Space Exploration News – Latest Headlines

Saturn's hexagon: an amazing phenomenon

An unusual structure with a hexagonal shape surrounding Saturn's north pole was spotted on the planet for the first time thirty years ago. Nothing similar with such a regular geometry had ever been seen on any planet in the Solar System.

April 8, 2014 Read more

Astronomers make the most precise measurement yet of the expanding universe

Astronomers from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey have used 140,000 distant quasars to measure the expansion rate of the Universe when it was only one-quarter of its present age. This is the best measurement yet of the expansion rate at any epoch in the last 13 billion years.

April 7, 2014 Read more

Tracking the transition of early-universe quark soup to matter-as-we-know-it

New evidence from the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider reveals different kinds of phase changes at different collision energies.

April 4, 2014 Read more

Sentinel-1A - start of a new era in Earth observation

Mapping flood events, observing oil slicks in the oceans, detecting ice distribution in the sea and measuring ground movements with millimetric precision - just some of the tasks of Sentinel-1A, the new flagship in European Earth observation.

April 4, 2014 Read more

Phoenix makes strides in orbital robotics and satellite architecture research (w/video)

Successful initial efforts fuel next steps toward developing technologies that would enable assembly of more flexible, scalable and cost-effective space systems on orbit.

April 3, 2014 Read more

Evidence that Saturn's moon Enceladus harbors a large underground ocean of liquid water

NASA's Cassini spacecraft and Deep Space Network have uncovered evidence Saturn's moon Enceladus harbors a large underground ocean of liquid water, furthering scientific interest in the moon as a potential home to extraterrestrial microbes.

April 3, 2014 Read more

Hubble finds that monster 'El Gordo' galaxy cluster is bigger than thought

The Hubble data show that the cluster is roughly 43 percent more massive than earlier estimates based on X-ray and dynamical studies of the unusual cluster.

April 3, 2014 Read more

Fermi data tantalize with new clues to dark matter

A new study of gamma-ray light from the center of our galaxy makes the strongest case to date that some of this emission may arise from dark matter, an unknown substance making up most of the material universe.

April 3, 2014 Read more

NASA challenge invites students to design exploration systems

College and university students have an opportunity to help design systems for future space habitats and exploration systems through NASA's Exploration Habitat (X-Hab) Academic Innovation Challenge. Applications for the fifth annual challenge will be accepted through April 30.

April 3, 2014 Read more

Researchers find regolith of small asteroids formed by thermal fatigue

The centimeter-sized fragments and smaller particles that make up the regolith - the layer of loose, unconsolidated rock and dust - of small asteroids is formed by temperature cycling that breaks down rock in a process called thermal fatigue, according to a paper published today.

April 2, 2014 Read more

Ethics guidelines for next generation of risky NASA missions

A new Institute of Medicine report says NASA should use an ethics framework to determine if extended or exploratory spaceflights that do not meet current health standards are acceptable.

April 2, 2014 Read more

The tell-tale radiation from metallic asteroids

In the process of evaluating thousands of datasets from the NASA Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) space telescope, planetary researchers at DLR have been tracking metallic asteroids.

April 2, 2014 Read more

Galactic serial killer

A new image from the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile shows two contrasting galaxies: NGC 1316, and its smaller neighbour NGC 1317. These two are quite close to each other in space, but they have very different histories. The small spiral NGC 1317 has led an uneventful life, but NGC 1316 has engulfed several other galaxies in its violent history and shows the battle scars.

April 2, 2014 Read more

Misleading mineral may have resulted in overestimate of water in moon

The amount of water present in the moon may have been overestimated by scientists studying the mineral apatite, researchers have discovered.

April 1, 2014 Read more

Osiris has its target in sight

The scientific imaging system on board ESA's spacecraft Rosetta gets its first glimpse of comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

April 1, 2014 Read more

Study finds astronauts' hearts become more spherical in space

New findings from a study of 12 astronauts show the heart becomes more spherical when exposed to long periods of microgravity in space, a change that could lead to cardiac problems.

March 31, 2014 Read more

'Cosmic barometer' could reveal violent events in universe's past

Scientists have developed a way of reading the universe's 'cosmic barometer' to learn more about ancient violent events in space.

March 31, 2014 Read more

A better ruler in the search for extrasolar planets

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have rejuvenated a technique for finding planets near distant stars. New measurements of light from special lamps could help astronomers find planets hidden in data from more than a decade's worth of extrasolar planet searches, as well as improve telescopes' current capabilities.

March 27, 2014 Read more