Orion's hidden fiery ribbon
A dramatic new image of cosmic clouds in the constellation of Orion reveals what seems to be a fiery ribbon in the sky.
May 15th, 2013
Read more
Space Exploration News – Latest Headlines
Subscribe to our Space Exploration News feed
New method of finding planets scores its first discovery
Detecting alien worlds presents a significant challenge since they are small, faint, and close to their stars. The two most prolific techniques for finding exoplanets are radial velocity (looking for wobbling stars) and transits (looking for dimming stars). A team at Tel Aviv University and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has just discovered an exoplanet using a new method that relies on Einstein's special theory of relativity.
May 13th, 2013
Read moreAfter Chelyabinsk: European experts assess asteroid options
This week, Deimos Space, an industrial partner working for ESA on SSA, has invited top researchers from universities, research institutes, national space agencies and industry in Europe and the USA to discuss the state of the art in near-Earth objects impact effects and threat mitigation.
May 13th, 2013
Read moreWater on moon, Earth have a common source
Water inside the Moon's mantle came from primitive meteorites, new research finds, the same source thought to have supplied most of the water on Earth. The findings raise new questions about the process that formed the Moon.
May 9th, 2013
Read moreHubble space telescope finds dead stars 'polluted' with planet debris
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has found the building blocks for Earth-sized planets in an unlikely place-- the atmospheres of a pair of burned-out stars called white dwarfs.
May 9th, 2013
Read moreExotic atoms hold clues to unsolved physics puzzle at the dawn of the universe
An international team of physicists has found the first direct evidence of pear shaped nuclei in exotic atoms.
May 8th, 2013
Read moreAstronomers discover surprising clutch of hydrogen clouds lurking among our galactic neighbors
In a dark, starless patch of intergalactic space, astronomers have discovered a never-before-seen cluster of hydrogen clouds strewn between two nearby galaxies, Andromeda (M31) and Triangulum (M33). The researchers speculate that these rarefied blobs of gas condensed out of a vast and as-yet undetected reservoir of hot, ionized gas, which could have accompanied an otherwise invisible band of dark matter.
May 8th, 2013
Read more...and now for the weather on Mars
In the north of the red planet, snowfalls occur with great regularity and can be predicted quite accurately.
May 8th, 2013
Read moreFirst biological evidence of a supernova
In fossil remnants of iron-loving bacteria, researchers of the Cluster of Excellence Origin and Structure of the Universe at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM), found a radioactive iron isotope that they trace back to a supernova in our cosmic neighborhood. This is the first proven biological signature of a starburst on our earth. The age determination of the deep-drill core from the Pacific Ocean showed that the supernova must have occurred about 2.2 million years ago, roughly around the time when the modern human developed.
May 8th, 2013
Read moreNASA will fly a space mission using a revolutionary 'green' spacecraft propellant
In 2015, NASA, for the first time, will fly a space mission utilizing a radically different propellant - one which has reduced toxicity and is environmentally benign.
May 7th, 2013
Read moreHerschel finds hot gas on the menu for Milky Way's black hole
ESA's Herschel space observatory has made detailed observations of surprisingly hot molecular gas that may be orbiting or falling towards the supermassive black hole lurking at the centre of our Milky Way galaxy.
May 7th, 2013
Read moreALMA Compact Array completed and named after Japanese astronomer
The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) has reached another milestone with the delivery of the last antenna forming the Atacama Compact Array (ACA) to the ALMA high site. The ACA is a subset of 16 closely separated antennas that will greatly improve ALMA's ability to study celestial objects with a large angular size, such as molecular clouds and nearby galaxies.
May 7th, 2013
Read moreNew analysis suggests wind, not water, formed mound on Mars
Researchers suggest that Mars' roughly 3.5-mile high Mount Sharp most likely emerged as strong winds carried dust and sand into Gale Crater where the mound sits. If correct, the research could dilute expectations that the mound is the remnant of a massive lake, which would have important implications for understanding Mars' past habitability.
May 6th, 2013
Read moreNASA's Fermi, Swift see 'shockingly bright' burst
A record-setting blast of gamma rays from a dying star in a distant galaxy has wowed astronomers around the world. The eruption, which is classified as a gamma-ray burst, or GRB, and designated GRB 130427A, produced the highest-energy light ever detected from such an event.
May 5th, 2013
Read moreBirth of a black hole
A new kind of cosmic flash may reveal something never seen before: the birth of a black hole.
May 5th, 2013
Read moreNASA rover prototype set to explore Greenland ice sheet
NASA's newest scientific rover is set for testing May 3 through June 8 in the highest part of Greenland.
May 3rd, 2013
Read moreLandslides and lava flows at Olympus Mons on Mars
Giant landslides, lava flows and tectonic forces are behind this dynamic scene captured recently by ESA's Mars Express of a region scarred by the Solar System's largest volcano, Olympus Mons.
May 3rd, 2013
Read moreTelling time on Saturn
A University of Iowa undergraduate student has discovered that a process occurring in Saturn's magnetosphere is linked to the planet's seasons and changes with them, a finding that helps clarify the length of a Saturn day and could alter our understanding of the Earth's magnetosphere.
May 3rd, 2013
Read more