Space Exploration news

NASA's LCROSS Reveals Target Crater For Lunar South Pole Impacts

NASA's LCROSS Reveals Target Crater For Lunar South Pole Impacts

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

created Sep 11, 2009 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (8) | comments 2

(PhysOrg.com) -- NASA has selected a final destination for its Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, after a journey of nearly 5.6 million miles that included several orbits around Earth ...


Rebirth of an icon: Hubble's first images since Servicing Mission 4

Rebirth of an icon: Hubble's first images since Servicing Mission 4

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

created Sep 09, 2009 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (24) | comments 4

(PhysOrg.com) -- Astronomers today declared the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope a fully rejuvenated observatory ready for a new decade of exploration, with the release of observations from four of its six ...


Are Sunspots Disappearing?

Are Sunspots Disappearing?

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

created Sep 03, 2009 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (23) | comments 15

The sun is in the pits of the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century. Weeks and sometimes whole months go by without even a single tiny sunspot. The quiet has dragged out for more than two years, prompting ...


Long-standing sunspot puzzle solved

Long-standing sunspot puzzle solved

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

created Aug 19, 2009 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (20) | comments 4

(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists at the Universities of Glasgow, Strathclyde and Central Lancashire have used 21st Century solar observations and image processing to finally solve a sunspot puzzle first noticed ...


The Ultimate Long Distance Communication

The Ultimate Long Distance Communication

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

created Aug 19, 2009 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (20) | comments 11

Anyone who's vacationed in the mountains or lived on a farm knows that it's hard to get good internet access or a strong cell phone signal in a remote area. Communicating across great distances has always ...


NASA researchers make first discovery of life's building block in comet

First discovery of life's building block in comet made

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

created Aug 17, 2009 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (18) | comments 13

(PhysOrg.com) -- NASA scientists have discovered glycine, a fundamental building block of life, in samples of comet Wild 2 returned by NASA's Stardust spacecraft.


moon rock

Scientists Make Oxygen Out of Moon Rock

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

created Aug 11, 2009 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (28) | comments 21

(PhysOrg.com) -- If humans ever create a lunar base, one of the biggest challenges will be figuring out how to breathe. Transporting oxygen to the moon is extremely expensive, so for the past several years ...


Enceladus

Mini Gradiometer Could Map Other Planets' Gravity Fields

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

created Aug 10, 2009 | popularity 4.3 / 5 (6) | comments 1

(PhysOrg.com) -- Although it may seem like gravity is the same everywhere on the Earth, it actually varies a small amount from place to place. Factors such as mountains, ocean trenches, and interior density ...


Venus

Expanding Spot on Venus Puzzles Astronomers

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

created Aug 04, 2009 | popularity 4.2 / 5 (30) | comments 7

(PhysOrg.com) -- The expanding spot discovered on Venus last month may not have garnered as much attention as the meteor impact with Jupiter, but its cause is certainly more puzzling. ...


Crashing comets not likely the cause of Earth's mass extinctions

Crashing comets not likely the cause of Earth's mass extinctions: new research

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

created Jul 30, 2009 | popularity 3.7 / 5 (18) | comments 14

(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists have debated how many mass extinction events in Earth's history were triggered by a space body crashing into the planet's surface. Most agree that an asteroid collision 65 million ...


Final frontier: Crowd sees spaceship launcher fly (AP)

Final frontier: Crowd sees spaceship launcher fly

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

created Jul 28, 2009 | popularity 4.4 / 5 (7) | comments 8

(AP) -- Hundreds of earthlings turned their faces to the sky Monday to see an airplane built to launch a ship into space, watching the gleaming white craft soar overhead.


Mars breakthrough: Scientists uncover red planet's hot and steamy secrets

Mars breakthrough: Scientists uncover red planet's hot and steamy secrets

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

created Jul 21, 2009 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (20) | comments 3

(PhysOrg.com) -- An analysis of Martian meteorites has led scientists to believe that Mars was molten for up to 100 million years after it formed, thwarting the evolution of early life on the planet.


New NASA Images Indicate Object Hits Jupiter

New Images Indicate Object Hits Jupiter

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

created Jul 21, 2009 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (22) | comments 11

(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists have found evidence that another object has bombarded Jupiter, exactly 15 years after the first impacts by the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9.


Earth & Moon

Gravity wells could provide 'parking lots' for spaceships

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

created Jul 15, 2009 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (20) | comments 22

Nature has provided five huge rest stops far out in space for the convenience of spacecraft traveling from Earth. Some NASA folks call them "parking lots" in space.


Primitive asteroids in the main asteroid belt may have formed far from the sun

Primitive asteroids in the main asteroid belt may have formed far from the sun (w/ Video)

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

created Jul 15, 2009 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (9) | comments 0

Many of the objects found today in the asteroid belt located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter may have formed in the outermost reaches of the solar system, according to an international team of astronomers ...