Until now, researchers have found no evidence of global tectonic activity on planets outside our solar system. Under the leadership of the University of Bern and the National Center of Competence in Research NCCR PlanetS, scientists have now found that the material inside planet LHS 3844b flows from one hemisphere to the other and could be responsible for numerous volcanic eruptions on one side of the planet.

NASA's Artemis program will establish a sustainable presence at the Moon as we prepare to venture on to Mars. To empower the success of these missions, terrestrial engineers must furnish astronauts with the tools they need to make new discoveries on their journeys.

To ensure that these instruments will work in the vacuum of space or on the rocky plains of a distant celestial body, NASA must test them in analog environments that mimic these settings. Examples of these environments include thermal vacuum chambers—where engineers can subject tools to extreme temperatures and pressures—or the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, an enormous swimming pool at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston—where astronauts can practice for spacewalks on the International Space Station.

These testing environments aren't always custom-built to match their counterparts in space. Engineers and scientists also take their instruments into the field, finding places on Earth analogous to areas of scientific interest on the lunar surface or the Red Planet.

New research from Royal Holloway, has found water and organic matter on the surface of an asteroid sample returned from the inner Solar System. This is the first time that organic materials, which could have provided chemical precursors for the origin of life on Earth, have been found on an asteroid.

The single grain sample was returned to Earth from asteroid Itokawa by JAXA's first Hayabusa mission in 2010. The sample shows that water and organic matter that originate from the asteroid itself have evolved chemically through time.

The research paper suggests that Itokawa has been constantly evolving over billions of years by incorporating water and organic materials from foreign extra-terrestrial material, just like the Earth. In the past, the asteroid will have gone through extreme heating, dehydration and shattering due to catastrophic impact. However, despite this, the asteroid came back together from the shattered fragments and rehydrated itself with water that was delivered via the in fall of dust or carbon-rich meteorites.