Space News

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrationannounced plans Jan. 8 to retire its decade-old Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) 13 to make way for its next generation: GOES 16 launched in 2016...

X-ray-optics technology has progressed such that future astrophysics X-ray observatories will have orders-of magnitude better performance than existing observatories such as NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. High-resolut...

NASA plans to begin awarding sole source contracts in March to companies flying small satellite constellations as part of an Earth science data pilot program. SpaceNews.com

Something appears to have gone seriously wrong with the secret government mission, codenamed Zuma, that SpaceX launched Sunday night. Exactly what, however, is far from clear. SpaceNews.com

As the National Oceanic and Aeronautics Administration prepares for the March 1 launch of its next Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) S on an Atlas 5 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in ...

The SCHOTT melting team has started casting the first mirror segments that will make up the 39-meter primary mirror (M-1) of the European Large Telescope (ELT)....

Scientists have solved a cosmic mystery by finding evidence that supermassive black holes prevent stars forming in some smaller galaxies.

NASA rockets launched during the Alaskan winter typically explore the interaction of solar winds with Earth's atmosphere and the resulting auroras that dance across the night sky. However this winter, between January 15 ...

Sloan Digital Sky Survey: Today, astronomers from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) announced new measurements of the masses of a large sample of supermassive black holes far beyond the local Universe. The results, bei...

Sloan Digital Sky Survey: Why do galaxies stop making new stars? Today, astronomers from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey report a surprising new answer to that important question: feedback from supermassive black holes bloc...

The first six hexagonal segments for the main mirror of ESO's Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) have been successfully cast by the German company SCHOTT at their facility in Mainz. These segments will form parts of the ELT...

An international research team led by Université de Montréal astrophysicist Lauren Weiss has discovered that exoplanets orbiting the same star tend to have similar sizes and a regular orbital spacing. This pattern, rev...

Keck Observatory: An international research team led by Université de Montréal astrophysicist Lauren Weiss has discovered that exoplanets orbiting the same star tend to have similar sizes and a regular orbital spacing....

Using the now-complete Cassini data set, Cornell astronomers have created a new global topographic map of Saturn's moon Titan that has opened new windows into understanding its liquid flows and terrain....

Media are invited to see a test version of NASA's Orion spacecraft and the hardware that will be used to recover the spacecraft upon its return from space, and talk with team members involved in the recovery operations a...

Crystalline growth, rather than biotic processes, are the likely explanation for strange Martian minerals glimpsed by NASA’s Curiosity rover --

On Jan. 7, 2017, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched the secret Zuma mission for the U.S. government in a nighttime liftoff from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. See photos of the dazzling launch here.

A report by the Wall Street Journal suggests the secret Zuma satellite launched by SpaceX Sunday night (Jan. 7) has failed. But SpaceX's president Gwynne Shotwell says the Falcon 9 rocket did its job.

It is more than two decades since we learnt that the Universe is awash with other worlds. Since 1992, more than 3,500 exoplanets have been discovered orbiting stars other than our Sun. The range of systems is dazzling, w...

NASA hopes to have a major astronomy mission back on track by April after completing efforts to reduce its cost, an agency official said Jan. 8.

Astronauts who flew on space missions with John Young, and others who followed him to space, have paid tribute to their friend and colleague, who was the ninth person to walk on the moon and first space shuttle mission c...

2017 was a banner year for scientists seeking aliens--even though they (apparently) didn't find any. So, what do a strangely fading faraway star, an oddly shaped interstellar interloper in the solar system and a curious ...