Space Exploration News – Latest Headlines

Using exoplanets as dark matter detectors

Astrophysicists suggest dark matter could be detected by measuring the effect it has on the temperature of exoplanets, which are planets outside our solar system.

April 22, 2021 Read more

Astronomers release new all-sky map of Milky Way's outer reaches

The highlight of the new chart is a wake of stars, stirred up by a small galaxy set to collide with the Milky Way. The map could also offer a new test of dark matter theories.

April 22, 2021 Read more

Black holes as magnetic jet engines

A new method may succeed in explaining the high-energy plasma outflows ejected by many black holes.

April 22, 2021 Read more

Bubble with titanium trigger titanic explosions

Scientists have found fragments of titanium blasting out of a famous supernova. This discovery could be a major step in pinpointing exactly how some giant stars explode.

April 21, 2021 Read more

Humungous flare from sun's nearest neighbor breaks records

Astronomers observed a record-setting flare from the star Proxima Centauri - a burst of energy roughly 100 times more powerful than any similar event seen from Earth's sun.

April 21, 2021 Read more

A novel optical physics method to measure the expansion of the universe

Researchers are suggesting a new way to use them to measure the expansion of the universe directly. They propose a method called intensity correlation speckles to measure the difference between the redshift - in which light stretches as it travels through an expanding universe, causing its wavelength to elongate - in two paths of light from the same quasar.

April 21, 2021 Read more

NASA's Ingenuity Mars helicopter succeeds in historic first flight (w/video)

NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter became the first aircraft in history to make a powered, controlled flight on another planet.

April 20, 2021 Read more

A new super-Earth detected orbiting a red dwarf star

In recent years there has been an exhaustive study of red dwarf stars to find exoplanets in orbit around them. These stars have effective surface temperatures between 2400 and 3700 K (over 2000 degrees cooler than the Sun), and masses between 0.08 and 0.45 solar masses.

April 16, 2021 Read more

Fast radio bursts shown to include lower frequency radio waves than previously detected

New clues discovered in quest to unravel astrophysical mystery.

April 16, 2021 Read more

Surprise twist suggests stars grow competitively

A survey of star formation activity in the Orion Nebula Cluster found similar mass distributions for newborn stars and dense gas cores, which may evolve into stars. Counterintuitively, this means that the amount of gas a core accretes as it develops, and not the initial mass of the core, is the key factor in deciding the final mass of the produced star.

April 16, 2021 Read more

Fast-spinning black holes narrow the search for dark matter particles

Certain ultralight bosons would be expected to put the brakes on black holes, but new results show no such slowdown.

April 14, 2021 Read more

Telescopes unite in unprecedented observations of famous black hole

Data from nineteen observatories are being released that promise to give unparalleled insight into this black hole and the system it powers, and to improve tests of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity.

April 14, 2021 Read more

Atom interferometry demonstrated in space for the first time

Scientists have established the technological basis for atom interferometry on board of a sounding rocket and demonstrated that such experiments are not only possible on Earth, but also in space.

April 13, 2021 Read more

CO2 mitigation on Earth and magnesium civilization on Mars

Researchers employed magnesium to convert CO2 to methane, methanol and formic acid, using water as the sole hydrogen source.

April 10, 2021 Read more

Helicopter to attempt first trip on Mars surface (w/video)

The first helicopter ever to fly on another planet will soon attempt its first trip above the surface of Mars.

April 9, 2021 Read more

Amounts of organic molecules in planetary systems differ from early on

An international group of scientists have studied the chemical composition of 50 protoplanetary-disk forming regions in the Perseus Molecular Cloud, and found that despite being in the same cloud, the amounts of complex organic molecules they contain are quite different.

April 9, 2021 Read more

New research shows that Mars did not dry up all at once

Mars had dry and wet eras and dried up for good 3 billion years ago.

April 9, 2021 Read more

Seeing quadruple

Machine-learning methods lead to discovery of rare 'quadruply imaged quasars' that can help solve cosmological puzzles.

April 9, 2021 Read more