Space Exploration News – Latest Headlines

Astronomers complete cosmic dust census

An international team of astronomers has completed a benchmark study of more than 300 galaxies, producing the largest census of dust in the local Universe, the Herschel Reference Survey.

March 18, 2014 Read more

Mercury's contraction much greater than thought

New global imaging and topographic data from MESSENGER show that the innermost planet has contracted far more than previous estimates. The results are based on a global study of more than 5,900 geological landforms, such as curving cliff-like scarps and wrinkle ridges, that have resulted from the planet's contraction as Mercury cooled. The findings are key to understanding the planet's thermal, tectonic, and volcanic history, and the structure of its unusually large metallic core.

March 17, 2014 Read more

An experiment recreates the crust of the moon Europa

Water, salts and gases dissolved in the huge ocean that scientists believe could exist below Europa's icy crust can rise to the surface generating the enigmatic geological formations associated to red-tinged materials that can be seen on this Jupiter's satellite.

March 14, 2014 Read more

Reducing debris threat from satellite batteries

A new study by ESA's Clean Space initiative - tasked with reducing the space industry's environmental impacts on both Earth and space - aims to evaluate battery behaviour after a satellite shuts down, assessing the risk of breakup and ensuring full 'passivation'.

March 13, 2014 Read more

The dusty heart of an active galaxy

Astronomers observe a dense disk and a bright funnel at the centre of the Circinus galaxy.

March 13, 2014 Read more

VLT spots largest yellow hypergiant star

ESO's Very Large Telescope has revealed the largest yellow star - and one of the 10 largest stars found so far. This hypergiant has been found to measure more than 1,300 times the diameter of the Sun, and to be part of a double star system, with the second component so close that it is in contact with the main star. Observations spanning over 60 years also indicate that this remarkable object is changing very rapidly.

March 12, 2014 Read more

'Space Odyssey': China's aspiration in future space exploration

In near future, in outer space, Chinese scientists and their international colleagues, perhaps in the company of robots, will seek knowledge in labs on China's future space station.

March 11, 2014 Read more

Some galaxies in the early universe grew up quickly

Most of the galaxies that have been observed from the early days of the universe were young and actively forming stars. Now, an international team of astronomers have discovered galaxies that were already mature and massive in the early days. Fifteen mature galaxies were found at a record-breaking average distance of 12 billion light years, when the universe was just 1.6 billion years old. Their existence at such an early time raises new questions about what forced them to grow up so quickly.

March 11, 2014 Read more

X-ray laser FLASH spies deep into giant gas planets

Using DESY's X-ray laser FLASH, researchers took a sneak peek deep into the lower atmospheric layers of giant gas planets such as Jupiter or Saturn. The observations reveal how liquid hydrogen becomes a plasma, providing information on the material's thermal conductivity and its internal energy exchange - important ingredients for planetary models.

March 11, 2014 Read more

The glory of Venus

A rainbow-like light phenomenon observed on Venus cloud tops helps to identify the components of the planet's acidic cloud cover.

March 11, 2014 Read more

Astronomer maps out Earth's place in the universe among 'Council of Giants'

A new paper maps out bright galaxies within 35-million light-years of the Earth, offering up an expanded picture of what lies beyond our doorstep.

March 11, 2014 Read more

Eleventh MESSENGER planetary data system release is the largest yet

The Planetary Data System (PDS), which archives and distributes data from all of NASA's planetary missions, today released its eleventh batch of data collected by the MESSENGER mission. With this release, images and measurements are now available to the public for the fifth full Mercury solar day of MESSENGER orbital operations.

March 10, 2014 Read more

'Death stars' in Orion blast planets before they even form

The Orion Nebula is home to hundreds of young stars and even younger protostars known as proplyds. Many of these nascent systems will go on to develop planets, while others will have their planet-forming dust and gas blasted away by the fierce ultraviolet radiation emitted by massive O-type stars that lurk nearby.

March 10, 2014 Read more

Astronomers find faint strings of galaxies inside empty space

Australian astronomers have shown galaxies in the vast empty regions of the Universe are actually aligned into delicate strings.

March 10, 2014 Read more

Be an asteroid hunter in NASA's first Asteroid Grand Challenge Contest Series

NASA's Asteroid Data Hunter contest series will offer $35,000 in awards over the next six months to citizen scientists who develop improved algorithms that can be used to identify asteroids.

March 10, 2014 Read more

New Van Allen Probes observations helping to improve space weather models

Using data from NASA's Van Allen Probes, researchers have tested and improved a model to help forecast what's happening in the radiation environment of near-Earth space -- a place seething with fast-moving particles and a space weather system that varies in response to incoming energy and particles from the sun.

March 9, 2014 Read more

NASA's WISE survey finds thousands of new stars, but no 'Planet X'

After searching hundreds of millions of objects across our sky, NASA's Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) has turned up no evidence of the hypothesized celestial body in our solar system commonly dubbed 'Planet X'

March 7, 2014 Read more

A river of plasma, guarding against the sun

Scientists identify a plasma plume that naturally protects the Earth against solar storms.

March 7, 2014 Read more