Space Exploration News – Latest Headlines

Subscribe to our Space Exploration News feed

Comet lander Philae found

The comet lander Philae has been found. The OSIRIS camera on board the Rosetta orbiter took the revealing images of the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. They show the landing craft lying sideways in a crevasse.

Sep 7th, 2016

Detailed age map shows how Milky Way came together

Using colors to identify the approximate ages of more than 130,000 stars in the Milky Way's halo, Notre Dame astronomers have produced the clearest picture yet of how the galaxy formed more than 13.5 billion years ago.

Sep 6th, 2016

First gravitational waves form after 10 million years

If two galaxies collide, the merging of their central black holes triggers gravitational waves, which ripple throughout space. An international research team has now calculated that this occurs around 10 million years after the two galaxies merge - much faster than previously assumed.

Sep 5th, 2016

One trace of dark matter vanishes

A mysterious X-ray signal most likely originates from sulfur ions which capture electrons.

Sep 2nd, 2016

The Genesis Project: New life on exoplanets

A new essay deals with the question if life can be brought to celestial bodies outside our solar system which are not permanently inhabitable?

Aug 31st, 2016

The rise and fall of galaxy formation (w/video)

An international team of astronomers has charted the rise and fall of galaxies over 90 percent of cosmic history. Their work includes some of the most sensitive astronomical measurements made to date.

Aug 30th, 2016

Planet Nine could spell doom for solar system

The solar system could be thrown into disaster when the sun dies if the mysterious 'Planet Nine' exists, according to new research.

Aug 30th, 2016

Milky Way had a blowout bash 6 million years ago

The center of the Milky Way galaxy is currently a quiet place where a supermassive black hole slumbers, only occasionally slurping small sips of hydrogen gas. But it wasn't always this way. A new study shows that 6 million years ago, when the first human ancestors known as hominins walked the Earth, our galaxy's core blazed forth furiously.

Aug 30th, 2016

Astronomers probe peculiar age-defying star

Located more than 12,000 light-years from Earth, the object first stood out as peculiar when it was observed at particular radio frequencies. Several teams of astronomers studied it using ground-based telescopes and concluded that it is an oxygen-rich star about 10 times as massive as the sun. The question was: What kind of star?

Aug 29th, 2016

ALMA finds unexpected trove of gas around larger stars

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) surveyed dozens of young stars and discovered that the larger variety have surprisingly rich reservoirs of carbon monoxide gas in their debris disks. In contrast, the lower-mass, Sun-like stars have debris disks that are virtually gas-free.

Aug 25th, 2016

Earth-like planet near Proxima Centauri

Astronomers discover a celestial body in the habitable zone around our nearest fixed star.

Aug 24th, 2016

What do aliens look like? The clue is in evolution

Speculating about what aliens look like has kept children, film producers and scientists amused for decades. If they exist, will extra terrestrials turn out to look similar to us, or might they take a form beyond our wildest imaginings? The answer to this question really depends on how we think evolution works at the deepest level.