Space Exploration News – Latest Headlines

Subscribe to our Space Exploration News feed

Observing small animals from space will soon be reality

The ambitious and globally unique ICARUS project receives funding from ROSKOSMOS.

Dec 3rd, 2014

Breakthrough in astroparticle physics

Physicists have developed a novel camera technology which for the first time allows sources of cosmic gamma radiation to be observed without interruption even when the moon is shining brightly.

Dec 3rd, 2014

Strange galaxy perplexes astronomers

With the help of citizen scientists, astronomers have found an important new example of a very rare type of galaxy that may provide valuable insight on galaxy evolution in the early Universe.

Dec 2nd, 2014

Traces of Martian biological activity could be locked inside a meteorite (w/video)

Did Mars ever have life? Does it still? A meteorite from Mars has reignited the old debate. An international team has published a paper, showing that martian life is more probable than previously thought.

Dec 2nd, 2014

Herschel observes Andromeda's past and future stars

Recently, the infrared Herschel Space Observatory, has taken a series of beautiful high-resolution infrared images of Andromeda. It is the first time we can see M31, at these wavelengths, at such a high resolution.

Dec 1st, 2014

Ground-based detection of super-Earth transit paves way to remote sensing of exoplanets

Astronomers have measured the passing of a super-Earth in front of a bright, nearby Sun-like star using a ground-based telescope for the first time. The transit of the exoplanet 55 Cancri e is the shallowest detected from the ground yet. Since detecting a transit is the first step in analyzing a planet's atmosphere, this success bodes well for characterizing the many small planets that upcoming space missions are expected to discover in the next few years.

Dec 1st, 2014

NASA's Van Allen Probes spot an impenetrable barrier in space

Two donuts of seething radiation that surround Earth, called the Van Allen radiation belts, have been found to contain a nearly impenetrable barrier that prevents the fastest, most energetic electrons from reaching Earth.

Nov 26th, 2014

First harvest of research based on the final GOCE gravity model

Just four months after the final data package from the GOCE satellite mission was delivered, researchers are laying out a rich harvest of scientific results, with the promise of more to come.

Nov 26th, 2014

Exo-Earths and the search for life elsewhere: a brief history

The criteria for life on other planets is the focus of the 4th Australian Exoplanet Workshop, hosted by the University of Southern Queensland this week. The first in this series on exoplanets looks at the story so far in the search for life elsewhere in the universe.

Nov 25th, 2014

Gas cloud in the galactic centre

Researchers discover that two clouds belong to the same complex.

Nov 25th, 2014

NASA opens Cube Quest Challenge for largest-ever prize of $5 million

Competitors have a shot at a share of $5 million in prize money and an opportunity to participate in space exploration and technology development, to include a chance at flying their very own CubeSat to the moon and beyond as secondary payload on the first integrated flight of NASA's Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System rocket.

Nov 25th, 2014

It's filamentary: How galaxies evolve in the cosmic web

How do galaxies like our Milky Way form, and just how do they evolve? Are galaxies affected by their surrounding environment? An international team of researchers proposes some answers. The researchers highlight the role of the 'cosmic web' on the evolution of galaxies that took place in the distant universe, a few billion years after the Big Bang.

Nov 21st, 2014

Philae's triple play

A short but significant 'thud' was heard by the Cometary Acoustic Surface Sounding Experiment (CASSE) as Philae made its first touchdown on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The two-second recording from space is the very first of the contact between a man-made object with a comet upon landing.

Nov 21st, 2014

How to estimate the magnetic field of an exoplanet?

Scientists developed a new method which allows to estimate the magnetic field of a distant exoplanet, i.e., a planet, which is located outside the Solar system and orbits a different star.

Nov 20th, 2014

Unravelling the mystery of gamma-ray bursts

A team of scientists hope to trace the origins of gamma-ray bursts with the aid of giant space 'microphones.' Researchers are trying to work out the possible sounds scientists might expect to hear when the ultra-sensitive LIGO and Virgo detectors are switched on in 2015.

Nov 20th, 2014

A jettisoned black hole?

Astronomers have discovered an object in space that might be a black hole catapulted out of a galaxy. Or, according to an alternative interpretation, it might be a giant star that is exploding over an exceptionally long period of several decades. In any case, one thing is certain: This mysterious object is something quite unique, a source of fascination for physicists the world over because of its potential to provide experimental confirmation of the much-discussed gravitational waves predicted by Albert Einstein.

Nov 19th, 2014

Spooky alignment of quasars across billions of light-years

Observations with ESO's Very Large Telescope have revealed alignments over the largest structures ever discovered in the universe. A research team has found that the rotation axes of the central supermassive black holes in a sample of quasars are parallel to each other over distances of billions of light-years. Also found was that the rotation axes of these quasars tend to be aligned with the structures in the cosmic web in which they reside.

Nov 19th, 2014

Physicists suggest new way to detect dark matter

For years physicists have been looking for the universe's elusive dark matter, but so far no one has seen any trace of it. Maybe we are looking in the wrong place? Now physicists from University of Southern Denmark propose a new technique to detect dark matter.

Nov 18th, 2014