Space Exploration News – Latest Headlines

NASA laser communication system sets record with data transmissions to and from Moon

NASA's Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration (LLCD) has made history using a pulsed laser beam to transmit data over the 239,000 miles between the moon and Earth at a record-breaking download rate of 622 megabits per second (Mbps).

October 23, 2013 Read more

Time is ripe for fire detection satellite

Wildfire detection today is much like it was 200 years ago, relying primarily on humans to spot smoke plumes or flames. UC Berkeley experts in fires, satellites and remote sensing now say that the technology is ripe for a fire-spotting satellite that could snap images of the US West every few seconds to detect fires before they spread with few false alarms. The cost would be a fraction of the country's annual fire-fighting budget.

October 22, 2013 Read more

Big plans for small spacecraft

MIT engineer is designing tiny ion thrusters for the next generation of satellites.

October 22, 2013 Read more

Astrophysics researchers advance explanation for star formation

A newly published paper by three UC San Diego astrophysics researchers for the first time provides an explanation for the origin of three observed correlations between various properties of molecular clouds in the Milky Way galaxy known as Larson's Laws.

October 21, 2013 Read more

Planck satellite on course for safe retirement

In preparation for its final switch-off on 23 October, mission controllers today fired Planck's thrusters to empty its fuel tanks. The burn is one of the final steps to ensure that Planck ends its hugely successful mission in a permanently safe configuration.

October 21, 2013 Read more

Countdown to ESA's billion-star surveyor

ESA's billion-star surveyor Gaia will be launched from Europe's spaceport in Kourou on 20 November to begin a five-year mission to map the stars with unprecedented precision.

October 21, 2013 Read more

Asteroid expert says surveillance is key to survival; planning is key to defense

For the threat of meteor strikes large or small, early detection is key, and evacuation may be the only defense needed within the next 1,000 years, according to an asteroid impact expert.

October 21, 2013 Read more

Gravitational waves 'know' how black holes grow

Supermassive black holes: every large galaxy's got one. But how did they grow so big?

October 18, 2013 Read more

Astronomers discover misaligned planets in distant system

Using data from NASA's Kepler space telescope, an international team of astronomers has discovered a distant planetary system featuring multiple planets orbiting at a severe tilt to their host star.

October 17, 2013 Read more

Astronomers detect gravitational lens at record distance

Astronomers have found the most distant gravitational lens yet - a galaxy that, as predicted by Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, deflects and intensifies the light of an even more distant object. The discovery provides a rare opportunity to directly measure the mass of a distant galaxy.

October 17, 2013 Read more

Curiosity confirms origins of Martian meteorites

Earth's most eminent emissary to Mars has just proven that those rare Martian visitors that sometimes drop in on Earth -- a.k.a. Martian meteorites -- really are from the Red Planet. A key new measurement of Mars' atmosphere by NASA's Curiosity rover provides the most definitive evidence yet of the origins of Mars meteorites while at the same time providing a way to rule out Martian origins of other meteorites.

October 16, 2013 Read more

New survey tools unveil 2 celestial explosions

A team of researchers, including two Carnegie scientists, used a novel astronomical survey software system - the intermediate Palomar Transient Factory - to link a new stripped-envelope supernova, named iPTF13bvn, to the star from which it exploded, which is a first for this type of supernova, called Type Ib. The iPTF team also pinpointed the first afterglow of an explosion called a gamma-ray burst that was found by the Fermi satellite.

October 16, 2013 Read more

Alma gives astronomers a unique glimpse of a black hole's eating habits

A team led by astronomers from Chalmers and Onsala Space Observatory have used the powerful telescope Alma to catch an unexpected glimpse of an extreme place in space: the base of a powerful jet close to a distant, hungry black hole.

October 16, 2013 Read more

How the largest star known is tearing itself apart

An international team of astronomers has observed part of the final death throes of the largest known star in the Universe as it throws off its outer layers. The discovery, by a collaboration of scientists from the UK, Chile, Germany and the USA, is a vital step in understanding how massive stars return enriched material to the interstellar medium which is necessary for forming planetary systems.

October 16, 2013 Read more

Astronomers find clues to decades-long coronal heating mystery

Scientists found evidence that magnetic waves in a polar coronal hole contain enough energy to heat the corona and moreover that they also deposit most of their energy at sufficiently low heights for the heat to spread throughout the corona. The observations help to answer a 70-year-old solar physics conundrum about the unexplained extreme temperature of the Sun's corona - known as the coronal heating problem.

October 16, 2013 Read more

Researchers chosen to develop advanced microelectronic circuits for space program

The University of Arkansas is one of 10 institutions selected by NASA to develop technology that will address technical needs and enable future missions of America's space program.

October 15, 2013 Read more

Martian scars

Ripped apart by tectonic forces, Hebes Chasma and its neighbouring network of canyons bear the scars of the Red Planet's early history.

October 11, 2013 Read more

Watery asteroid discovered in dying star points to habitable exoplanets

Astronomers have found the shattered remains of an asteroid that contained huge amounts of water orbiting an exhausted star, or white dwarf. This suggests that the star GD 61 and its planetary system - located about 150 light years away and at the end of its life - had the potential to contain Earth-like exoplanets, they say.

October 10, 2013 Read more