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High-res commercial Earth imager launched to space
A Delta 2 rocket thundered out of America's western spaceport Saturday and put into orbit a commercial Earth-imaging satellite that promises to offer a sharper clarity than any private satellite launched before it.
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China could launch next manned flight this month
China launched two disaster monitoring satellites Saturday as officials announced the country's next piloted space mission could occur before the end of September, state media reported.
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Rosetta asteroid flyby reveals diamond in the sky
Europe's comet chaser, Rosetta, last night flew by a small body in the main asteroid belt, asteroid Steins, collecting a wealth of information about this rare type of minor Solar System body.
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Phoenix finds Martian soil perplexingly dry
Although NASA's Phoenix Mars lander has sensed a rise and fall in humidity in the air around the spacecraft, the Martian soil itself is found to be thoroughly and perplexingly dry.
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Jules Verne cargo ship departs the space station
Europe's first state-of-the-art Automated Transfer Vehicle departed the international space station Friday after a five-month stay that delivered more than 10,000 pounds of cargo to the complex.
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New launch dates picked for next two shuttles
NASA on Friday formally pushed back the target launch dates for shuttle Atlantis' servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope and Endeavour's logistics run to the space station.
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U.S. astronauts may be left without rides to station
NASA Administrator Mike Griffin says it is likely the U.S. segment of the space station will have to be unmanned for at least some portion of 2012 because legislation that would allow the agency to buy seats on Russian Soyuz spacecraft is at a virtual standstill.
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Atlantis travels to launch pad for Hubble mission
The space shuttle that will make the fifth and final servicing call on the Hubble Space Telescope was rolled to the launch pad Thursday for its October mission to extend the life and vision of the famous observatory.
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Closest look ever at the edge of a black hole
Astronomers have taken the closest look ever at the giant black hole in the center of the Milky Way. By combining telescopes in Hawaii, Arizona, and California, they detected structure at a tiny angular scale of 37 micro-arcseconds - the equivalent of a baseball seen on the surface of the moon, 240,000 miles distant. These observations are among the highest resolution ever done in astronomy.
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Analysis begins on Mars lander's deepest soil sample
Scientists have begun to analyze a sample of soil delivered to NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander's wet chemistry experiment from the deepest trench dug so far in the Martian arctic plains.
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Heritage lunar engine fired up once again -- Engineers from NASA and Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne successfully completed a series of hot-fire altitude tests using liquid methane on the RS-18 engine. The tests, conducted at White Sands test facility in New Mexico, are part of the technology development for NASA's Constellation program, and gathered important data on ignition, performance measurement, and rapid start and stop.
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Hubble sees magnetic monster in erupting galaxy
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has found an answer to a long-standing puzzle by resolving giant but delicate filaments shaped by a strong magnetic field around the active galaxy NGC 1275. It is the most striking example of the influence of the immense tentacles of extragalactic magnetic fields, say researchers.
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Origin of Crab Nebula's high-energy emission found
Thanks to data from ESA's Integral gamma-ray observatory, scientists have been able to locate where particles in the vicinity of the rotating neutron-star in the Crab Nebula are accelerated to immense energies.
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Mars rover Opportunity ascends out of crater
NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has climbed out of the large crater that it had been examining from the inside since last September.
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Phoenix mission conducting extended activities on Mars
NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander, having completed its 90-day primary mission, is continuing its science collection activities. Science and engineering teams are looking forward to at least another month of Martian exploration.
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Five RapidEye remote sensing satellites launched
The Dnepr rocket, a weapon of war converted for peaceful applications, bolted out of an underground silo early Friday and delivered five German agricultural imaging satellites to orbit.
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The missing link between meteorites and asteroids
Scientists have often wondered why only a tiny fraction of meteorites found on Earth match the vast majority of asteroids that orbit in our local neighbourhood, but new research suggests the solution could be in the Sun.
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Earth's leaky atmosphere
ESA's formation-flying Cluster satellites have discovered the physical mechanism that is driving the constant leak of oxygen out of Earth's atmosphere and into space: the Earth's own magnetic field.
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Clash of clusters provides new dark matter clue
A dramatic collision between galaxy clusters captured by the Hubble and Chandra space telescopes provides striking evidence for the existence of dark matter as it separates from ordinary matter.
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Rover Opportunity to leave Victoria Crater
After nearly a year of daring exploration within Victoria Crater, NASA's Mars Exploration rover Opportunity is heading back out to the surrounding Martian plains to examine exposed ancient rock layers, and boulders thrown from massive impact events.
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Atlantis rollout to pad delayed a few days
Troubles getting the liquid hydrogen umbilical connected between space shuttle Atlantis and its external fuel tank inside the Vehicle Assembly Building has delayed the rollout to launch pad 39A.
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GLAST, renamed Fermi, reveals first all-sky image
NASA's newest space observatory GLAST has begun its mission of exploring the Universe in high-energy gamma rays and has been renamed the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope in honour of Professor Enrico Fermi, a pioneer of high-energy physics on which the mission is founded.
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XMM discovers monster galaxy cluster
ESA's orbiting X-ray observatory XMM-Newton has discovered a cosmic needle in the haystack of space: the most massive galaxy cluster ever seen in the distant Universe, and one which confirms the existence of dark energy.
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Generations of stars pose for family portrait
In celebration of Spitzer's five years in orbit, a stunning new image reveals the family portrait of a star-forming inferno studded with multiple generations of brilliant stars, and provides dramatic new evidence that massive stars can trigger the birth of stellar newborns through their savage winds and radiation.
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Phoenix lander digs into extended mission on Mars
Today, the 90th Martian sol and the end of the originally planned primary mission, Phoenix will perform the challenging task of scooping up soil from the deepest trench ever dug on Mars.
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Atlantis rolls to the Vehicle Assembly Building
After spending four extra days parked inside its hangar while Tropical Storm Fay poured on the Kennedy Space Center, shuttle Atlantis finally moved to the Vehicle Assembly Building on Friday night in preparation for its October launch to the Hubble Space Telescope.
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The interplanetary mapping maverick
In an exclusive interview to coincide with the September issue of Astronomy Now, the Planetary Science Institute's Dr Robert Gaskell discusses his innovative mapping technique that is bringing the diverse surfaces of the Solar System to life.
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Most black holes might come in only small and large
Black holes are sometimes huge cosmic beasts, billions of times the mass of our sun, and sometimes petite with just a few times the sun's mass. But do black holes also come in size medium? A new study suggests that, for the most part, the answer is no.
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Phoenix lander explores Mars site by trenching
NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander scientists and engineers are continuing to dig into the area around the lander with the spacecraft's robotic arm, looking for new materials to analyze and examining the soil and ice subsurface structure.
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Proposals made to solve Ares 1 vibration worry
NASA hopes to resolve concern about high vibrations in its new Ares 1 rocket by using a shock absorber-like passive damper between the first and second stages and a computer-controlled, motor-driven system of spring-mounted weights at the base of the booster to actively cancel out unwanted up-and-down oscillations.
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Proton launcher returns to commercial service
Commercial flights of Russia's Proton rocket successfully resumed Monday night, putting into orbit a sophisticated mobile communications satellite that joins two other spacecraft to offer global broadband coverage.
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New Milky Way map reveals a complicated outer galaxy
The halo of stars that envelops the Milky Way galaxy is like a river delta criss-crossed by stellar streams large and small, according to new data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. While the largest rivers of this delta have been mapped out over the last decade, analysis of the new map shows that smaller streams can be found throughout the stellar halo.
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NASA engineers complete test series for Ares I rocket -- Engineers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., have completed a series of tests on a key component of the J-2X engine. The J-2X powers the upper stage of the Ares I rocket, which will launch human explorers to the International Space Station and to the moon.
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Solar System's new member
An ice-rock minor planet 30 to 60 miles in diameter, discovered two years ago between the orbits of Uranus and Neptune could be a member of the "inner Oort Cloud." But this is only part of the story.
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Phoenix microscope takes first image of Martian dust
NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has taken the first-ever image of a single particle of Mars' ubiquitous dust, using its atomic force microscope. The particle is shown at higher magnification than anything ever seen from another world.
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Ariane 5 rocket goes up for the fifth time this year
Europe's workhorse Ariane 5 rocket took off from a South American space base Thursday on its third launch in barely two months, this time with Japanese and U.S. television broadcasting satellites.
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NASA opts to leave shuttle launch dates as scheduled
Space shuttle program leaders met Thursday and discussed a proposal to move up the target launch dates for the next two missions in October and November. But in the end officials decided to leave the Hubble servicing mission and space station flight as originally scheduled on Oct. 8 and Nov. 10.
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Pluto debate continues
In 2006, the International Astronomical Union reclassified Solar System objects such that Pluto became a dwarf planet, and in June of this year it was placed into the 'plutoid' sub-category. Now astronomers have reopened the debate at this week's Great Planet Debate: Science as a Process conference.
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Crane mishap at Baikonur damages commercial craft
A Malaysian communications satellite being prepared for launch next week could be grounded for at least several months after a crane struck the fuel-laden spacecraft at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
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Cassini returns pictures from Monday's flyby
Cassini is beaming back its first images from Monday's close encounter with Saturn's moon Enceladus. The spacecraft came within 30 miles of the moon to study fissures dubbed "tiger stripes" where geysers of water-ice and vapor jet out into space.
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Delta 2 rocket launch of GeoEye craft postponed
Launch of a commercial Earth-imaging satellite aboard a Delta 2 rocket originally scheduled to occur next week from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California will be pushed into early September.
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Cassini begins transmitting data from Enceladus flyby
The Cassini spacecraft has started sending data to Earth following a close flyby of Saturn's moon Enceladus. During closest approach on Monday, Cassini successfully passed only 30 miles from the surface of the tiny moon.
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NASA slips internal target for first manned Orion flight
NASA's internal planning date for the first manned launch of the new Orion spacecraft that will replace the space shuttle after the winged orbiters are retired in 2010 has slipped one year, from September 2013 to September 2014. The new schedule, managers said Monday, reflects a more realistic assessment of projected funding, contract realities and technical requirements in the absence of any significant additional support from Congress.
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Soil studies continue at Mars lander site
Vibration of the screen above a laboratory oven on NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander on Saturday succeeded in getting enough soil into the oven to begin analysis. Commands were sent for the lander's Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer (TEGA) to begin analysis Sunday of the soil sample from a trench called "Rosy Red."
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Hubble unveils colorful and turbulent star-birth region
The Hubble Space Telescope is celebrating its 100,000th orbit around the Earth with the release of a spectacular image of a fantasy-like landscape embellished with scenes of stellar birth and renewal.
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Cassini prepares to swoop by geyser-spewing moon
Fractures, or "tiger stripes," where icy jets erupt on Saturn's moon Enceladus will be the target of a close flyby by the Cassini spacecraft on Monday, zooming past the tiny moon a mere 30 miles from the surface.
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Computer simulations put Solar System in its place
Traditional theories of Solar System formation assume our neighbourhood to be pretty run of the mill, but in a new study using data from 300 exoplanets discovered orbiting other stars, our planetary haven turns out to be one of a kind.
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Hubble's odometer turns over 100,000 orbits of Earth
The odometer on NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is about to turn over 100,000. That's not 100,000 miles but the number of orbits it has made around Earth since it was launched aboard the space shuttle Discovery on April 24, 1990.
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Collision between rocket stages doomed Falcon 1
The investigation into Saturday night's failed SpaceX Falcon 1 launch has revealed the spent first stage separated and then recontacted the second stage due to residual thrust from the main engine, the company's founder says.
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Jupiter and Saturn full of liquid metal helium
A strange, metal brew lies buried deep within Jupiter and Saturn, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and in London.
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Dark matter clumps and streams in Milky Way
Using powerful supercomputer simulations, researchers have reason to believe that dense clumps and streams of dark matter lurk in the inner regions of the Milky Way's galactic halo, in the same neighborhood as our Solar System.
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Phoenix data suggests perchlorates in Mars soil
An instrument aboard NASA's Phoenix Mars lander has detected what may be perchlorate in the soil of the red planet's northern latitudes, an unexpected, still tentative discovery that has touched off a flurry of speculation about whether Mars is now, or has ever been, habitable.
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Globular clusters tell tale of nearby galaxy metropolis
The Hubble Space Telescope has identified thousands of more than 5 billion years old globular clusters in the Virgo cluster of galaxies. One of the results of these discoveries led astronomers to understand more about the life and evolution of cannibal galaxies.
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'Cosmic ghost' discovered by volunteer astronomer
When Yale astrophysicist Kevin Schawinski and his colleagues at Oxford University enlisted public support in cataloguing galaxies, they never envisioned the strange object Hanny van Arkel found in archived images of the night sky.
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Martian soil data from Phoenix being analyzed
Scientists are analyzing results from soil samples delivered several weeks ago to science instruments on NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander to understand the landing site's soil chemistry and mineralogy.
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Hubble finds large sample of very distant galaxies
New Hubble Space Telescope observations of six spectacular galaxy clusters acting as gravitational lenses have given significant insights into the early stages of the Universe.
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Falcon 1 suffers another setback
The Falcon 1 rocket, a sleek black-and-white booster built to usher in an era of low-cost space travel, was bitten by failure for the third time in three tries during a dramatic Saturday night launch from the central Pacific.
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Obama vows NASA support during visit to Florida
Sen. Barack Obama held a town hall meeting near the Kennedy Space Center Saturday and vowed strong support for NASA, saying he favors at least one shuttle flight beyond the 10 missions left on the agency's manifest. Obama also said he would work to close the gap between the end of shuttle operations and the debut of the Orion spacecraft that will replace it and said earlier reports that he would divert money from NASA's next manned spacecraft to education were unfounded.
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Supervoids, superclusters point to dark energy
By studying regions of space with an above and below average concentration of galaxies - superclusters and supervoids, respectively - a team of astronomers have found direct evidence for the existence of dark energy.
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Phoenix confirms water as mission gets extended
Laboratory tests aboard NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander have identified water in a soil sample. The lander's robotic arm delivered the sample Wednesday to an instrument that identifies vapors produced by the heating of samples.
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The first stars
The universe began with the Big Bang about 13.7 billion years ago. Very soon after that event, the first stars formed. Today, those stars are dead and gone leaving little evidence of their size and composition behind. Now, a new computer simulation now offers the most detailed picture yet of how these first stars came into existence.
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Lunar mapper and military vehicle swap launch slots
The launch of NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has been delayed until next February to make room on the Atlas 5 rocket's cramped East Coast manifest for a secretive Air Force space plane, government officials said this week.
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NASA confirms liquid lake on Saturn's moon Titan
NASA scientists have concluded that at least one of the large lakes observed on Saturn's moon Titan contains liquid hydrocarbons, and have positively identified the presence of ethane. This makes Titan the only body in our solar system beyond Earth known to have liquid on its surface.
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Jason 2 satellite begins mapping Earth's oceans
Less than a month after launch, the NASA-French space agency Ocean Surface Topography Mission/Jason 2 oceanography satellite has produced its first complete maps of global ocean surface topography, surface wave height and wind speed.
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Barred spiral galaxies are latecomers to the universe
In a landmark study of more than 2,000 spiral galaxies from the largest galaxy census conducted by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers found that so-called barred spiral galaxies were far less plentiful 7 billion years ago than they are today, in the local universe.
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Satellite providing scintillation forecast data
Whether it's static interrupting a radio station, or crackling noises interfering with a theater commander's attempt to contact a deployed unit, scintillation can cause communication chaos.
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Phoenix lander working with sticky Martian soil
Scientists and engineers on NASA's Phoenix Mars Mission spent the weekend examining how the icy soil on Mars interacts with the scoop on the lander's robotic arm, while trying different techniques to deliver a sample to one of the instruments.
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Ancient galactic magnetic fields stronger than expected -- Mining the far reaches of the universe for clues about its past, a team of scientists has proposed that magnetic fields of ancient galaxies like ours were just as strong as those existing today, prompting a rethinking of how our galaxy and others may have formed.
NASA successfully tests parachute for Ares rocket -- NASA and industry engineers have successfully completed the first drop test of a drogue parachute for the Ares I rocket. The drogue parachute is designed to slow the rapid descent of the spent first-stage motor, cast off by the Ares I rocket during its climb to space.
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Supernova explodes in controversy
The interpretation of supernova explosion SN 2008D, which was captured by a serendipitous Swift telescope observation earlier this year, is causing controversy among different research groups who argue its origin and evolution as either a 'normal' supernova, or something more reminiscent of a gamma-ray burst.
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Phoenix revises method to deliver icy sample
NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander's robotic arm will use a revised collection-and-delivery sequence overnight Sunday with the goal of depositing an icy soil sample in the lander's oven.
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Stellar vampires make the Universe dusty
For the first time, astronomers have witnessed the expulsion of a shell of dusty gas around a freshly erupted nova and tracked its evolution for over 200 days, providing a new and invaluable way of estimating the distances to nearby novae.
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Phoenix collects icy soil but needs to work on delivery
NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander's robotic arm collected a more than adequate amount of icy soil for baking in one of the lander's ovens but will need to adjust how it delivers samples.
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NASA changes plans for advancing shuttle dates
Space shuttle program managers Friday modified an official "change request" that, if approved, will move up the next two shuttle launchings by three days each, not six as initially requested.
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Soyuz 2-1b rocket launches classified military payload -- Russia launched a military reconnaissance satellite Saturday using a modernized version of the Soyuz rocket, according to news reports.
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Satellites discover what powers Northern Lights
Researchers using a fleet of five NASA satellites have discovered that explosions of magnetic energy a third of the way to the moon power substorms that cause sudden brightenings and rapid movements of the aurora borealis, called the Northern Lights.
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COROT finds exoplanet orbiting Sun-like star
A team of European scientists working with COROT have discovered an exoplanet orbiting a star slightly more massive than the Sun. After just 555 days in orbit, the mission has now observed more than 50,000 stars and is adding significantly to our knowledge of the fundamental workings of stars.
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Astronomers see disks surrounding black holes
For the first time, a team of international researchers has found a way to view the accretion disks surrounding black holes and verify that their true electromagnetic spectra match what astronomers have long predicted they would be.
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Phoenix lander prepares for next sample analysis
The latest activities of NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander have moved the mission closer to analyzing a sample of material, possibly icy soil, from a hard layer at the bottom of a shallow trench beside the lander.
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New project to develop GPS-like system for moon
The same Ohio State University researcher who is helping rovers navigate on Mars is leading a new effort to help humans navigate on the moon.
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Ocean surface a boon for extreme event forecasts
For humans in the path of destructive hurricanes and tsunamis, an accurate warning of the pending event is critical for damage control and survival. Such warnings, however, require a solid base of scientific observations, and a new satellite is ready for the job.
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Using gravitational lensing to weigh 70 galaxies
An international team of astronomers recently announced a finding that helps to settle a long-standing debate over the relationship between mass and luminosity in galaxies.
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Radar reconnaissance spacecraft launched
The capstone of a fleet of German military satellites rocketed into space from Russia early Tuesday, completing a series of five launchings of spacecraft designed to scout locations around the world.
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European orbiter begins closing in on Venus
Starting last week, spacecraft controllers have been executing a series of manoeuvres to gradually bring Venus Express closer to its host planet. In its modified orbit, the spacecraft will be able to observe unexplored regions and investigate phenomena that were not within its reach before.
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Spitzer sees 'no organics' zone around Pinwheel
The Pinwheel galaxy is gussied up in infrared light in a new picture from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The fluffy-looking galaxy is dominated by a mishmash of spiral arms. In Spitzer's new view, in which infrared light is color coded, the galaxy sports a swirling blue center and a unique, coral-red outer ring.
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Brightest star in the galaxy has new competition
A contender for the title of brightest star in our Milky Way galaxy has been unearthed in the dusty metropolis of the galaxy's center. Nicknamed the "Peony nebula star," the bright stellar bulb blazes with the light of an estimated 3.2 million suns.
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XMM-Newton discovers the star that everyone missed
XMM-Newton has discovered an exploding star in the Milky Way. Usually that would be important in itself, but this time there is a special twist. Calculations show that the explosion must have been clearly visible to the unaided eye but was missed by the legions of star watchers around the planet.
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Fourth dwarf planet named -- The International Astronomical Union has given the name Makemake to the newest member of the family of dwarf planets - the object formerly known as 2005 FY9 - after the Polynesian creator of humanity and the god of fertility.
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Video flashback on this anniversary of Apollo 11
One of the defining moments of the 20th century was mankind's voyage to the moon. This video selection allows you to relive the mission of Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins on Apollo 11.
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A new way developed to weigh giant black holes
How do you weigh the biggest black holes in the universe? One answer now comes from a completely new and independent technique that astronomers have developed using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.
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NASA's Deep Impact films Earth as an alien world
NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft has created a video of the moon passing in front of Earth as seen from the probe's point of view 31 million miles away. Scientists are using the movie to develop techniques to study other planets.
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Jupiter red spots mix it up
A new sequence of Hubble Space Telescope images offers an unprecedented view of a planetary game of Pac-Man among three red spots clustered together in Jupiter's atmosphere.
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NASA picks crew for STS-128 mission to space station -- NASA has assigned the crew for space shuttle mission STS-128 that is targeted for launch next July. The flight will carry science and storage racks to the International Space Station.
Joint statement by the ISS Heads of Agency -- The Heads of the International Space Station Agencies from Canada, Europe, Japan, Russia and the United States met in Paris on Thursday to review ISS cooperation.
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Crew of most recent shuttle mission tells its story
Space shuttle Discovery's flight to the space station in June delivered and attached the outpost's largest module -- the Kibo science laboratory built by Japan. The STS-124 astronauts recap the mission in this post-flight presentation.
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Mars Express to rendezvous with Martian moon
Scientists and engineers are preparing the European Space Agency's Mars Express for a pair of close fly-bys of the Martian moon Phobos. Passing within 100 km of the surface, the spacecraft will conduct some of the most detailed investigations of the moon to date.
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Ancient Mars had diverse, wet environments
Mars once hosted vast lakes, flowing rivers and a variety of other wet environments that had the potential to support life, according to two new studies based on data from instruments on board NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
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