Space Exploration News – Latest Headlines

Is Europa habitable? Defining scientific goals of a mission to explore Jupiter's moon

Europa, the ice-covered moon of the planet Jupiter, may be able to support life. NASA has commissioned a team of expert scientists to consider the science goals for a landed spacecraft mission to the surface of Europa, and to investigate the composition and geology of its icy shell and the potential for life within its interior ocean.

August 7, 2013 Read more

Quasar observed in 6 separate light reflections

Quasars are active black holes -- primarily from the early universe. Using a special method where you observe light that has been bent by gravity on its way through the universe, a group of physics students from the Niels Bohr Institute have observed a quasar whose light has been deflected and reflected in six separate images. This is the first time a quasar has been observed with so many light reflections.

August 7, 2013 Read more

First hundred thousand years of our Universe

A new analysis of cosmic microwave background radiation data by researchers with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has taken the furthest look back through time yet - 100 years to 300,000 years after the Big Bang - and provided tantalizing new hints of clues as to what might have happened.

August 7, 2013 Read more

The odd couple - two very different gas clouds in the galaxy next door

ESO's Very Large Telescope has captured an intriguing star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud - one of the Milky Way's satellite galaxies. This sharp image reveals two distinctive glowing clouds of gas: Red-hued NGC 2014, and its blue neighbour NGC 2020. While they are very different, they were both sculpted by powerful stellar winds from extremely hot newborn stars that also radiate into the gas, causing it to glow brightly.

August 7, 2013 Read more

The sun's magnetic field is about to flip (w/video)

Something big is about to happen on the sun. According to measurements from NASA-supported observatories, the sun's vast magnetic field is about to flip.

August 6, 2013 Read more

Explosion illuminates invisible galaxy in the dark ages

More than 12 billion years ago a star exploded, glowing so brightly that it outshone its entire galaxy by a million times. This brilliant flash traveled across space for 12.7 billion years to a planet that hadn't even existed at the time of the explosion -- our Earth. By analyzing this light, astronomers learned about a galaxy that was otherwise too small, faint and far away for even the Hubble Space Telescope to see.

August 6, 2013 Read more

New and remarkable details of the sun now available from NJIT's Big Bear Observatory

Researchers at NJIT's Big Bear Solar Observatory in Big Bear, Calif., have obtained new and remarkably detailed photos of the sun with the New Solar Telescope. The photographs reveal never-before-seen details of solar magnetism revealed in photospheric and chromospheric features.

August 6, 2013 Read more

Astronomers image lowest-mass exoplanet around a sun-like star

Using infrared data from the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii, an international team of astronomers has imaged a giant planet around the bright star GJ 504. Several times the mass of Jupiter and similar in size, the new world, dubbed GJ 504b, is the lowest-mass planet ever detected around a star like the sun using direct imaging techniques.

August 5, 2013 Read more

New research aids ability to predict solar storms, protect Earth

Three new solar modeling developments at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) are bringing scientists closer to being able to predict the occurrence and timing of coronal mass ejections from the sun.

August 5, 2013 Read more

Hubble finds 'smoking gun' after gamma-ray burst

Probing the location of a recent short-duration gamma-ray burst in near-infrared light, astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope found the fading fireball produced in the aftermath of the blast. The afterglow reveals for the first time a new kind of stellar blast called a kilonova.

August 3, 2013 Read more

Mission to build world's most advanced telescope reaches major milestone

With the signing last week of a 'master agreement' for the Thirty Meter Telescope - destined to be the most advanced and powerful optical telescope in the world - the University of California and UCLA moved a step closer to peering deeper into the cosmos than ever before.

August 3, 2013 Read more

A cometary graveyard

Astronomers have discovered a graveyard of comets. The researchers describe how some of these objects, inactive for millions of years, have returned to life leading them to name the group the 'Lazarus comets'.

August 2, 2013 Read more

Why galaxies seemingly grow in old age

On average, galaxies that no longer form stars are larger today than they were several billion years ago. However, this has nothing to do with individual galaxies merging with others, as was long thought to be the case, concludes ETH-Zurich professor Marcella Carollo after evaluating data from the Hubble Space Telescope.

August 2, 2013 Read more

Shining light on the early Universe

A predicted experimental test will clarify how light interacts with matter at high energies.

August 2, 2013 Read more

When galaxies switch off

Hubble's COSMOS survey solves 'quenched' galaxy mystery.

August 1, 2013 Read more

NASA technologist makes traveling to hard-to-reach destinations easier

A NASA technologist has developed a fully automated tool that gives mission planners a preliminary set of detailed directions for efficiently steering a spacecraft to hard-to-reach interplanetary destinations, such as Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, and most comets and asteroids.

August 1, 2013 Read more

Saturn moon's mystery plume influenced by tides

Using Cassini data, astronomers have determined that the amount of water vapor and ice erupting from Enceladus depends on tidal forces from Saturn - the same phenomenon that creates tides on Earth.

July 31, 2013 Read more

Laser communication set for Moon misison

An advanced laser system offering vastly faster data speeds is now ready for linking with spacecraft beyond our planet following a series of crucial ground tests. Later this year, ESA's observatory in Spain will use the laser to communicate with a NASA Moon orbiter.

July 30, 2013 Read more