Space Exploration News – Latest Headlines

ESA is looking for the best student-built CubeSats to launch into space

They fit in your hand, weigh no more than a bag of sugar, yet fly in space and perform experiments. They are CubeSats, a new generation of miniature satellites. Now, ESA is looking for the best student-built CubeSats to launch into space.

January 30, 2013 Read more

Fossilized conduits suggest water flowed beneath Martian surface

Networks of narrow ridges found in impact craters on Mars appear to be the fossilized remnants of underground cracks through which water once flowed, according to a new analysis by researchers from Brown University.

January 29, 2013 Read more

The tail of Venus

When the solar wind nearly breaks off, our neighbour's ionosphere expands into space.

January 29, 2013 Read more

Universe in a Box: bringing astronomy to the classroom

The UNAWE (Universe Awareness) project is developing "Universe in a Box", a low-cost activity kit to help teachers introduce astronomy to their students. It provides both practical activities and the materials needed.

January 29, 2013 Read more

Satellite visualization Tool for High-Resolution Observation Review (THOR) now a web-based application

Initially only operable from a desktop computer, with the approach outlined in the study, THOR is now accessible online from NASA's Precipitation Processing System website. This allows researchers to remotely examine the 15-year archive of Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite data.

January 29, 2013 Read more

NASA solicits ideas for International Space Station research

NASA wants to know how you can improve the International Space Station as a technology test bed.

January 28, 2013 Read more

Chameleon star baffles astronomers

Pulsars - tiny spinning stars, heavier than the sun and smaller than a city - have puzzled scientists since they were discovered in 1967. Now, new observations by an international team make these bizarre stars even more puzzling.

January 25, 2013 Read more

Red explosions: The secret life of binary stars is revealed

A University of Alberta professor has revealed the workings of a celestial event involving binary stars that produce an explosion so powerful its luminosity ranks close to that of a supernova, an exploding star.

January 24, 2013 Read more

NASA joins ESA's 'Dark Universe' mission

NASA has joined the European Space Agency's (ESA's) Euclid mission, a space telescope designed to investigate the cosmological mysteries of dark matter and dark energy.

January 24, 2013 Read more

Asteroid with active past

While studying a meteorite from Vesta, geoscientists found evidence that planet-like dynamic processes also occurred in the asteroid. Simulations by scientist Gregor Golabek from ETH Zurich confirmed this assumption.

January 24, 2013 Read more

Revolutionary theory of dark matter

The universe abounds with dark matter. Nobody knows what it consists of. Physicists have now launched a very hard mathematical explanation that could solve the mystery once and for all.

January 24, 2013 Read more

The 3D fireworks of a star

In 1901 the star GK Persei gave off a powerful explosion that has not stopped growing and astonishing ever since. Now a team of Spanish and Estonian astronomers has reconstructed the journey of the emitted gas in 3D which, contrary to predictions, has hardly slowed down its speed of up to 1,000 km/s after all this time.

January 24, 2013 Read more

Grad student to build infrared camera for nanosatellite space mission

Michael Veto, a third-year graduate student in the School of Earth and Space Exploration (SESE) at Arizona State University, has been chosen to build an infrared and visible light camera system that will launch on a space satellite.

January 24, 2013 Read more

National Space Society launches "Our Future in Space" Kickstarter campaign (w/video)

The National Space Society (NSS) has just launched a campaign on the popular Kickstarter internet platform for the creation of a cutting-edge film about the ways in which all of humanity benefits from the expansion of space exploration and development.

January 23, 2013 Read more

Sounding rocket flight provides important clues to coronal heating, and points the way to future solar missions

A NASA sounding rocket flight in 2012 captured five minutes of the highest-resolution images ever taken of the Sun's million-degree outer atmosphere, the corona. The new images have provided tantalizing hints of another mechanism that likely contributes to the heating of the solar corona.

January 23, 2013 Read more

Setting the dark on fire

A new image from the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope in Chile shows a beautiful view of clouds of cosmic dust in the region of Orion. While these dense interstellar clouds seem dark and obscured in visible-light observations, APEX's LABOCA camera can detect the heat glow of the dust and reveal the hiding places where new stars are being formed. But one of these dark clouds is not what it seems.

January 23, 2013 Read more

Best ever measurement of how the universe has cooled since the Big bang

Astronomers have put the Big bang theory through a tough new test - by measuring the temperature of the universe when it was half as old as it is now.

January 23, 2013 Read more

U.S. company aims to 'harvest' asteroids

A U.S. company said Tuesday it plans to send a fleet of spacecraft into the solar system to mine asteroids for metals and other materials in the hopes of furthering exploration of the final frontier.

January 22, 2013 Read more