Space Exploration news

WISE Is Chilling Out

10 hours ago | 4.7 / 5 (3) | 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- Engineers are busy cooling the science instrument on NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. The spacecraft is scheduled to blast into space from Vandenberg Air Force Base in ...

Seeing stars, Proba-2 platform passes its first health check

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

11 hours ago | 4.5 / 5 (2) | 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- Into its second week in orbit, Proba-2's spacecraft platform has proven to be in excellent health. This leaves the way clear for commissioning the many new technology payloads aboard the mini-satellite, ...

A Tale of Planetary Woe (w/ Video)

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

11 hours ago | 4.3 / 5 (8) | 2

Once upon a time — roughly four billion years ago — Mars was warm and wet, much like Earth. Liquid water flowed on the Martian surface in long rivers that emptied into shallow seas. A thick atmosphere blanketed ...

A lightning strike in Africa helps take the pulse of the sun

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

13 hours ago | 4.9 / 5 (8) | 0

Sunspots, which rotate around the sun's surface, tell us a great deal about our own planet. Scientists rely on them, for instance, to measure the sun's rotation or to prepare long-range forecasts of the Earth's ...

A bubbling ball of gas (w/ Video)

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

16 hours ago | 4.9 / 5 (15) | 5

The Sun is a bubbling mass. Packages of gas rise and sink, lending the sun its grainy surface structure, its granulation. Dark spots appear and disappear, clouds of matter dart up - and behind the whole thing ...