A comparison of Arecibo Observatory radar images of Venus from 1988 and 2012. Via Ed Rivera-Valentín.

The Air out There: Astronomers Aim to Find Atmospheres of Alien Earths - Scientific American
https://www.scientificamerican.com/...out-there-astronomers-aim-to-find-atmospheres-of-alien-earths/

Is our nearest neighboring exoplanet, Proxima b, an "Earth next door," or is it a lifeless rock?

Remotely sniffing the air of these tantalizing worlds is no easy task, and is unlikely to occur sooner than the end of this decade, if not well into the next.
The first observations could be made by NASA’s infrared James Webb Space Telescope, launching in 2018, followed in the mid-2020s by a new generation of ground-
based “Extremely Large Telescopes” with 30-meter mirrors. However, the payoff could be immense: In a forthcoming paper submitted to The Astrophysical Journal,
the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics astronomer Caroline Morley and colleagues conclude that with a total investment of as little as a week of
observing time Webb could conceivably deliver statistically significant detections of Earth-like atmospheric conditions upon a handful of small planets transiting
nearby red dwarf stars. Or, of course, Webb could find instead that those worlds are airless rocks. Whether such investments will happen at all is far from certain:
With a nominal lifetime of only five years and astronomers worldwide clamoring to use it, the telescope is destined to become the most oversubscribed and in-demand
scientific instrument humans have ever built.

In the meantime some researchers are focusing on ways to use Webb to simply detect an atmosphere—or rule one out—upon the closest potentially life-friendly red-dwarf
world. Find that Proxima b has managed to keep an appreciable atmosphere in spite of the barrage of physical insults from its stellar host, and you have taken a big
step toward showing the universe is filled with biologically promising red-dwarf worlds. Finding it has no atmosphere could, by contrast, bolster the case that red
dwarfs are by and large dead-ends in the search for alien life.

“It may sound arrogant, but using Webb to prove that Proxima b has an atmosphere would be one of the biggest scientific achievements it could make,” says Ignas
Snellen, an astronomer at the University of Leiden. “If Webb does that, I think the project would have to be considered a success, no matter what else it does.”

VIRGO:

NASA and ESA Spacecraft Track a Solar Storm Through Space
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6N8WZvZCQ7E


https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/nasa-esa-spacecraft-track-solar-storm-through-space

https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/jpl/pia21341/cloudy-waves-false-color

This false color view is centered on 46 degrees north latitude on Saturn. The images were taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on May 18,
2017 using a combination of spectral filters which preferentially admit wavelengths of near-infrared light. The image filter centered at 727 nanometers was used
for red in this image; the filter centered at 750 nanometers was used for blue. (The green color channel was simulated using an average of the two filters.)

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/nasa-studies-cubesat-mission-to-solve-venusian-mystery

Venus looks bland and featureless in visible light, but change the filter to ultraviolet, and Earth’s twin suddenly looks like a different
planet. Dark and light areas stripe the sphere, indicating that something is absorbing ultraviolet wavelengths in the planet’s cloud tops.

A team of scientists and engineers working at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, has received funding from the agency’s
Planetary Science Deep Space SmallSat Studies, or PSDS3, program to advance a CubeSat mission concept revealing the nature of this mysterious
absorber situated within the planet’s uppermost cloud layer.

Called the CubeSat UV Experiment, or CUVE, the mission would investigate Venus’ atmosphere using ultraviolet-sensitive instruments and a novel,
carbon-nanotube light-gathering mirror.

Přesně za měsíc Cassini zanikne...

http://greenbankobservatory.org/lunar_radar/

Researchers from the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum are using radio telescopes at the Arecibo Observatory and Green Bank Observatory to map the Moon
with radar. The radar signals, transmitted from the Arecibo telescope and received at the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope, can probe many meters below the surface
of the Moon, just like ground-piercing radar on Earth. They reveal Lunar structures that can’t be seen in optical images because they’re hidden from view under the layer
of dust and rubble that covers the Moon’s surface. The scientists are searching for unseen structures of Lunar geology such as lava flow complexes and buried craters.

This is a radar view of the Moon’s southeastern highlands, showing the densely cratered surface formed as the result of more than 4 billion years of meteorite impacts.
The radar can distinguish the age of some craters. Younger impact craters have enhanced radar return showing bright floors and surrounding areas due to rocky material
that has not yet been worn away by very small meteorites.