Space Exploration News – Latest Headlines

Space-time - smooth or grainy?

A new paper reviews research on the grain of space-time.

December 19, 2013 Read more

Eight essential facts about NASA's Deep Space Network

Get to know the Deep Space Network (DSN) - NASA's worldwide radio telescope array that communicates with spacecraft throughout the solar system.

December 19, 2013 Read more

Powerful ancient explosions explain new class of supernovae

Astronomers affiliated with the Supernova Legacy Survey have discovered two of the brightest and most distant supernovae ever recorded, 10 billion light-years away and a hundred times more luminous than a normal supernova.

December 18, 2013 Read more

Europe's billion-star surveyor is ready for launch

Europe's billion-star surveyor, Gaia, is due to be launched into space on Thursday 19 December 2013, where it will embark on its mission to create a highly accurate 3D map of our galaxy.

December 18, 2013 Read more

Hitchhiker's guide to Vesta's hidden attractions

Varied geological formations and a unique landscape: new evaluations show the beauty spots of protoplanet Vesta.

December 18, 2013 Read more

Fungal pathogen shows profound effects from spaceflight

At Arizona State University's Biodesign Institute, Cheryl Nickerson and her team have been investigating the intriguing effects of spaceflight on microbial pathogens.

December 17, 2013 Read more

Hubble watches super star create holiday light show

This festive NASA Hubble Space Telescope image resembles a holiday wreath made of sparkling lights. The bright southern hemisphere star RS Puppis, at the center of the image, is swaddled in a gossamer cocoon of reflective dust illuminated by the glittering star. The super star is ten times more massive than our Sun and 200 times larger.

December 17, 2013 Read more

Astrophysicists to construct the first accurate image of a black hole

Was Einstein right? The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded 14 Million Euros to a team of European astrophysicists to construct the first accurate image of a black hole. The team will test the predictions of current theories of gravity, including Einstein's theory of General Relativity.

December 17, 2013 Read more

China Plans to Launch Chang'e-5 in 2017

China plans to launch lunar probe Chang'e-5 in 2017, according to the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense.

December 17, 2013 Read more

Massive stars mark out Milky Way's 'missing' arms

A 12-year study of massive stars has reaffirmed that our Galaxy has four spiral arms, following years of debate sparked by images taken by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope that only showed two arms.

December 17, 2013 Read more

Swift satellite catches 100,000 new cosmic X-ray sources

Astronomers from University of Leicester provide new insights into cosmic phenomena.

December 16, 2013 Read more

SMA reveals giant star cluster in the making

W49A might be one of the best-kept secrets in our galaxy. This star-forming region shines 100 times brighter than the Orion nebula, but is so obscured by dust that very little visible or infrared light escapes. The Smithsonian's Submillimeter Array has peered through the dusty fog to provide the first clear view of this stellar nursery.

December 16, 2013 Read more

Close-up on impact craters

Scientists are currently trying to gain a better understanding of how craters are formed. Their work involves smashing miniature meteorites into rock under laboratory conditions - and then analyzing the craters using ultrasound tomography.

December 16, 2013 Read more

The manifold path to millisecond pulsars

Two astronomers from Bonn have proposed a new path for the formation of a newly discovered class of millisecond pulsars with similar orbital periods and eccentricities. In the scenario of Paulo Freire and Thomas Tauris, a massive white dwarf star accretes matter and angular momentum from a normal companion star and grows beyond the critical Chandrasekhar mass limit. The new hypothesis makes several testable predictions about this recently discovered sub-class of millisecond pulsars.

December 16, 2013 Read more

Swirls in remnants of Big Bang may hold clues to universe's infancy

South Pole Telescope scientists have detected for the first time a subtle distortion in the oldest light in the universe, which may help reveal secrets about the earliest moments in the universe's formation.

December 14, 2013 Read more

First rock dating experiment performed on Mars

Although researchers have determined the ages of rocks from other planetary bodies, the actual experiments - like analyzing meteorites and moon rocks - have always been done on Earth. Now, for the first time, researchers at Caltech have successfully determined the age of a Martian rock - with experiments performed on Mars. This work could not only help in understanding the geologic history of Mars but also aid in the search for evidence of ancient life there.

December 13, 2013 Read more

Fast radio bursts might come from nearby stars

First discovered in 2007, 'fast radio bursts' continue to defy explanation. These cosmic chirps last for only a thousandth of a second. The characteristics of the radio pulses suggested that they came from galaxies billions of light-years away. However, new work points to a much closer origin - flaring stars within our own galaxy.

December 12, 2013 Read more

Collapse of the universe is closer than ever before

Maybe it happens tomorrow. Maybe in a billion years. Physicists have long predicted that the universe may one day collapse, and that everything in it will be compressed to a small hard ball. New calculations from physicists at the University of Southern Denmark now confirm this prediction - and they also conclude that the risk of a collapse is even greater than previously thought.

December 12, 2013 Read more