Space Exploration News

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover captured this beautiful view of nightfall on the Red Planet on April 15, 2015. The red surface coloring of Mars is due to oxidized iron. At certain times of the Martian year, great dust storms occur; the large amounts of dust in the atmosphere during these storms absorb much of the incoming radiation from the Sun; this causes large temperature inversions in the Martian atmosphere. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS.

Curiosity Spies Sunset on Mars

May 11, 2015 by News Staff

This awesome-looking time-lapse sequence of the Martian sunset was created by piecing together images taken by NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity. NASA’s...

Color differences on Mercury are subtle, but they reveal important information about the nature of the planet’s surface material. Image credit: NASA / JPL.

Magnetic Field of Planet Mercury about 4 Billion Years Old

May 8, 2015 by News Staff

New data from NASA’s MESSENGER orbiter suggest that Mercury’s magnetic field is 3.7 – 3.9 billion years old. This image was taken on January...

This color view of Enceladus was taken by Cassini spacecraft on 31 January 2011, from a distance of 50,330 miles (NASA / JPL-Caltech / SSI / G. Ugarković).

Cassini Revealing More Details about Enceladus

May 7, 2015 by News Staff

Two new studies using data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft reveal the pH of water spewing from a geyser-like plume on Enceladus, and suggest that much...

A long solar filament erupted on the Sun on April 28-29, 2015. Image credit: ESA / NASA / SOHO.

NASA’s SOHO Sees Huge Filament Erupt on Sun

May 5, 2015 by News Staff

On April 28-29, 2015 a massive filament of solar material that had been hovering in the Sun’s atmosphere erupted into space in a large burst of bright...

Artist’s conception of a human mission to Mars. Image credit: Les Bossinas / NASA Lewis Research Center.

What Happens to Astronaut’s Brain on Way to Mars

May 3, 2015 by News Staff

According to new research from the University of California, Irvine, and the University of Nevada, exposure to galactic cosmic rays may have long-term...

This image from MESSENGER is located within the floor of the 93-km-diameter crater Jokai. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Carnegie Institution of Washington.

NASA’s MESSENGER Beams Back Its Final Image of Mercury

May 1, 2015 by News Staff

This image is the last one captured and beamed back to Earth by NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft. This image from MESSENGER is located within the floor of...

This colorful view of Mercury was produced by using images from the color base map imaging campaign during MESSENGER’s primary mission. These colors are not what Mercury would look like to the human eye, but rather the colors enhance the chemical, mineralogical, and physical differences between the rocks that make up the planet’s surface. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Carnegie Institution of Washington.

NASA’s MESSENGER Spacecraft Collides with Mercury

May 1, 2015 by News Staff

MESSENGER mission scientists have confirmed that the probe impacted the surface of Mercury on April 30th, as predicted, at 3:26 p.m. EDT (12:26 p.m. PDT,...

An artist’s concept of Pluto. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.

New Horizons Spacecraft Sees Possible Polar Cap on Pluto

Apr 30, 2015 by News Staff

The Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has captured some spectacular new images of Pluto, revealing bright and...

Dr Adrian Daw of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and his colleagues have gathered some of the strongest evidence to date to explain what makes the Sun’s outer atmosphere so much hotter than its surface. Image credit: NASA / SDO.

NASA’s EUNIS Detects Evidence Supporting Coronal Heating Theory

Apr 29, 2015 by News Staff

Strong new evidence supports a theory that the Sun’s corona is heated by tiny explosions called nanoflares. Dr Adrian Daw of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight...

MASCS/MDIS color mosaics of Mercury. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Carnegie Institution of Washington.

NASA Scientists Release Colorful Images of Mercury

Apr 28, 2015 by News Staff

Stunning new images of Mercury have been produced by combining data from the Mercury Atmosphere and Surface Composition Spectrometer (MASCS) instrument...

This is an artist's impression of an exoplanet. Image credit: Ron Miller.

NASA’s NExSS Initiative to Look for Signs of Extraterrestrial Life

Apr 23, 2015 by News Staff

NASA’s Nexus for Exoplanet System Science (NExSS) initiative will bring together top research groups and will provide a synthesized approach in the search...

The two mysterious bright spots are located in a crater that’s 92 km wide (top of the image). Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA.

Dawn Returns New Image of Ceres’ Bright Spots

Apr 22, 2015 by News Staff

The two bright spots on Ceres are back in view in the new image from NASA’s Dawn space probe. The two mysterious bright spots are located in a crater...

This image shows the north pole of the dwarf planet Ceres as seen by the Dawn spacecraft on April 10, 2015. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA.

NASA’s Dawn Probe Sees North Pole of Ceres

Apr 17, 2015 by News Staff

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has returned stunning new images of the sunlit north pole of the dwarf planet Ceres, the largest object in the main asteroid belt. This...

An artist’s concept shows MESSENGER in orbit around Mercury. Image credit: NASA.

NASA’s MESSENGER Spacecraft to Collide with Mercury in Two Weeks

Apr 16, 2015 by News Staff

NASA’s MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging) probe will crash into the planet at 8,750 miles per hour (3.91 km/sec),...

This image from the New Horizons shows Pluto and Charon. It was made from a distance of about 71 million miles (115 million kilometers) - roughly the distance from the Sun to Venus. At this distance, neither Pluto nor Charon is well resolved by the color imager, but their distinctly different appearances can be seen. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.

New Horizons Captures its First Color Image of Pluto, Charon

Apr 15, 2015 by News Staff

The Ralph color imager on NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has captured a low-resolution color image of Pluto and its largest moon, Charon. This image...

Cassini Helps Solve Saturn’s Mysterious Great White Spots

Apr 14, 2015 by News Staff

Planetary researchers studying data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft have found the solution to the mystery of why Saturn seethes with massive storms every...

The pictures on the left indicate the positions of the Rosetta Plasma Consortium fluxgate magnetometer (RPC-MAG) on the orbiter and of the Rosetta Lander Magnetometer and Plasma Monitor (ROMAP) on the lander. The graph on the right shows the data collected by the instruments. The data shown cover the period immediately prior to the second touchdown of Philae on November 12, 2014. Image credit: ESA / Auster et al / ATG medialab.

Nucleus of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is Non-Magnetic, Scientists Say

Apr 14, 2015 by News Staff

Complementary data collected by the Rosetta Plasma Consortium fluxgate magnetometer (RPC-MAG) on board ESA’s Rosetta orbiter, and by the Rosetta Lander...

The moons of our Solar System are brimming with unusual landscapes. However, sometimes they look a little more familiar, as in this new radar image from the Cassini orbiter. The image shows dark streaks carved into dunes reminiscent of those we might find on a beach on Earth, or raked with flowing lines in a Japanese Zen garden — but this scene is actually taking place on Saturn’s moon Titan. While our sand is composed of silicates, the ‘sand’ of these alien dunes is formed from grains of organic materials about the same size as particles of our beach sand. The small size and smoothness of these grains means that the flowing lines carved into the dunes show up as dark to the human eye. While previous images have spotted these eerily familiar patterns on Titan's dunes, this new image (colorized) shows them in greater detail. The image was obtained by Cassini's radar mapper on July 10, 2013. The vertical seam near the center is an artifact of radar image data processing. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Sci-News.com.

Why Dunes on Saturn’s Moon Titan Point to East

Apr 14, 2015 by News Staff

A new study published in the journal Nature Geoscience explains why the sand dunes of Titan run in parallel lines from the west to the east. The moons...

This color map of Ceres was created from images taken by the Dawn spacecraft during its initial approach to the dwarf planet. Images taken using blue, green and infrared spectral filters were combined to create the map; the filters were assigned to color channels in reverse order, compared to natural color. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA /MPS / DLR / IDA.

NASA Releases Color Map of Ceres

Apr 13, 2015 by News Staff

NASA scientists using the framing camera aboard the Dawn spacecraft have created the first color map of the dwarf planet Ceres. This color map of Ceres...