Space Exploration News – Latest Headlines

Phoenix program hopes to repurpose retired satellites (w/video)

Inserting new capabilities into a satellite is no simple task. Doing so as that satellite hurdles through space 22,000 miles above the Earth is a bit more challenging. DARPA's Phoenix program, which hopes to repurpose retired satellites while they remain in orbit, seeks to fundamentally change how space systems could be designed here on earth and then sustained once in space.

January 22, 2013 Read more

Betelgeuse braces for a collision

Multiple arcs are revealed around Betelgeuse, the nearest red supergiant star to Earth, in this new image from ESA's Herschel space observatory. The star and its arc-shaped shields could collide with an intriguing dusty 'wall' in 5000 years.

January 22, 2013 Read more

NASA announces Space Station Science Challenge winners

Students from two schools, one in Iowa and the other in New York, are the winners of the International Space Station (ISS) Science Challenge, NASA announced Friday.

January 22, 2013 Read more

NASA to test Bigelow expandable module on Space Station

NASA announced a newly planned addition to the International Space Station that will use the orbiting laboratory to test expandable space habitat technology. NASA has awarded a $17.8 million contract to Bigelow Aerospace to provide a Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM), which is scheduled to arrive at the space station in 2015 for a two-year technology demonstration.

January 22, 2013 Read more

New evidence indicates auroras occur outside our solar system

University of Leicester planetary scientists have found new evidence suggesting auroras - similar to Earth's Aurora Borealis - occur on bodies outside our solar system.

January 21, 2013 Read more

Martian underground could contain clues to life's origins

Minerals found in the subsurface of Mars, a zone of more than three miles below ground, make for the strongest evidence yet that the red planet may have supported life.

January 20, 2013 Read more

A microquasar makes a giant manatee nebula

A new view of a 20,000-year old supernova remnant demonstrates the upgraded imaging power of the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) and provides more clues to the history of this giant cloud that resembles a beloved endangered species, the Florida Manatee.

January 20, 2013 Read more

Titan gets a dune "makeover"

Titan's siblings must be jealous. While most of Saturn's moons display their ancient faces pockmarked by thousands of craters, Titan - Saturn's largest moon - may look much younger than it really is because its craters are getting erased. Dunes of exotic, hydrocarbon sand are slowly but steadily filling in its craters.

January 18, 2013 Read more

Physicists on the way to describe the inside of neutron stars

Physicists have succeeded in simulating the strong atomic nuclear interactions to enable its calculability while at the same time preserving the typical charac­teristics of a neutron star.

January 18, 2013 Read more

NASA beams Mona Lisa to Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter at the Moon

As part of the first demonstration of laser communication with a satellite at the moon, scientists with NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) beamed an image of the Mona Lisa to the spacecraft from Earth.

January 18, 2013 Read more

A hidden treasure in the Large Magellanic Cloud

Nearly 200 000 light-years from Earth, the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, floats in space, in a long and slow dance around our galaxy. Vast clouds of gas within it slowly collapse to form new stars.

January 17, 2013 Read more

ESA workhorse to power NASA's Orion spacecraft

ESA agreed with NASA today to contribute a driving force to the Orion spacecraft planned for launch in 2017. Ultimately, Orion will carry astronauts further into space than ever before using a module based on Europe's Automated Transfer Vehicle technology.

January 17, 2013 Read more

China to launch 20 spacecrafts in 2013

China plans to launch 20 spacecrafts this year, including the country's third lunar probe Chang'e-3 and manned spacecraft Shenzhou-10, China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) announced Wednesday.

January 17, 2013 Read more

Black holes growing faster than expected

Astronomers from Swinburne University of Technology have discovered how supermassive black holes grow - and it's not what was expected.

January 17, 2013 Read more

NASA'S Webb telescope team completes optical milestone

Engineers working on NASA's James Webb Space Telescope met another milestone recently with they completed performance testing on the observatory's aft-optics subsystem.

January 16, 2013 Read more

ChemCam follows the 'Yellowknife Road' to Martian wet area

Researchers have tracked a trail of minerals that point to the prior presence of water at the Curiosity rover site on Mars.

January 16, 2013 Read more

Light from the darkness

An evocative new image from ESO shows a dark cloud where new stars are forming, along with a cluster of brilliant stars that have already emerged from their dusty stellar nursery.

January 16, 2013 Read more

Students take control of satellites on the International Space Station

200 high-school students participate in MIT's annual Zero Robotics competition.

January 15, 2013 Read more