Space Exploration news

WISE Is Chilling Out

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

13 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

14 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

14 hours ago | 4.3 / 5 (8) | 4

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

16 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

18 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 ...

The 2009 Leonid Meteor Shower

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

Nov 10, 2009 | 4.8 / 5 (4) | 0

This year's Leonid meteor shower peaks on Tuesday, Nov. 17th. If forecasters are correct, the shower should produce a mild but pretty sprinkling of meteors over North America followed by a more intense outburst ...

The Stars My Destination

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

Nov 10, 2009 | 4.9 / 5 (21) | 1

The Voyager spacecraft are now in the outermost layer of the heliosphere, traveling toward interstellar space - the first man-made spacecraft to travel such a vast distance from Earth.

Butterfly payload to launch Nov. 16 on space shuttle

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

Nov 10, 2009 | 5 / 5 (1) | 0

When NASA's space shuttle Atlantis launches for the International Space Station on Nov. 16 it will carry a University of Colorado at Boulder butterfly experiment that will be monitored by thousands of K-12 ...

Vatican searches for extra-terrestrial life

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

Nov 10, 2009 | 5 / 5 (2) | 0

Is there life on other planets? The Vatican has asked that age-old question over the past five days during a "study week" on astrobiology gathering leading scientists from around the world.

Rocket with new module for space station blasts off

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

Nov 10, 2009 | 5 / 5 (1) | 0

A Soyuz rocket carrying a new Russian-made module for the International Space Station blasted off on Tuesday from the Baikonur space base in Kazakhstan, television pictures showed.

Planetary Society plans new 'solar sail'

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

Nov 09, 2009 | 4.7 / 5 (14) | 1

(AP) -- Four years after its first solar sail ended up in the ocean instead of orbit, The Planetary Society announced Monday that by the end of 2010 it will try again to launch a spacecraft that will be propelled by the ...

NASA on crusade to debunk 2012 apocalypse myths

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

Nov 09, 2009 | 4.9 / 5 (7) | 4

The world is not coming to an end on December 21, 2012, the US space agency insisted Monday in a rare campaign to dispel widespread rumors fueled by the Internet and a new Hollywood movie.