Terrestrial Planet

Following an underwater volcano eruption on Saturday, Tonga has suffered significant damage and is blanketed in ash that closed runways and threatens water supplies.

NASA's Mars 2020 mission team has been working methodically and thoroughly, making good progress on understanding the best path forward to remove the uninvited pebbles from Perseverance's bit carousel. Over the previous weekend, and earlier this week, operational sequences were developed and tested to remove these rocky interlopers.

The ongoing volcanic eruption in Tonga began in December 2021, but it wasn't until 5:15pm local time on January 15 2022 that the powerful explosion occurred. It generated an enormous cloud of ash, earthquakes, and tsunamis that reached as far as the distant coastlines of Peru on the other side of the Pacific. Now scientists are even looking for the effects of the eruption in space.

The discovery of more than 4,500 extra-solar planets has created a need for modelling their interior structure and dynamics. As it turns out, iron plays a key role.

Freshwater mussels are dying suddenly and in the thousands, with each mass death event bringing these endangered molluscs closer to extinction. Tragically, these events rarely get noticed.