Space Exploration News – Latest Headlines

Making light work of orbit and attitude control

Microsatellites have to be very light - every gram counts. The same applies to the gyroscopes used to sense the satellite's orientation when in orbit. A novel prototype is seven times lighter and significantly smaller than earlier systems.

April 30, 2014 Read more

Search for extraterrestrial life more difficult than thought

A new study suggests the search for life on planets outside our solar system may be more difficult than previously thought. The study finds the method used to detect biosignatures on such planets, known as exoplanets, can produce a false positive result.

April 29, 2014 Read more

Experiment on Earth demonstrates effect observed in space

Streaming jets of high-speed matter produce some of the stunning objects seen in space. Astronomers have seen them shooting out of young stars just being formed, X-ray binary stars and supermassive black holes at the centers of large galaxies. Theoretical explanations for what causes those beam-like jets have been around for years, but now an experiment by French and American researchers using extremely high-powered lasers offers experimental verification of one proposed mechanism for creating them.

April 29, 2014 Read more

Star is discovered to be a close neighbor of the Sun and the coldest of its kind

A 'brown dwarf' star that appears to be the coldest of its kind has been discovered by a Penn State University astronomer using NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer and Spitzer Space Telescopes. Images from the space telescopes also pinpointed the object's distance at 7.2 light-years away, making it the fourth closest system to our Sun.

April 26, 2014 Read more

Move over exoplanets, exomoons may harbour life too

Although more than 1,000 exoplanets have been discovered since the first one was found in 1995, only a handful of those are thought to be habitable, at least by life as we know it. New research shows that exomoons, too, could provide habitable environments.

April 25, 2014 Read more

Traces of recent water on Mars

New research has shown that there was liquid water on Mars as recently as 200,000 years ago.

April 25, 2014 Read more

Astronomical forensics uncover planetary disks in hubble archive

This is an astronomical forensics story of revisiting earlier data with new image processing techniques - and of some tenacious astronomers.

April 24, 2014 Read more

Cosmic illusion revealed

A team of researchers has announced the discovery of a galaxy that magnified a background, Type Ia supernova thirty-fold through gravitational lensing. This first example of strong gravitational lensing of a supernova confirms the team's previous explanation for the unusual properties of this supernova.

April 24, 2014 Read more

Cracker-sized satellites launch into orbit

After years of planning and several last-minute delays, about 100 Cornell-developed mini satellites demonstrating space flight at its simplest have launched into orbit and are now circling Earth.

April 24, 2014 Read more

A dance of black holes

Unique pair of supermassive black holes in an ordinary galaxy discovered by XMM-Newton.

April 24, 2014 Read more

Asteroids made easy

A team at Arizona State University is building its own 'patch of asteroid' inside of a small spinning satellite that will allow researchers to conduct experiments with the rocks in space.

April 23, 2014 Read more

Physicists consider implications of recent revelations about the universe's first light

Recent evidence that the universe expanded from microscopic to cosmic size in a mere instant brings with it important implications. During a live Google Hangout, leading astrophysicists from the University of Chicago and Stanford University discussed what this potential 'crack in the cosmic egg' means for our understanding of the universe.

April 23, 2014 Read more

Liquid spacetime

What if spacetime were a kind of fluid? This is the question tackled by theoretical physicists working on quantum gravity by creating models attempting to reconcile gravity and quantum mechanics.

April 23, 2014 Read more

'Upside-down planet' reveals new method for studying binary star systems

What looked at first like a sort of upside-down planet has instead revealed a new method for studying binary star systems, discovered by a University of Washington student astronomer.

April 22, 2014 Read more

Mysteries of a nearby planetary system's dynamics now are solved

Mysteries of one of the most fascinating nearby planetary systems now have been solved. The study presents the first viable model for the planetary system orbiting one the first stars discovered to have planets.

April 22, 2014 Read more

Vitamin B3 might have been made in space, delivered to Earth by meteorites

Ancient Earth might have had an extraterrestrial supply of vitamin B3 delivered by carbon-rich meteorites, according to a new analysis by researchers. The result supports a theory that the origin of life may have been assisted by a supply of key molecules created in space and brought to Earth by comet and meteor impacts.

April 17, 2014 Read more

Bright points in sun's atmosphere mark patterns deep in its interior

Like a balloon bobbing along in the air while tied to a child's hand, a tracer has been found in the sun's atmosphere to help track the flow of material coursing underneath the sun's surface.

April 17, 2014 Read more

Kepler telescope discovers first Earth-size planet in 'habitable zone'

Using NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, astronomers have discovered the first Earth-size planet orbiting a star in the 'habitable zone' - the range of distance from a star where liquid water might pool on the surface of an orbiting planet. The discovery of Kepler-186f confirms that planets the size of Earth exist in the habitable zone of stars other than our sun.

April 17, 2014 Read more