Space Exploration News

September 16, 2016

Echoes of Black Holes Eating Stars

Some Ancient Mars Lakes Formed More Recently

Starving Black Hole Returns Galaxy to the Shadows

X-Ray Detection Sheds New Light on Pluto

Latest Headlines

updated 12:42am EDT

Cassini Begins Epic Final Year at Saturn

Sep. 15, 2016 — After more than 12 years studying Saturn, its rings and moons, NASA's Cassini spacecraft has entered the final year of its epic voyage. The conclusion of the historic ... read more

Exploration Team Shoots for the Moon With Water-Propelled Satellite

Sep. 15, 2016 — Cislunar Explorers, a team of Cornell University students guided by Mason Peck, a former senior official at NASA and associate professor of mechanical and aerospace ... read more

Pluto 'Paints' Its Largest Moon Red

Sep. 14, 2016 — In June 2015, when the cameras on NASA's approaching New Horizons spacecraft first spotted the large reddish polar region on Pluto's largest moon, Charon, mission scientists ... read more

Analysis of the Impact of Solar Activity on Radio Signals in the Atmosphere Boosted by New Research

Sep. 14, 2016 — The assessment of the impact of solar activity on radio signals in the atmosphere has been boosted by a new measurement method, report ... read more

Astronomers Shed Light on Different Galaxy Types

Sep. 14, 2016 — Scientists have taken a critical step towards understanding why different types of galaxies exist throughout the Universe. The research, made possible by cutting-edge ... read more

Astronomers Observe Star Reborn in a Flash

Sep. 13, 2016 — Astronomers using Hubble have been able to study stellar evolution in real time. Over a period of 30 years dramatic increases in the temperature of the star SAO 244567 have ... read more

Explaining Why the Universe Can Be 'Transparent': Universe's Reionization Is Based on a Galaxy's Dust Content

Sep. 12, 2016 — Scientists can explain why the universe has enough energy to become transparent. The study marks the first quantitative ... read more

Mars Rover Views Spectacular Layered Rock Formations

Sep. 12, 2016 — The layered geologic past of Mars is revealed in stunning detail in new color images returned by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover, which is currently exploring the "Murray Buttes" ... read more

NASA's THEMIS Sees Auroras Move to the Rhythm of Earth's Magnetic Field

Sep. 12, 2016 — For the first time, scientists have directly mapped Earth's fluctuating magnetic field and resulting electrical currents to aurora, thanks to northern lights observations ... read more

Moon Is Proto-Earth's Mantle, Relocated, Chemistry Suggests

Sep. 12, 2016 — The leading theory for the moon's formation got in trouble recently when it was revealed that the moon and Earth are isotopic twins. Now highly precise measurements of the ... read more

The Moon Could Be Making Some Earthquakes Bigger

Rosetta Orbiter Will End Its Space Journey By Smashing Into A Comet

America Could Wait Longer Than Expected For Next Manned Spaceflight

NASA Spacecraft Going to Asteroid

Fighting Cancer With Space Research

Sep. 15, 2016 — For the past 15 years, the big data techniques pioneered by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, have been revolutionizing biomedical research. On Sept. 6, 2016, JPL and the ... read more

Asteroid Named After Professor

Sep. 13, 2016 — A professor has had his name written among the stars, after an asteroid was named after ... read more

Avoiding 'Traffic Jam' Creates Impossibly Bright 'Lighthouse'

Sep. 8, 2016 — The central energy source of enigmatic pulsating Ultra Luminous X-ray sources (ULX) could be a neutron star according to numerical simulations. ULXs, which are remarkably bright X-ray sources, were ... read more

Hubble Discovers Rare Fossil Relic of Early Milky Way

Sep. 7, 2016 — A fossilized remnant of the early Milky Way harboring stars of hugely different ages has been revealed by an international team of astronomers. This stellar system resembles a globular cluster, but ... read more

Detailed Age Map Shows How Milky Way Came Together

Sep. 6, 2016 — Using colors to identify the approximate ages of more than 130,000 stars in the Milky Way's halo, astronomers have produced the clearest picture yet of how the galaxy formed more than 13.5 ... read more

Earth's Carbon Points to Planetary Smashup

Sep. 5, 2016 — Research suggests that virtually all of Earth's life-giving carbon could have come from a collision about 4.4 billion years ago between Earth and an embryonic planet similar to ... read more

First Gravitational Waves Form After 10 Million Years

Sep. 5, 2016 — If two galaxies collide, the merging of their central black holes triggers gravitational waves, which ripple throughout space. An international research team has now calculated that this occurs ... read more

The Supernova That Wasn't: A Tale of Three Cosmic Eruptions

Sep. 2, 2016 — Long-term observations with the Hubble Space Telescope revealed that Eta Carinae, a very massive star system that has puzzled astronomers since it erupted in a supernova-like event in the mid 19th ... read more

NASA's SDO Witnesses a Double Eclipse

Sep. 2, 2016 — Early in the morning of Sept. 1, 2016, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, caught both Earth and the moon crossing in front of the sun. SDO keeps a constant eye on the sun, but during ... read more

First Stars Formed Even Later Than Previously Thought

Sep. 2, 2016 — ESA's Planck satellite has revealed that the first stars in the Universe started forming later than previous observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background indicated. This new analysis also ... read more

Jupiter's North Pole Unlike Anything Encountered in Solar System

Sep. 2, 2016 — NASA's Juno spacecraft has sent back the first-ever images of Jupiter's north pole, taken during the spacecraft's first flyby of the planet with its instruments switched on. The images ... read more

New Light on the Complex Nature of 'Hot Jupiter' Atmospheres

Sep. 2, 2016 — A team of international researchers used state-of-the-art modelling techniques to extensively study the atmosphere of a 'hot Jupiter' found 150 light-years from Earth. The scientists ... read more

Ceres' Geological Activity, Ice Revealed in New Research

Sep. 1, 2016 — A lonely 3-mile-high (5-kilometer-high) mountain on Ceres is likely volcanic in origin, and the dwarf planet may have a weak, temporary atmosphere. These are just two of many new insights about Ceres ... read more

Images from Sun's Edge Reveal Origins of Solar Wind

Sep. 1, 2016 — Ever since the 1950s discovery of the solar wind -- the constant flow of charged particles from the Sun -- there's been a stark disconnect between this outpouring and the sun itself. The details ... read more

Discovery One-Ups Tatooine, Finds Twin Stars Hosting Three Giant Exoplanets

Aug. 31, 2016 — Scientists have discovered three giant planets in a binary star system composed of stellar 'twins' that are also effectively siblings of our Sun. One star hosts two planets and the other ... read more

The Genesis Project: New Life on Exoplanets

Aug. 31, 2016 — Can life be brought to celestial bodies outside our solar system which are not permanently inhabitable? This is the question with which experts are dealing in a recent ... read more

The Rise and Fall of Galaxy Formation

Aug. 30, 2016 — Astronomers have charted the rise and fall of galaxies over 90 percent of cosmic history. The FourStar Galaxy Evolution Survey has built a multicolored photo album of galaxies as they grow from their ... read more

Anomalous Grooves on Martian Moon Phobos Explained by Impacts

Aug. 30, 2016 — Some of the mysterious grooves on the surface of Mars' moon Phobos are the result of debris ejected by impacts eventually falling back onto the surface to form linear chains of craters, ... read more

NASA Team Probes Peculiar Age-Defying Star

Aug. 29, 2016 — For years, astronomers have puzzled over a massive star lodged deep in the Milky Way that shows conflicting signs of being extremely old and extremely young. Researchers initially classified the star ... read more

Proxima B Is in Host Star's Habitable Zone, but Could It Really Be Habitable?

Aug. 29, 2016 — The world's attention is now on Proxima Centauri b, a possibly Earth-like planet orbiting the closest star, 4.22 light-years away. The planet's orbit is just right to allow liquid water on ... read more

Thursday, September 15, 2016