Space Exploration News – Latest Headlines

Strange radio waves have emerged from the direction of the galactic centre

Astronomers have discovered unusual signals coming from the direction of the Milky Way's centre. The radio waves fit no currently understood pattern of variable radio source and could suggest a new class of stellar object.

October 12, 2021 Read more

Brain damage from long stays in space

Spending a long time in space appears to cause brain damage. This is shown by a study of five Russian cosmonauts who had stayed on the International Space Station (ISS).

October 12, 2021 Read more

Rover images confirm Jezero crater is an ancient Martian lake

The findings include signs of flash flooding that carried huge boulders downstream into the lakebed.

October 11, 2021 Read more

'Double' galaxy mystifies Hubble astronomers

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope uncovered what appears to be a pair of identical objects that look so weird it took astronomers several years to determine what they are.

October 7, 2021 Read more

An X-ray view of carbon: New measurement method promises spectacular insights into the interior of planets

At the heart of planets, extreme states are to be found: temperatures of thousands of degrees, pressures a million times greater than atmospheric pressure. They can therefore only be explored directly to a limited extent - which is why the expert community is trying to use sophisticated experiments to recreate equivalent extreme conditions.

October 5, 2021 Read more

Extreme exoplanet even more exotic than originally thought

Considered an ultra-hot Jupiter - a place where iron gets vaporized, condenses on the night side and then falls from the sky like rain - the fiery, inferno-like WASP-76b exoplanet may be even more sizzling than scientists had realized.

October 5, 2021 Read more

'Planet confusion' could slow Earth-like exoplanet exploration

When it comes to directly imaging Earth-like exoplanets orbiting faraway stars, seeing isn't always believing. A new study finds that next-generation telescopes used to see exoplanets could confuse Earth-like planets with other types of planets in the same solar system.

September 30, 2021 Read more

Bombardment of planets in the early solar system

Studies of the asteroid Vesta provide new findings on the formation of Earth-like planets.

September 30, 2021 Read more

Are pulsars the source of galactic cosmic rays?

A new project is investigating the role pulsars play in creating galactic, high-energy cosmic rays.

September 29, 2021 Read more

This is what it looks like when a black hole snacks on a star

Astronomers documented a fatal encounter between an unlucky star and an intermediate-mass black hole.

September 28, 2021 Read more

Hubble finds early, massive galaxies running on empty

When the universe was about 3 billion years old, just 20% of its current age, it experienced the most prolific period of star birth in its history. But when astronomers gazed toward cosmic objects in this period, they found something odd: six early, massive, 'dead' galaxies that had run out of the cold hydrogen gas needed to make stars.

September 22, 2021 Read more

How many satellites are orbiting Earth?

The idea that 'space is getting crowded' has been around for a few years now, but just how crowded is it? And how crowded is it going to get?

September 17, 2021 Read more

Burning space mystery solved as researchers confirm origins of 'empty sky' gamma-rays

Star-forming galaxies are responsible for creating gamma-rays that until now had not been associated with a known origin. Gamma rays are one of the most energetic forms of light in the universe, and Aussie researchers say they have been able to pinpoint how they form.

September 16, 2021 Read more

Scientists say it's possible we've detected dark energy

Dark energy, the mysterious force that causes the universe to accelerate, may have been responsible for unexpected results from the XENON1T experiment, deep below Italy's Apennine Mountains.

September 15, 2021 Read more

ALMA reveals carbon-rich, organic birth environments of planets

Scientists connect the dots between where planets form and what they're made of.

September 15, 2021 Read more

Affordable housing in outer space: Scientists develop cosmic concrete from space dust and astronaut blood

Transporting a single brick to Mars can cost more than a million dollars - making the future construction of a Martian colony seem prohibitively expensive. Scientists have now developed a way to potentially overcome this problem, by creating a concrete-like material made of extra-terrestrial dust along with the blood, sweat and tears of astronauts.

September 14, 2021 Read more

Researchers enlist robot swarms to mine lunar resources

Aerospace and mining engineers are mapping out a plan for harvesting the moon's resources using autonomous robot swarms and new excavation techniques.

September 10, 2021 Read more

Largest virtual universe free for anyone to explore

An international team of researchers has generated an entire virtual universe, and made it freely available on the cloud to everyone. Uchuu (meaning 'Outer Space' in Japanese) is the largest and most realistic simulation of the Universe to date.

September 10, 2021 Read more