Space Exploration news

LCROSS Impact Finds Water on the Moon

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

Nov 13, 2009 | 4.9 / 5 (31) | 15

(PhysOrg.com) -- The argument that the moon is a dry, desolate place no longer holds water. Secrets the moon has been holding, for perhaps billions of years, are now being revealed to the delight of scientists ...

Possible Signs of Liquid Water Flowing on Mars

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

Dec 06, 2006 | 4.5 / 5 (68) | 0

NASA photographs have revealed bright new deposits seen in two gullies on Mars that suggest water carried sediment through them sometime during the past seven years.

SMART-1 impacts Moon (Update 2)

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

Sep 03, 2006 | 4.6 / 5 (32) | 0

At 07:42:22 CEST (05:42:22 UT) today, the SMART-1 spacecraft impacted the Moon's surface as planned, ending ESA's first solar-powered mission to another celestial body and Europe's first mission to the Moon. ...

Engineers envision exploring Mars with mini probes

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

Jul 18, 2006 | 4.9 / 5 (22) | 0

MIT engineers and scientist colleagues have a new vision for the future of Mars exploration: a swarm of probes, each the size of a baseball, spreading out across the planet in every direction.

Life on Mars theory boosted by new methane study

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

Dec 08, 2009 | 4.8 / 5 (26) | 10

Scientists have ruled out the possibility that methane is delivered to Mars by meteorites, raising fresh hopes that the gas might be generated by life on the red planet, in research published tomorrow in Earth an ...

Virgin Galactic unveils commercial spaceship

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

Dec 07, 2009 | 4.6 / 5 (8) | 2

SpaceShipTwo (SS2) and its mothership, VMS Eve (WhiteKnightTwo) herald a new era in commercial space flight with daily space tourism flights set to commence from Spaceport America in New Mexico after test ...

Virgin Galactic readies maiden suborbital flight

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

Dec 06, 2009 | 5 / 5 (22) | 10

British billionaire Sir Richard Branson will unveil a craft on Monday that could soon carry tourists on an out-of-this-world trip into space -- for a mere 200,000 dollars. (Update: Virgin Galactic unveils commercial spaceship) ...

Sandtrapped Rover Makes a Big Discovery

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

Dec 03, 2009 | 4.8 / 5 (54) | 11

Homer's Iliad tells the story of Troy, a city besieged by the Greeks in the Trojan War. Today, a lone robot sits besieged in the sands of Troy while engineers and scientists plot its escape.

Scientists explain puzzling lake asymmetry on Titan

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

Nov 29, 2009 | 4.4 / 5 (14) | 0

Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) suggest that the eccentricity of Saturn's orbit around the sun may be responsible for the unusually uneven distribution of methane and ethane ...

Cassini Captures Ghostly Dance of Saturn's Northern Lights (w/ Video)

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

Nov 24, 2009 | 4.9 / 5 (10) | 1

(PhysOrg.com) -- In the first video showing the auroras above the northern latitudes of Saturn, Cassini has spotted the tallest known "northern lights" in the solar system, flickering in shape and brightness ...

New computer-developed map shows more extensive valley network on Mars

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

Nov 23, 2009 | 4.4 / 5 (9) | 1

(PhysOrg.com) -- New research adds to the growing body of evidence suggesting the Red Planet once had an ocean.

Cassini's Big Sky: The View from the Center of Our Solar System

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

Nov 20, 2009 | 4.8 / 5 (15) | 1

(PhysOrg.com) -- When NASA's Cassini spacecraft began orbiting Saturn five years ago, a dozen highly-tuned science instruments set to work surveying, sniffing, analyzing and scrutinizing the Saturnian system.

Rosetta bound for outer Solar System after final Earth swingby (w/ Video)

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

Nov 13, 2009 | 4.9 / 5 (7) | 1

(PhysOrg.com) -- This morning, mission controllers confirmed that ESA’s comet chaser Rosetta had swung by Earth at 8:45 CET as planned, skimming past our planet to pick up a gravitational boost for an epic ...

A bubbling ball of gas (w/ Video)

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

Nov 11, 2009 | 4.9 / 5 (18) | 7

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 ...

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 ...