Space Exploration News

This image of the comet ISON was taken by Hubble on October 9, 2013. Image credit: NASA / ESA / the Hubble Heritage Team / STScI / AURA.

ISON: Hubble Space Telescope Zooms in on Comet of Century

Oct 21, 2013 by News Staff

Astronomers have used NASA’s Hubble telescope to capture a new image of comet ISON, the so-called ‘comet of the century.’ This image...

Professional and Amateur Astronomers Shed Light on Asteroid Sylvia

Oct 15, 2013 by Enrico de Lazaro

A team of scientists led by Dr Franck Marchis from the Carl Sagan Center of the SETI Institute teamed up with amateur astronomers to discover that the...

This image shows a 5.5 km-diameter LARLE crater on Mars. Image credit: Northern Arizona University.

Planetary Scientists Discover New Type of Impact Craters on Mars

Oct 9, 2013 by News Staff

Northern Arizona University scientist Prof Nadine Barlow and Dr Joseph Boyce from the University of Hawaii have discovered a new class of Martian impact...

This image shows Tutankhamun's pectoral with a scarab carved from the Libyan Desert Glass. Image credit: Jon Bodsworth.

Libyan Desert Glass: Diamond-Bearing Pebble Provides Evidence of Comet Striking Earth

Oct 8, 2013 by News Staff

A mysterious black pebble found by an Egyptian geologist at the Libyan Desert Glass strewnfield provides the first ever evidence of a comet entering Earth’s...

This false color image shows the Eden Patera supervolcano, Arabia Terra, Mars. Image credit: ESA / Mars Express / Freie Universitat Berlin / NHM.

Researchers Find Evidence of Ancient Supervolcanoes on Mars

Oct 3, 2013 by News Staff

Planetary scientists have discovered remnants of giant supervolcanoes in a region in the northern highlands of Mars known as Arabia Terra. The discovery...

Propylene: Ingredient of Household Plastic Detected in Atmosphere of Saturn’s Moon Titan

Oct 2, 2013 by News Staff

Planetary scientists using the Composite InfRared Spectrometer aboard NASA/ESA’s Cassini spacecraft have detected propylene in the lower atmosphere...

Ozone production over the southern winter pole on Mars. Image credit: ESA / ATG medialab.

Scientists Discover Third Ozone Layer in Atmosphere of Mars

Sep 30, 2013 by News Staff

A new study published in the journal Nature Geoscience explains how global atmospheric circulation creates a previously undetected layer of ozone above...

NASA's Curiosity Rover. Image credit: NASA.

Curiosity: Martian Surface Soil Contains Two Percent Water

Sep 27, 2013 by News Staff

In five papers published today in the journal Science, scientists using the ChemCam, CheMin instruments, the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) and...

This is an artist's concept of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft approaching Mars. The Curiosity rover is safely tucked inside the spacecraft's aeroshell. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Curiosity Finds No Methane in Atmosphere of Mars

Sep 20, 2013 by News Staff

NASA scientists reported Thursday that the Mars rover Curiosity has not found any clear signs of methane, a gas that on our planet is a strong indicator...

This image shows a diatom frustule, possibly a Nitzschia species, captured on a stud from a height of 25 km in the stratosphere. Image credit: Milton Wainwright et al.

Astrobiologists Claim to Have Found Extraterrestrial Life Form in Earth’s Stratosphere

Sep 19, 2013 by News Staff

British astrobiologists are claiming to have found alien life form in the Earth’s stratosphere. They collected a small diatom frustule that could...

View of Aram Chaos with elevation map. Image credit: Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht University.

Aram Chaos Reveals Ancient Ice Lake on Mars

Sep 16, 2013 by News Staff

According to a team of planetary scientists led by Dr Manuel Roda from the Utrecht University, a huge impact crater on Mars known as Aram Chaos formed...

Voyager 1 Reaches Interstellar Space, NASA Scientists Say

Sep 13, 2013 by News Staff

According to a team of scientists reporting online in the journal Science, NASA’s Voyager 1 has indeed left the Solar System and entered interstellar...

Fragments of the Sutter's Mill meteorite collected by NASA astronomer Dr Peter Jenniskens two days after the fall (NASA / Eric James).

Scientists Find Unique Extraterrestrial Organic Molecules in Sutter’s Mill Meteorite

Sep 11, 2013 by News Staff

Arizona State University researchers reporting this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences have found that fragments of the Sutter’s...

Zodiacal light scattered from dust grains in our Solar System is seen rising diagonally up to the left in this image, as the plane of the Milky Way rises up to the right (Tunc Tezel / TWAN / APOD).

Astronomers Study Solar System’s Interplanetary Nanodust

Sep 10, 2013 by News Staff

An international team of astronomers has used the Low Frequency Receiver onboard the twin Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory (STEREO) to learn more...

Two digital single-lens reflex cameras captured these two all-sky images of Northern Lights in Alaska. The subtle differences between the left and right pictures allow the team to measure the altitude where electrons in the atmosphere emit the light that produces aurora (Kataoka et al).

Scientists Use SLR Cameras to Capture Aurora Borealis in 3D

Sep 9, 2013 by News Staff

Researchers from Japan and the United States have used two digital single-lens reflex cameras set 5 miles apart to capture 3D images of Aurora Borealis...

The Solar System moves through a local galactic cloud at a speed of 50,000 miles per hour, creating an interstellar wind of particles, some of which can travel all the way toward Earth to provide information about our neighborhood (NASA / Adler / U. Chicago / Wesleyan).

Astrophysicists: Interstellar Winds Changed Direction over Forty Years

Sep 6, 2013 by News Staff

The particles streaming into the Solar System from interstellar space have changed direction over the last forty years, says a group of astrophysicists...

This image is a composite of several images taken during two separate Titan flybys on October 9 and October 25, 2004. Credit: NASA / JPL / University of Arizona.

Cassini Sees Rigid, Weathered Ice Shell on Titan

Aug 29, 2013 by News Staff

New gravity and topography data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft reveal unexpected features of the Titan’s outer ice shell. This image is a composite...

This is a fragment of the Chelyabinsk (Laboratory of Meteoritics, Vernadsky Institute, Russia).

Chelyabinsk Meteorite May Have Collided with Another Body in Solar System

Aug 27, 2013 by News Staff

According to a team of Russian scientists reporting today at the Goldschmidt conference in Italy, the Chelyabinsk meteorite either collided with another...

New observations by NASA’s twin Van Allen Probes show that particles in the radiation belts surrounding Earth are accelerated by a local kick of energy, helping to explain how these particles reach speeds of 99 percent the speed of light (G. Reeves / M. Henderson)

Scientists Find Electron Acceleration within Van Allen Belts

Jul 26, 2013 by Natali Anderson

U.S. researchers believe they have answered a long-standing question about how electrons in the Earth’s Van Allen radiation belts can suddenly become...