Space News

It has been known that many hot white dwarfs atmospheres, essentially of pure hydrogen or pure helium, are contaminated by other elements - like carbon, silicon and iron. What was not known, however, was the origins of t...

We told you this was going to be a good season to observe Jupiter, and astrophotographers in the northern hemisphere have been making the most of this time of opposition where Jupiter has been riding high in the sky. Wha...

One NASA astronaut launching to the International Space Station in May is ready to 3D print in space. Astronaut Reid Wiseman, bound for the station in May, is looking forward to setting up a 3D printer on the orbiting ou...

Riding a dragon is a fantasy many have and few fulfil, but if you're interested in sending research to the International Space Station, the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) can help bring those drea...

2012 VP113 is a new world that has been discovered on a Sedna-like orbit. What does that mean? It could imply the existence of a planet X, but doesn't prove it. It does suggest that a lot more Sednas are waiting to be di...

The scar of the deadly landslide that devastated a small community near Oso, Wash., over the weekend can be seen from space.

Until now, rings of material in a disc have only been observed around giant planets like Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune and especially Saturn, which is known for its spectacular rings....

The scheduled launch of a classified payload aboard an Atlas 5 rocket has been delayed until no earlier than April 10.

Space.com caught up with Jane Poynter, CEO of World View, a private company that aims to bring passengers to near-space using a high-altitude balloon.

The Solar System has a new most-distant member, bringing its outer frontier into focus. New work from Carnegie's Scott Sheppard and Chadwick Trujillo of the Gemini Observatory reports the discovery of a distant dwarf pla...

The discovery of dwarf galaxy black holes that are bigger than expected suggests that galaxy mergers are not necessary to create big black holes. Dwarf galaxies don't have a history of galactic smash-ups, and yet their b...

The U.S. Air Force has awarded SpaceX a $4.2 million contract to study the integration of an unspecified satellite with the company's Falcon 9 v.1.1 rocket.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory News and Features: How does one grow supermassive black holes? A new study using data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) has turned up what might be their seeds.

Observations at many sites in South America have made the discovery that the asteroid Chariklo is surrounded by two dense and narrow rings. This is the smallest object by far found to have rings and only the fifth body i...

The Solar System has a new most-distant member, bringing its outer frontier into focus.

Carnegie Institution for Science: Washington, D.C.--The Solar System has a new most-distant member, bringing its outer frontier into focus. New work from Carnegie's Scott Sheppard and Chadwick Trujillo of the Gemini Obse...

Astronomers have now discovered two dwarf planets -- Sedna and 2012 VP113 -- in the distant inner Oort Cloud, a largely unexplored region that likely hosts millions of icy objects.

Scientists have made a stunning discovery in the outer realm of the solar system -- an asteroid with its own set of rings that orbits the sun between Saturn and Uranus. The space rock is the first non-planetary object ev...

Chariklo is the first asteroid discovered to have it's own ring system, and only the fifth body in the solar system. The largest of a class of asteroids known as Centaurs that orbit between Uranus and Saturn, Charriklo h...

Astronomers have announced the discovery of an amazing object in our solar system: 2012 VP113, an icy body with an orbit so big it never gets closer than 12 billion kilometers (7.4 billion miles) from the Sun! That's 80 ...

New observations from telescopes in South America of asteroid (10199) Chariklo, as it passed in front of a distant star, have revealed rings. Astronomers believe the rings may be partially composed of water ice.

The asteroid Chariklo is surrounded by two rings similar to those around the brilliant planet Saturn. See images and artist views of the asteroid's strange rings in this Space.com gallery.