Subscribe to our Space Exploration News feed
One of the great, unanswered questions for space weather scientists is just what creates two gigantic donuts of radiation surrounding Earth, called the Van Allen radiation belts. Recent data from the Van Allen Probes - two nearly identical spacecraft that launched in 2012 - address this question.
Jul 15th, 2014
Read more
NASA has issued an Announcement of Opportunity (AO) for proposals about science instruments that could be carried aboard a future mission to Jupiter's moon Europa. Selected instruments could address fundamental questions about the icy moon and the search for life beyond Earth.
Jul 15th, 2014
Read more
Astronomers analyzing a long-lasting blast of high-energy light observed in 2013 report finding features strikingly similar to those expected from an explosion from the universe's earliest stars. If this interpretation is correct, the outburst validates ideas about a recently identified class of gamma-ray burst and serves as a stand-in for what future observatories may see as the last acts of the first stars.
Jul 11th, 2014
Read more
After a month surfing in and out of the atmosphere of Venus down to just 130 km from the planet's surface, ESA's Venus Express is about to embark on a 15 day climb up to the lofty heights of 460 km.
Jul 11th, 2014
Read more
Earlier this week, three planet hunters came together during a live Google Hangout to discuss the discovery boom, consider what state-of-the-art telescopes can - and can't - tell us about exoplanets, as well as ponder the likelihood of finding evidence of life on another planet.
Jul 11th, 2014
Read more
Meet the seven new dwarf galaxies. Yale University astronomers, using a new type of telescope made by stitching together telephoto lenses, recently discovered seven celestial surprises while probing a nearby spiral galaxy. The previously unseen galaxies may yield important insights into dark matter and galaxy evolution, while possibly signaling the discovery of a new class of objects in space.
Jul 11th, 2014
Read more
A new technique for measuring the age of a star using its spin - gyrochronology - is coming into its own. Today astronomers are presenting the gyrochronological ages of 22 sun-like stars. Before this, only two sun-like stars had measured spins and ages.
Jul 10th, 2014
Read more
The European Science Foundation (ESF) has released a new report on 'technological breakthroughs for scientific progress'. While the sector is known to be a key driver of society-benefiting innovation, both ESF and the European Space Agency are banking on part of its future lying in non-space technologies.
Jul 10th, 2014
Read more
The Hubble Space Telescope has photographed an unusual structure 100,000 light years long, which resembles a corkscrew-shaped string of pearls and winds around the cores of two colliding galaxies.
Jul 10th, 2014
Read more
The discovery of a split-second burst of radio waves using the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico provides important new evidence of mysterious pulses that appear to come from deep in outer space.
Jul 10th, 2014
Read more
As anybody who has started a campfire by rubbing sticks knows, friction generates heat. Now, computer modeling by NASA scientists shows that friction could be the key to survival for some distant Earth-sized planets traveling in dangerous orbits.
Jul 10th, 2014
Read more
Technology that can create thermal maps of asteroids, giving us vital information about how their trajectories might change, is about to undergo trials in space.
Jul 10th, 2014
Read more
Understanding the sun from afar isn't easy. NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft - which orbits Mercury, and so is as close as 28 million miles from the sun versus Earth's 93 million miles - is near enough to the sun to detect solar neutrons that are created in solar flares.
Jul 9th, 2014
Read more
A group of astronomers has been able to follow stardust being made in real time - during the aftermath of a supernova explosion.
Jul 9th, 2014
Read more
For the first time, in response to the public's increased interest in being part of discoveries in astronomy, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) is organizing a worldwide contest to give popular names to selected exoplanets along with their host stars.
Jul 9th, 2014
Read moreResearchers engineered a new technology that can detect very long wavelength infrared light.
Jul 9th, 2014
Read more
In the middle of the 19th century, the massive binary system Eta Carinae underwent an eruption that ejected at least 10 times the sun's mass and made it the second-brightest star in the sky. Now, a team of astronomers has used extensive new observations to create the first high-resolution 3-D model of the expanding cloud produced by this outburst.
Jul 9th, 2014
Read more
New simulations show that Mercury and other unusually metal-rich objects in the solar system may be relics left behind by hit-and-run collisions in the early solar system.
Jul 8th, 2014
Read more