Space Exploration News – Latest Headlines

National Space Society launches "Our Future in Space" Kickstarter campaign (w/video)

The National Space Society (NSS) has just launched a campaign on the popular Kickstarter internet platform for the creation of a cutting-edge film about the ways in which all of humanity benefits from the expansion of space exploration and development.

January 23, 2013 Read more

Sounding rocket flight provides important clues to coronal heating, and points the way to future solar missions

A NASA sounding rocket flight in 2012 captured five minutes of the highest-resolution images ever taken of the Sun's million-degree outer atmosphere, the corona. The new images have provided tantalizing hints of another mechanism that likely contributes to the heating of the solar corona.

January 23, 2013 Read more

Setting the dark on fire

A new image from the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope in Chile shows a beautiful view of clouds of cosmic dust in the region of Orion. While these dense interstellar clouds seem dark and obscured in visible-light observations, APEX's LABOCA camera can detect the heat glow of the dust and reveal the hiding places where new stars are being formed. But one of these dark clouds is not what it seems.

January 23, 2013 Read more

Best ever measurement of how the universe has cooled since the Big bang

Astronomers have put the Big bang theory through a tough new test - by measuring the temperature of the universe when it was half as old as it is now.

January 23, 2013 Read more

U.S. company aims to 'harvest' asteroids

A U.S. company said Tuesday it plans to send a fleet of spacecraft into the solar system to mine asteroids for metals and other materials in the hopes of furthering exploration of the final frontier.

January 22, 2013 Read more

Phoenix program hopes to repurpose retired satellites (w/video)

Inserting new capabilities into a satellite is no simple task. Doing so as that satellite hurdles through space 22,000 miles above the Earth is a bit more challenging. DARPA's Phoenix program, which hopes to repurpose retired satellites while they remain in orbit, seeks to fundamentally change how space systems could be designed here on earth and then sustained once in space.

January 22, 2013 Read more

Betelgeuse braces for a collision

Multiple arcs are revealed around Betelgeuse, the nearest red supergiant star to Earth, in this new image from ESA's Herschel space observatory. The star and its arc-shaped shields could collide with an intriguing dusty 'wall' in 5000 years.

January 22, 2013 Read more

NASA announces Space Station Science Challenge winners

Students from two schools, one in Iowa and the other in New York, are the winners of the International Space Station (ISS) Science Challenge, NASA announced Friday.

January 22, 2013 Read more

NASA to test Bigelow expandable module on Space Station

NASA announced a newly planned addition to the International Space Station that will use the orbiting laboratory to test expandable space habitat technology. NASA has awarded a $17.8 million contract to Bigelow Aerospace to provide a Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM), which is scheduled to arrive at the space station in 2015 for a two-year technology demonstration.

January 22, 2013 Read more

New evidence indicates auroras occur outside our solar system

University of Leicester planetary scientists have found new evidence suggesting auroras - similar to Earth's Aurora Borealis - occur on bodies outside our solar system.

January 21, 2013 Read more

Martian underground could contain clues to life's origins

Minerals found in the subsurface of Mars, a zone of more than three miles below ground, make for the strongest evidence yet that the red planet may have supported life.

January 20, 2013 Read more

A microquasar makes a giant manatee nebula

A new view of a 20,000-year old supernova remnant demonstrates the upgraded imaging power of the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) and provides more clues to the history of this giant cloud that resembles a beloved endangered species, the Florida Manatee.

January 20, 2013 Read more

Titan gets a dune "makeover"

Titan's siblings must be jealous. While most of Saturn's moons display their ancient faces pockmarked by thousands of craters, Titan - Saturn's largest moon - may look much younger than it really is because its craters are getting erased. Dunes of exotic, hydrocarbon sand are slowly but steadily filling in its craters.

January 18, 2013 Read more

Physicists on the way to describe the inside of neutron stars

Physicists have succeeded in simulating the strong atomic nuclear interactions to enable its calculability while at the same time preserving the typical charac­teristics of a neutron star.

January 18, 2013 Read more

NASA beams Mona Lisa to Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter at the Moon

As part of the first demonstration of laser communication with a satellite at the moon, scientists with NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) beamed an image of the Mona Lisa to the spacecraft from Earth.

January 18, 2013 Read more

A hidden treasure in the Large Magellanic Cloud

Nearly 200 000 light-years from Earth, the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, floats in space, in a long and slow dance around our galaxy. Vast clouds of gas within it slowly collapse to form new stars.

January 17, 2013 Read more

ESA workhorse to power NASA's Orion spacecraft

ESA agreed with NASA today to contribute a driving force to the Orion spacecraft planned for launch in 2017. Ultimately, Orion will carry astronauts further into space than ever before using a module based on Europe's Automated Transfer Vehicle technology.

January 17, 2013 Read more

China to launch 20 spacecrafts in 2013

China plans to launch 20 spacecrafts this year, including the country's third lunar probe Chang'e-3 and manned spacecraft Shenzhou-10, China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) announced Wednesday.

January 17, 2013 Read more