Space News

In science fiction, explorers can hop in futuristic spaceships and traverse half the galaxy in the blink of a plot hole. However, this sidelines the navigational acrobatics required in order to guarantee real-life missio...

This image shows what appears to be a large patch of fresh, untrodden snow - a dream for any lover of the holiday season. However, it's a little too distant for a last-minute winter getaway: this feature, known as Korole...

Before moving NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, and to assure that it's kept clean and safe, Webb got a very special wrapping treatment. The wrapping acts as a "mobile clean room," safeguarding the technological marvel ...

The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over the island of South Georgia. Linked with the South Sandwich Islands to form a British Overseas Territory, this southern Atlantic island is a haven for a vast array of wildl...

The December 2018 close approach by the large, near-Earth asteroid 2003 SD220 has provided astronomers an outstanding opportunity to obtain detailed radar images of the surface and shape of the object and to improve the ...

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory News and Features:

NASA’s InSight lander has deployed its first instrument on the surface of Mars. On December 19th, the stationary lander used its robotic arm to deploy the SEIS (Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure), marking the f...

Uranus is a lopsided oddity, the only planet to spin on its side. Scientists now think they know how it got that way: It was pushed over by a rock at least twice as big as Earth.

A member of NASA's "Thirty-Five New Guys" and the 35th woman to fly into space will enter the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame in April.

This festive NASA Hubble Space Telescope image resembles a holiday wreath made of sparkling lights. The bright southern hemisphere star RS Puppis, at the center of the image, is swaddled in a gossamer cocoon of reflectiv...

Today marks the solstice, when the seasons change, and Google has designed a pair of charming animated doodles to commemorate the celestial moment.

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is bearing down on Ultima Thule, its New Year's flyby target in the far away Kuiper Belt. Among its approach observations over the past three months, the spacecraft has been taking hundreds...

December 24 is the 50th anniversary of Earthrise, arguably one of the most profound images in the history of human culture. When astronaut William Anders photographed a fragile blue sphere set in dark space peeking over ...

The Chang’e-4 mission could have major effects on Earthbound science and politics --

Barely visible to the naked eye, Comet 46P/Wirtanen keeps some secrets so close that only radar can uncover them.

Is there life beyond Earth?

Half a century of Christmases ago, the NASA space mission Apollo 8 became the first manned craft to leave low Earth orbit, atop the unprecedentedly powerful Saturn V rocket, and head out to circumnavigate another celesti...

In 2003, scientists from NASA's Goddard Space Center made the first-ever detection of trace amounts of methane in Mars' atmosphere, a find which was confirmed a year later by the ESA's Mars Express orbiter. In December o...

From the Neolithic to present times, the amount of sunlight we see in a day has had a profound impact on human culture. We are fast approaching the winter solstice for the Northern hemisphere, which takes place on Decemb...

The MILO Institute's mission is to augment the work of traditional space agencies by enabling more frequent, affordable and science-driven missions to be flown. SpaceNews.com

A cutting-edge instrument developed by scientists at the University of Oxford has passed critical tests and gained a powerful adaptive optics system.

Modern galaxies show a wide diversity, including dwarf galaxies, irregular galaxies, spiral galaxies, and massive elliptical galaxies. This final type, massive elliptical galaxies, provides astronomers with a puzzle. Alt...