Space Exploration News – Latest Headlines

Capturing a fleeting starburst

The MAXI instrument aboard the International Space Station gets a ringside seat as a white dwarf undergoes a spectacular and short-lived nova explosion.

January 31, 2014 Read more

'Rogue' asteroids may be the norm

A new map of the solar system's asteroids shows more diversity than previously thought.

January 30, 2014 Read more

Asteroid diversity points to a 'snow globe' solar system

Our solar system seems like a neat and orderly place, with small, rocky worlds near the sun and big, gaseous worlds farther out, all eight planets following orbital paths unchanged since they formed. However, the true history of the solar system is more riotous. Giant planets migrated in and out, tossing interplanetary flotsam and jetsam far and wide. New clues to this tumultuous past come from the asteroid belt.

January 29, 2014 Read more

NASA selects physical science research proposals for the International Space Station

NASA's Physical Science Research Program will fund seven proposals to conduct physics research using the agency's new microgravity laboratory, which is scheduled to launch to the International Space Station in 2016.

January 29, 2014 Read more

Surface map of a brown dwarf

Brown dwarfs are failed stars which did not have enough mass to ignite nuclear fusion at their core. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy are among the astronomers who have now released the first surface map of such a celestial body.

January 29, 2014 Read more

Hubble helps solve mystery of ultra-compact burned-out galaxies

Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and Europe's Herschel Space Observatory have pieced together the evolutionary sequence of compact elliptical galaxies that erupted and burned out early in the history of the universe.

January 29, 2014 Read more

Comet under attack

Space probes have studied the nuclei of comets from up close, gathered material, and even fired a projectile.

January 28, 2014 Read more

Active supermassive black holes revealed in merging galaxies

A team of astronomers has conducted infrared observations of luminous, gas-rich, merging galaxies with the Subaru Telescope to study active, mass-accreting supermassive black holes (SMBHs). They found that at least one SMBH almost always becomes active and luminous by accreting a large amount of material.

January 28, 2014 Read more

River of hydrogen flowing through space seen with Green Bank Telescope

Using the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope, astronomers have discovered what could be a never-before-seen river of hydrogen flowing through space. This very faint, very tenuous filament of gas is streaming into the nearby galaxy NGC 6946 and may help explain how certain spiral galaxies keep up their steady pace of star formation.

January 27, 2014 Read more

NASA spacecraft take aim at nearby supernova

An exceptionally close stellar explosion discovered on Jan. 21 has become the focus of observatories around and above the globe, including several NASA spacecraft. The blast, designated SN 2014J, occurred in the galaxy M82 and lies only about 12 million light-years away. This makes it the nearest optical supernova in two decades and potentially the closest type Ia supernova to occur during the life of currently operating space missions.

January 27, 2014 Read more

Solving a 30-year-old problem in massive star formation

Astrophysicists have found evidence strongly supporting a solution to a long-standing puzzle about the birth of some of the most massive stars in the universe. Young massive stars shine brightly in the ultraviolet, heating the gas around them, and it has long been a mystery why the hot gas doesn't explode outwards. Now, observations have confirmed predications that as the gas cloud collapses, it forms dense filamentary structures that absorb the star's ultraviolet radiation.

January 27, 2014 Read more

Mars rover finds 'liveable' mud

A team of researchers has found what may once have been the most liveable mud on Mars.

January 27, 2014 Read more

'Space cops' to help control traffic in space

A team of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists are using mini-satellites that work as "space cops" to help control traffic in space.

January 23, 2014 Read more

Galaxies on FIRE: Star feedback results in less massive galaxies

For decades, astrophysicists have encountered a contradiction: although many galactic-wind models - simulations of how matter is distributed in our universe - predict that most matter exists in stars at the center of galaxies, in actuality these stars account for less than 10 percent of the matter in the universe. New simulations offer insight into this mismatch between the models and reality: energy released by individual stars can have a substantial effect on where matter ends up.

January 23, 2014 Read more

Herschel telescope detects water on dwarf planet

Scientists using the Herschel space observatory have made the first definitive detection of water vapor on the largest and roundest object in the asteroid belt, Ceres.

January 22, 2014 Read more

Rosetta's eyes

The development and construction of the OSIRIS onboard camera system.

January 22, 2014 Read more

Sneak preview of Survey Telescope treasure trove

The VLT Survey Telescope (VST) at ESO's Paranal Observatory in Chile has captured this richly detailed new image of the Lagoon Nebula. This giant cloud of gas and dust is creating intensely bright young stars, and is home to young stellar clusters. This image is a tiny part of just one of eleven public surveys of the sky now in progress using ESO telescopes. Together these are providing a vast legacy of publicly available data for the global astronomical community.

January 22, 2014 Read more

ESA/ESO collaboration successfully tracks its first potentially threatening Near-Earth Object

The first Near-Earth Object (NEO) recovery campaign has been successfully carried out by a new collaboration between the European Space Agency (ESA) and ESO. Up to now the asteroid 2009 FD had been ranked among the top five objects in a list of the most dangerous objects, but new observations with ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) have now shown that it is far less likely to hit the Earth than had been feared.

January 21, 2014 Read more