Space Exploration News – Latest Headlines

Astronomers discover a new type of freak stars covered in helium burning ashes

While normal stars have surfaces composed of hydrogen and helium, the newly discovered stars have their surfaces covered with carbon and oxygen, the ashes of He-burning - a very exotic composition for a star. The situation becomes more puzzling because the new stars have temperatures and radii that indicate they are still burning helium in their cores.

April 8, 2022 Read more

10 new gravitational waves found in LIGO-Virgo's O3a data

Astrophysicists re-examined LIGO-Virgo's O3a data and found 10 additional black hole mergers, all outside the detection threshold of the original analysis. The new mergers hint at exotic astrophysical scenarios that, for now, are only possible to study using gravitational wave astronomy.

April 8, 2022 Read more

The hunt for the gravitational wave background

Scientists show that using gamma rays instead of radio waves yields a clearer view to the pulsars and provides an independent and complementary way to detect gravitational waves.

April 7, 2022 Read more

Astronomers detect galactic space laser

The record-breaking find is the most distant megamaser of its kind ever detected, at about five billion light years from Earth.

April 7, 2022 Read more

Astronomers have spotted the farthest galaxy ever

Named HD1, the galaxy candidate is some 13.5 billion light-years away and scientists have begun to speculate exactly what the galaxy is.

April 7, 2022 Read more

Hubble probes extreme weather on ultra-hot Jupiters

In two new papers, teams of Hubble astronomers are reporting on bizarre weather conditions on these sizzling worlds. It's raining vaporized rock on one planet, and another one has its upper atmosphere getting hotter rather than cooler because it is being 'sunburned' by intense ultraviolet (UV) radiation from its star.

April 6, 2022 Read more

Scientists connect the dots between Galilean moon, auroral emissions on Jupiter

Juno spacecraft discovered clues about mysterious processes creating the dance of the auroral footprints.

April 5, 2022 Read more

Ringing black holes could put general relativity to the test

Gravitational waves could reveal whether general relativity must be modified at the edges of black holes.

April 5, 2022 Read more

Hubble finds a planet forming in an unconventional way

The Hubble Space Telescope has directly photographed evidence of a Jupiter-like protoplanet forming through what researchers describe as an 'intense and violent process'. This discovery supports a long-debated theory for how planets like Jupiter form, called 'disk instability'.

April 4, 2022 Read more

Thermal electrons play key role in determining emissions from gamma-ray-burst afterglows

Theoretical model probes the origins of unexpectedly high-energy radiation from the aftermath of cosmic explosions.

April 4, 2022 Read more

A closer look at Jupiter's origin story

One of the most important open questions in planetary formation theory is the story of Jupiter's origin. Using sophisticated computer modelling, researchers now shed new light on Jupiter's formation history.

April 4, 2022 Read more

Perseverance analyzes the first sounds from Mars

The NASA Perseverance rover, which has been exploring the Jezero Crater on Mars since February 2021, has recorded the acoustic environment of the red planet for the first time.

April 1, 2022 Read more

When worlds collide: Studying impact craters to uncover the secrets of the solar system

While for humans the constants might be death and taxes, for planets the constants are gravity and collisions.

March 30, 2022 Read more

Record broken: Hubble spots farthest star ever seen

The Hubble Space Telescope has established an extraordinary new benchmark: detecting the light of a star that existed within the first billion years after the universe's birth in the big bang - the farthest individual star ever seen to date.

March 30, 2022 Read more

Stellar motions reveal backbone of the Large Magellanic Cloud

Using data from the VISTA survey of the Magellanic Clouds system, researchers confirmed the existence of elongated orbits which are at the backbone of the bar formation process.

March 29, 2022 Read more

Hey DUDE: Mysterious death of carbon star plays out like six-ring circus

Scientists studying V Hydrae have witnessed the star's mysterious death throes in unprecedented detail.

March 28, 2022 Read more

DARPA kicks off program to explore space-based manufacturing

Eight teams selected to pioneer novel ways of designing and manufacturing large structures on orbit.

March 26, 2022 Read more

The wild years of our Milky Way galaxy

Astronomers reconstruct the turbulent past life of our home galaxy.

March 26, 2022 Read more