Space Exploration News – Latest Headlines

Subscribe to our Space Exploration News feed

DARPA issues RFI for robotic space services for satellites

Space community invited to submit ideas to enable a flight demonstration in the next five years and an innovative public-private partnership to jumpstart a new industry.

Sep 6th, 2014

Rosetta-Alice spectrograph obtains first far ultraviolet spectra of a cometary surface

NASA's Alice ultraviolet spectrograph aboard the European Space Agency's Rosetta comet orbiter has delivered its first scientific discoveries. Rosetta, in orbit around comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, is the first spacecraft to study a comet up close.

Sep 5th, 2014

Cosmologists probe beyond the Big Bang

A long tradition of cosmology research has given birth to a vigorous effort by a new generation of cosmologists to understand the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), the thermal radiation left over from the Big Bang.

Sep 4th, 2014

Researcher advances a new model for a cosmological enigma - dark matter

A novel model of dark matter, dubbed 'flavor-mixed multicomponent dark matter'.

Sep 4th, 2014

Researchers discover new clues to determining the solar cycle

Approximately every 11 years, the sun undergoes a complete personality change from quiet and calm to violently active. The height of the sun's activity, known as solar maximum, is a time of numerous sunspots, punctuated with profound eruptions that send radiation and solar particles out into the far reaches of space.

Sep 4th, 2014

Newly identified galactic supercluster is home to the Milky Way

Astronomers have determined that our own Milky Way galaxy is part of a newly identified ginormous supercluster of galaxies, which they have dubbed Laniakea, which means 'immense heaven' in Hawaiian.

Sep 3rd, 2014

Cosmic forecast: Dark clouds will give way to sunshine

Lupus 4, a spider-shaped blob of gas and dust, blots out background stars like a dark cloud on a moonless night in this intriguing new image. Although gloomy for now, dense pockets of material within clouds such as Lupus 4 are where new stars form and where they will later burst into radiant life.

Sep 3rd, 2014

Observing the onset of a magnetic substorm

Magnetic substorms, the disruptions in geomagnetic activity that cause brightening of aurora, may sometimes be driven by a different process than generally thought, a new study shows.

Sep 2nd, 2014

$1.5M software grant to process solar astronomy data on larger scale

Researchers in Georgia State University's new Astroinformatics program have been awarded $1.5 million from the National Science Foundation to develop software tools that can process large sets of solar astronomy data and allow scientists to perform analyses on scales and detail levels that have not been possible.

Sep 2nd, 2014

Why sibling stars look alike: Early, fast mixing in star-birth clouds

Early, fast, turbulent mixing of gas within giant molecular clouds means all stars formed from a single cloud bear the same unique chemical 'tag' or 'DNA fingerprint'. Could such chemical tags help astronomers identify our own Sun's long-lost sibling stars?

Aug 31st, 2014

Mysteries of space dust revealed

The first analysis of space dust collected by a special collector onboard NASA's Stardust mission and sent back to Earth for study in 2006 suggests the tiny specks open a door to studying the origins of the solar system and possibly the origin of life itself.

Aug 29th, 2014

Astrophysicists report radioactive cobalt in supernova explosion

A group of astrophysicists have detected the formation of radioactive cobalt during a supernova explosion, lending credence to a corresponding theory of supernova explosions.

Aug 29th, 2014

Uncloaking the King of the Milky Way: The largest star in our home galaxy's largest stellar nursery

Astronomers have identified the most massive star in our home galaxy's largest stellar nursery, the star-forming region W49. The star, named W49nr1, has a mass between 100 and 180 times the mass of the Sun.

Aug 28th, 2014

Physicists observe the creation of solar energy for the first time ever

For the first time in the history of solar research, scientists have successfully measured solar energy at the instant of creation inside the sun. In the Gran Sasso underground laboratory, physicists of the Borexino Collaboration are for the first time ever directly observing the neutrinos created during the fusion of two hydrogen nuclei and the resultant production of heavy hydrogen.