmosphere, which happened on January 21, 2024. This allowed acquisition of 17 recordings from the fireball stations, on the basis of which, the strewn field was precisely calculated and the heliocentric orbit of this meteoroid was determined. The aphelion distance of this asteroid's orbit (Q=1.838 AU) lies in the...
The development of advanced technologies for lunar exploration, including rovers, drills, and sample collection systems, requires access to reliable regolith simulants. However, the availability of natural lunar regolith simulants is limited, and many existing substitutes do not fully reflect the chemical and mechanical properties of lunar soil. This study focuses on the identification and...
Chondrules are small spherical objects that formed at high temperatures early in the history of the Solar System. The key compositional characteristics of chondrules may be well explained by high gas pressures in their formation environment. However, such high gas pressures are widely considered astrophysically unreasonable. Here, we propose that chondrules were formed via the processing of...
We present new spectroscopic measurement results for two sample dust analogues: charcoal derived from walnut wood and willow wood, respectively. These measurements were performed in our laboratory using a Cary 5000 spectrometer with an integrating sphere. This measurement setup enabled the measurement of hemispherical albedo as a function of wavelength in the range of 200 to 2500 nm. The...
We studied a megachondrule from an unclassified meteorite from the Sahara Desert, acquired in 2010. The meteorite, measures ca. 4 × 5 cm, exhibits a glossy brown desert varnish, and is cut by numerous fractures.
Petrological, mineralogical, and chemical analyses (SEM-EDS), have led to the preliminary classification of the meteorite as an unequilibrated ordinary chondrite (L3, S3, W2/W3)....
This work is an extension of the topic addressed in the article (M.I Błęcka; PSS, 2024) concerning the influence of the mineralogy of the Martian surface on the detectability of trace gases in its atmosphere. Currently, the modelling has been extended to include the presence of dust in the Martian atmosphere. The spectral range of the simulation is wide, from 3.0µm to 20µm, which requires the...
Here we report spatial analysis of a large number of bedform patterns in eastern Noctis Labyrinthus (NL), Mars, which occur preferentially on very large, steep (up to ~30°) slopes, and interpret the features as extensive palaeo-dunefields. We base this aeolian genesis for the features on: i) their frequently oblique orientation to hillslopes, ii) their apparent interaction with topography...
One of the primary objectives of the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) mission was to search for previously undetected trace gases that could be diagnostic of active geology or a biosphere. The first such gas was hydrogen chloride (HCl), detected with the ACS and NOMAD spectrometer suites. The presence of HCl on Mars was expected to be an indication of active magmatic processes. However, HCl was...
About one-third of the Martian surface contains water ice within the shallow ground. Many researchers see the thermodynamics of that ice as crucial for Martian climate history research and as possible source of water during future missions.
Shallow ice affects geomorphology as the ground cemented by the ice in pores turns into a solid rock. In some places exposed scarps show uncovered ice...
The mission was to explore a Mars-like environment in the valley of Tso Kar, one of the highest-altitude salt lakes, located at an elevation of 4,500 metres above sea level. This unique astrobiological area perfectly simulates conditions on the Red Planet. The team's main tasks were six path finder experiments included searching for and collecting samples of extremophilic organisms from the...
On Earth and Mars, aeolian (wind) transport causes sand grains to break down, which can result in mineralogic and textural changes to the sand. The nature of those changes currently represents a knowledge gap on Mars. Filling this knowledge gap could advance capabilities for provenance research that uses mineralogy to identify the sand sources of Martian dune fields. More broadly,...
Aeolian processes, such as accumulation, erosion, and transport, were investigated in the western part of Meridiani Planum. This is an equatorial region of Mars that was explored by the NASA Opportunity Rover of the Mars Exploration Rover mission. This area is also fully covered by high-resolution images taken by the HiRISE and CTX cameras of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission. The...
The surface topography of Mars is well-known but understanding of its subsurface structure is substantially more limited. Given this, identifying correlative relationships between the geomorphology of topographic features and subsurface faults in an analogue setting can potentially be applied to topographic data from Mars to yield insight into structural features and associated processes...
Expansive digital elevation models (DEMs) of surface topography are now available for many terrestrial planetary bodies. However, subsurface data for these bodies, particularly fault information, remains limited. Establishing a predictive relationship between DEM derived surface morphology and subsurface structures, like faults, could yield insight into tectonic and geologic processes on Earth...
Graben and fracture systems are prominent extensional structures found on multiple planetary bodies, though their scale, morphology, and formation mechanisms vary significantly across environments. The formation of these structures is closely linked to magma dyke emplacement and lithospheric flexure in regions such as Cerberus Fossae on Mars, where InSight seismic data indicate ongoing...
Current atmospheric conditions on Mars make it impossible for life forms known on Earth to exist. Scientific research indicates that by artificially enhancing the greenhouse effect, it is possible to change the climate of Mars so that it is similar to conditions on Earth.
Research conducted using energy balance simulations at high spatial and temporal resolution indicates that for a CO$_2$...
The concept of sustainable development has long been considered a central framework for addressing environmental and economic challenges on Earth. Yet, the accelerating progress in space technologies raises an important and controversial question: does the expansion of humanity into space make sustainability obsolete? The prospect of asteroid mining eliminating the scarcity of rare earth...
Understanding magma propagation mechanisms and ascent paths towards the surface is essential in interpreting deformation features such as dyke-induced grabens and intrusive domes at the surface of rocky planetary bodies, and characterizing the underlying volcanic and igneous plumbing systems (VIPS). Forward models reveal dominant mechanisms of magma propagation below the surface. Those forward...
In our study, we compare Martian concretions and some chosen terrestrial analogs. Data of Martian concretions were obtained by the MiniTES spectrometer on the Opportunity rover. Terrestrial analogues include spherules from the Dakota and Navajo formations (Utah, USA) and the Trovants from Romania. These analogs were examined using X-ray (Microprobe and EDS) and microscopic techniques to...
Providing enough water remains a key challenge in the context of terraforming Mars. One interesting method is to redirect small water-rich bodies to hit the surface. While the prevailing focus of dynamical studies has been on Main Belt objects as the source, Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs) represent a more attractive source because of their significantly higher volatile content, including water...
Numerical modelling is essential in planetary sciences to simulate, explore, and understand the magmatic processes that are otherwise inaccessible for direct study. Models often rely on uncertain parameters, mainly due to remotely sensed observations or assumptions, leading to false confidence or uncertain interpretations. Therefore, real, ground-truthed data gathered from the planetary...
In the context of studying the surface of Mars, it is imperative to undertake a thorough examination of the past and present changes to the surface. The analysis of morphological features formed by ancient water flow enables the drawing of conclusions regarding the velocity and duration of the processes that formerly shaped the planet's surface. The execution of studies of this nature...
For ten days, a post-mining heap from the coal mine in Bytom was transformed into an analog space base. This place became a hub of scientific activity as young researchers from the Scientific Club of Geophysics at the University of Warsaw embarked on an innovative project to simulate Martian conditions. The mission, named RAF-Analog Space Mission, aimed to replicate space conditions, test...
In this paper, we develop the terraforming ideas proposed in "Energy Problems of Terraforming Mars" (www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2025/pdf/1858.pdf). We consider terraforming enabling humans to live on the surface of Mars without space suits.
There could be a number of reasons why Earth may become uninhabitable and terraforming Mars would be necessary, for example: (1) the eruptions of a...
On Earth, intrusions of dykes in the shallow crust can induce graben formation. Graben and fracture features are also seen in the Tharsis volcanic province on Mars and are proposed to form through similar mechanisms. ‘Marsquake’ clusters were detected below Cerberus Fossae, one such graben and fracture system, by the InSight mission seismometer between 2019 and 2022. To generate these...
We developed a high-resolution surface energy balance model for Mars using a 4002-cell Goldberg polyhedron. The model accounted for radiation, heat diffusion between cells, CO$_2$ phase changes, subsurface exchange, and atmospheric heat transport. We calibrated parameters against Viking lander data and Mars GCMs, and then applied the model to assess the combined effects of elevated CO$_2$...
