Space Exploration News – Latest Headlines

Square Kilometre Array: The cosmology engine

Scientists from around the world have joined forces to lay the foundations for an experiment of truly astronomical proportions: putting together the biggest map of the Universe ever made. The experiment will combine signals from hundreds of radio dishes to make cosmic atlas.

January 19, 2015 Read more

HiRISE camera spots long-lost space probe on Mars

On Christmas Day 2003, a kitchen table-size lander descended onto the surface of the red planet on a mission to study the Martian surface and potential clues for life. The probe never called home, and no one knew what happened to it. Until now.

January 16, 2015 Read more

New evidence for anthropic theory that fundamental physics constants underlie life-enabling universe

The theory that an Anthropic Principle guided the physics and evolution of the universe was initially proposed by Brandon Carter; this theory was later debated by Cambridge scholar Stephen Hawking and a widening web of physicists around the world. German scholar Ulf-G Meissner adds to a series of discoveries that support this Anthropic Principle.

January 16, 2015 Read more

Abell 4067 shows collision of two galaxy clusters

The catalogues of celestial objects contain a galaxy cluster called 'Abell 4067'. Recent observations with the XMM-Newton space observatory, however, reveal evidence that this object actually constitutes of the merger of two clusters. The smaller system appears to be losing the greater part of its gas.

January 16, 2015 Read more

Galactic 'hailstorm' in the early universe

Astronomers have looked back nearly 13 billion years, when the Universe was less than 10 percent its present age, to determine how quasars - extremely luminous objects powered by supermassive black holes with the mass of a billion suns - regulate the formation of stars and the build-up of the most massive galaxies.

January 16, 2015 Read more

Planets outside our solar system more hospitable to life than thought

A study by astrophysicists at the University of Toronto suggests that exoplanets are more likely to have liquid water and be more habitable than we thought.

January 15, 2015 Read more

New telescopes to search for planets outside the Solar System

The Next-Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) telescope at the Paranal Observatory, operated by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, has achieved 'first light'.

January 15, 2015 Read more

A twist on planetary origins

New study finds meteorites were byproducts of planetary formation, not building blocks.

January 14, 2015 Read more

Stargazers begin hunt for planets

University of Warwick scientists have begun searching for planets after the unveiling of twelve robotically controlled telescopes.

January 14, 2015 Read more

Photonic booms may help illuminate astronomical secrets

If you sweep a laser pointer across the Moon fast enough, you can create spots that actually move faster than light. Anyone can do it.

January 9, 2015 Read more

Map of mysterious molecules in our galaxy sheds new light on century-old puzzle

By analyzing the light of hundreds of thousands of celestial objects, astronomers from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) have created a unique map of enigmatic molecules in our galaxy that are responsible for puzzling features in the light from stars.

January 9, 2015 Read more

Astronomers use vanishing neutron star to measure space-time warp (w/video)

In an interstellar race against time, astronomers have measured the space-time warp in the gravity of a binary star and determined the mass of a neutron star - just before it vanished from view.

January 8, 2015 Read more

Novel vision of the death of massive stars

An international consortium has published in a single article a compendium of data obtained after the simultaneous research of three supernovas and of their corresponding Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRB). The research enabled contrasting statistically that the supernovas associated with GRB emit greater quantities of nickel compared to those not linked to GRB.

January 8, 2015 Read more

'Assassin' targets supernovae in our neighborhood of the universe

While many astronomical collaborations use powerful telescopes to target individual objects in the distant universe, a new project at is doing something radically different: using small telescopes to study a growing portion of the nearby universe all at once.

January 8, 2015 Read more

Volunteer 'Disk Detectives' top 1 million classifications of possible planetary habitats

A NASA-sponsored website designed to crowdsource analysis of data from the agency's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission has reached an impressive milestone. In less than a year, citizen scientists using DiskDetective.org have logged 1 million classifications of potential debris disks and disks surrounding young stellar objects (YSO). This data will help provide a crucial set of targets for future planet-hunting missions.

January 7, 2015 Read more

'Iron Sun' is not a rock band, but a key to how stars transmit energy

Working at temperatures matching the interior of the sun, researchers at Sandia National Laboratories' Z machine have been able to determine experimentally, for the first time, iron's role in inhibiting energy transmission from the center of the sun to near the edge of its radiative band - the section of the solar interior between the sun's core and outer convection zone.

January 6, 2015 Read more

Milky Way core drives wind at 2 million miles per hour

At a time when our earliest human ancestors had recently mastered walking upright, the heart of our Milky Way galaxy underwent a titanic eruption, driving gases and other material outward at 2 million miles per hour. Now, at least 2 million years later, astronomers are witnessing the aftermath of the explosion: billowing clouds of gas towering about 30,000 light-years above and below the plane of our galaxy.

January 6, 2015 Read more

New analyses of Martian chemical maps suggest water bound to sulfates in soil

New research reveals a spatial association between the presence of sulfur and hydrogen found in martian soil. The work may in turn identify hydrous iron sulfates as key carriers of H2O in bulk martian soil.

January 5, 2015 Read more