Space Exploration News – Latest Headlines

Kepler finds a very wobbly planet

Imagine living on a planet with seasons so erratic you would hardly know whether to wear Bermuda shorts or a heavy overcoat. That is the situation on a weird, wobbly world found by NASA's planet-hunting Kepler space telescope.

February 4, 2014 Read more

New technique could be used to search space dust for life's ingredients

While the origin of life remains mysterious, scientists are finding more and more evidence that material created in space and delivered to Earth by comet and meteor impacts could have given a boost to the start of life. Some meteorites supply molecules that can be used as building blocks to make certain kinds of larger molecules that are critical for life.

February 4, 2014 Read more

Space flies offer clues about microgravity's impact on astronauts

Fruit flies bred in space are offering scientists a clue as to how astronauts' immune systems may be damaged during prolonged space travel.

January 31, 2014 Read more

Cleaning up space debris with sailing satellites

The gossamer deorbiting system is designed to automatically orient the sail in the direction where maximum drag can be achieved, ensuring quicker deorbiting. Furthermore, the sail is made reflective, which allows it to make use of the solar radiation pressure to manoeuvre; solar sailing, so to speak.

January 31, 2014 Read more

One planet, 2 stars: New research shows how circumbinary planets form

Luke Skywalker's home planet Tatooine would have formed far from its current location in the Star Wars universe, a new University of Bristol study into its real world counterparts, observed by the Kepler space telescope, suggests.

January 31, 2014 Read more

Capturing a fleeting starburst

The MAXI instrument aboard the International Space Station gets a ringside seat as a white dwarf undergoes a spectacular and short-lived nova explosion.

January 31, 2014 Read more

'Rogue' asteroids may be the norm

A new map of the solar system's asteroids shows more diversity than previously thought.

January 30, 2014 Read more

Asteroid diversity points to a 'snow globe' solar system

Our solar system seems like a neat and orderly place, with small, rocky worlds near the sun and big, gaseous worlds farther out, all eight planets following orbital paths unchanged since they formed. However, the true history of the solar system is more riotous. Giant planets migrated in and out, tossing interplanetary flotsam and jetsam far and wide. New clues to this tumultuous past come from the asteroid belt.

January 29, 2014 Read more

NASA selects physical science research proposals for the International Space Station

NASA's Physical Science Research Program will fund seven proposals to conduct physics research using the agency's new microgravity laboratory, which is scheduled to launch to the International Space Station in 2016.

January 29, 2014 Read more

Surface map of a brown dwarf

Brown dwarfs are failed stars which did not have enough mass to ignite nuclear fusion at their core. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy are among the astronomers who have now released the first surface map of such a celestial body.

January 29, 2014 Read more

Hubble helps solve mystery of ultra-compact burned-out galaxies

Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and Europe's Herschel Space Observatory have pieced together the evolutionary sequence of compact elliptical galaxies that erupted and burned out early in the history of the universe.

January 29, 2014 Read more

Comet under attack

Space probes have studied the nuclei of comets from up close, gathered material, and even fired a projectile.

January 28, 2014 Read more

Active supermassive black holes revealed in merging galaxies

A team of astronomers has conducted infrared observations of luminous, gas-rich, merging galaxies with the Subaru Telescope to study active, mass-accreting supermassive black holes (SMBHs). They found that at least one SMBH almost always becomes active and luminous by accreting a large amount of material.

January 28, 2014 Read more

River of hydrogen flowing through space seen with Green Bank Telescope

Using the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope, astronomers have discovered what could be a never-before-seen river of hydrogen flowing through space. This very faint, very tenuous filament of gas is streaming into the nearby galaxy NGC 6946 and may help explain how certain spiral galaxies keep up their steady pace of star formation.

January 27, 2014 Read more

NASA spacecraft take aim at nearby supernova

An exceptionally close stellar explosion discovered on Jan. 21 has become the focus of observatories around and above the globe, including several NASA spacecraft. The blast, designated SN 2014J, occurred in the galaxy M82 and lies only about 12 million light-years away. This makes it the nearest optical supernova in two decades and potentially the closest type Ia supernova to occur during the life of currently operating space missions.

January 27, 2014 Read more

Solving a 30-year-old problem in massive star formation

Astrophysicists have found evidence strongly supporting a solution to a long-standing puzzle about the birth of some of the most massive stars in the universe. Young massive stars shine brightly in the ultraviolet, heating the gas around them, and it has long been a mystery why the hot gas doesn't explode outwards. Now, observations have confirmed predications that as the gas cloud collapses, it forms dense filamentary structures that absorb the star's ultraviolet radiation.

January 27, 2014 Read more

Mars rover finds 'liveable' mud

A team of researchers has found what may once have been the most liveable mud on Mars.

January 27, 2014 Read more

'Space cops' to help control traffic in space

A team of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists are using mini-satellites that work as "space cops" to help control traffic in space.

January 23, 2014 Read more