Space Exploration News – Latest Headlines

Alien radioactive element prompts creation rethink

The first-ever discovery of an extraterrestrial radioactive isotope on Earth has scientists rethinking the origins of the elements on our planet.

May 18, 2021 Read more

'Europium stars' in the dwarf galaxy Fornax

A physics research team has discovered the highest ever observed europium content in stars. Europium is the key for understanding the formation of the heavy elements by the fast neutron capture process, the so-called r-process.

May 18, 2021 Read more

Deep oceans dissolve the rocky shell of water planets

High-pressure experiments show that the hidden oceans of water planets selectively leach magnesium from typical rock minerals at conditions of pressures of hundred thousand atmospheres and temperatures above one thousand degrees Celsius.

May 18, 2021 Read more

Supermassive black holes devour gas just like their petite counterparts

Regardless of size, all black holes experience similar accretion cycles, a new study finds.

May 17, 2021 Read more

Charting the expansion history of the universe with supernovae

An international research team analyzed a database of more than 1000 supernova explosions and found that models for the expansion of the Universe best match the data when a new time dependent variation is introduced.

May 14, 2021 Read more

New research reveals hidden processes at work in the hearts of large stars

Astronomers have now measured the internal mixing within an ensemble of massive stars using observations of waves from their deep interiors.

May 13, 2021 Read more

Scientists find molecular patterns that may help identify extraterrestrial life

Upcoming Solar System exploration missions will search for extraterrestrial (ET) life, but ET life may not be like Earth life; a new mass spectrometry analysis technique may allow for process-based ways to find ET life that is compositionally alien.

May 13, 2021 Read more

Scientists invent a method for predicting solar radio flux for two years ahead

Scientists developed a method and software called RESONANCE to predict the solar radio flux activity for 1-24 months ahead. RESONANCE will serve to improve the specification of satellite orbits, re-entry services, modeling of space debris evolution, and collision avoidance maneuvers.

May 12, 2021 Read more

New study identifies five double-sun planets that could support life

Researchers investigated the effects of double-star and giant planets on habitable zones of nine systems observed by the Kepler mission.

May 10, 2021 Read more

In the emptiness of space, Voyager I detects plasma 'hum'

Voyager 1's instruments have detected the constant drone of interstellar gas (plasma waves).

May 10, 2021 Read more

How planets form controls elements essential for life

The prospects for life on a given planet depend not only on where it forms but also how, according to scientists.

May 10, 2021 Read more

Planet formation may start earlier than previously thought

Rings in protoplanetary systems may develop much earlier than in conventional scenarios of planet formation.

May 7, 2021 Read more

Star formation is triggered by cloud-cloud collisions, study finds

Researchers have found that collisions of gas clouds hovering in space bring about the birth of star clusters.

May 7, 2021 Read more

Teamwork in space: Robots pave the way for crewed lunar missions and sustainable space research (w/video)

To survive on the moon, humans need a lot of resources. Transporting them to the earth's satellite by spaceship would be extremely expensive. There is a much cheaper and sustainable solution: special manufacturing plants that can extract and process raw materials directly on site.

May 6, 2021 Read more

Researchers create new lunar map to help guide future exploration missions

The map, along with proposed paths for robotic rovers, provides new details on a scientifically important region of the moon's south pole.

May 4, 2021 Read more

Hubble watches how a giant planet grows

The Hubble Space Telescope is giving astronomers a rare look at a Jupiter-sized, still-forming planet that is feeding off material surrounding a young star.

April 30, 2021 Read more

Small galaxies likely played important role in evolution of the Universe

A new study by astrophysicists shows that high-energy light from small galaxies may have played a key role in the early evolution of the Universe. The research gives insight into how the Universe became reionized, a problem that astronomers have been trying to solve for years.

April 30, 2021 Read more

Octo-Tiger rapidly models stellar collisions

Astrophysicists have developed 'Octo-Tiger', a breakthrough astrophysics code to more efficiently model stellar collisions. The code simulates the evolution of self-gravitating and rotating systems of arbitrary geometry using adaptive mesh refinement and a new method to parallelise the code to achieve superior speeds.

April 29, 2021 Read more