Space News

NASA's Dawn spacecraft has entered an approach phase in which it will continue to close in on Ceres, a Texas-sized dwarf planet never before visited by a spacecraft. Dawn launched in 2007 and is scheduled to enter Ceres ...

The 'Interstellar' actress talks about the early stages of the space agency's exploration agenda.

This has been on my bucket list for a while, but I’ve never had the opportunity to witness it myself: seeing the International Space Station transit the Moon. And now thanks to my friend Gadi Eidelheit, I want to see i...

The end of 2014 marks two decades of data from a NASA mission called Wind. Wind--along with 17 other missions - is part of what's called the Heliophysics Systems Observatory, a fleet of spacecraft dedicated to understand...

WASHINGTON -- Scheduling issues created by a delayed space station resupply mission have postponed the launch of a long-awaited space and Earth sciences satellite by several days, officials said Dec. 29. The U.S. Nationa...

How do you celebrate a birthday in space? A NASA astronaut on the International Space Station found out how to have a cosmic birthday party Monday (Dec. 29).

I'll admit it, I am a sucker for year-end lists. If I'm reading one, it is a fun provocation for disagreement. If I'm writing one (like now), it is a welcome opportunity to separate the timeless from the ephemeral. Eithe...

NASA's flight control team in Houston wished International Space Station commander Barry "Butch" Wilmore a happy 52nd birthday on Dec. 29th, 2014.

A mystery object at the center of the galaxy has astronomers scratching their heads, and a new piece of information won't be solving the case before the New Year.

It was about this time last year that Europa really began to excite us again. Following a sci-fi movie about the Jupiter moon, astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope announced they had found possible water vapor ne...

August 15, 1977: the night before Elvis Presley died, at 11:16 p.m. an Ohio radio telescope -a rectangular structure, larger than three football feilds- called the Big Ear recorded a single pulse of radiation that seemed...

We’ve written extensively about the orbital debris problem here on Universe Today. In a nutshell, just about every time we launch something from Earth there are bits and pieces that are left behind. Screws. Paint fleck...

The January digest of upcoming space and astronomy events. This month sees the launch of satellites to monitor soil conditions on Earth and give an early warning of space weather, and the 225th meeting of the American As...

A 14th magnitude supernova discovered in the spiral galaxy NGC 4666 earlier this month has recently brightened to 11th magnitude, making it not only the second brightest supernova of the year, but an easy find in an 8-in...

If all goes well — and there’s no guarantee of this — NASA’s venerable Mercury sentinel may have an extra month of life left in it before it goes on a death plunge to the planet’s surface. Managers think they h...

Feel like visiting a dwarf planet today? How about a comet or the planet Mars? Luckily for us, there are sentinels across the Solar System bringing us incredible images, allowing us to browse the photos and follow in the...

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has picked up the faint, ghostly glow of stars ejected from ancient galaxies that were gravitationally ripped apart several billion years ago. The mayhem happened 4 billion light-years away,...

Today: Ocular Health Tonometry Test: Virts took his blood pressure, then Cristoforetti, acting as the Crew Medical Officer (CMO), performed a tonometry test of Virts as part of a regular series of tests for Ocular Health...

For years, astronomers have studied the formation of galaxies using computer simulations, but with limited success. The galaxies that formed in previous simulations were often too massive, too small, too old and too sphe...

Looking for life on other planets is not straightforward. It usually relies on chemical detection, which might be limited or even completely irrelevant to alien biology. On the other hand, motion is a trait of all life, ...

The Dawn mission will arrive at the dwarf planet in March 2015. The probe uses an ion engine to propel it throughout the solar system. Find out how they work.

Together, the space probes Dawn and New Horizons have been in flight for a collective 17 years. One remained close to home and the other departed to parts of the Solar System of which little is known. They now share a co...