Space science news

Artist’s view of two Galileo satellites released into orbit. – See more at: http://spacenews.com/soyuz-rocket-places-pair-of-galileo-satellites-into-orbit/#sthash.5eHgPHZH.dpufCredit: ESA PARIS — A Europeanized Russian Soyuz rocket equipped with a Fregat upper stage on Sept. 11 successfully placed two European Galileo positioning, navigation and timing satellites into medium-Earth orbit, with two more scheduled for launch in December aboard a Soyuz. […]

PREVIOUS | NEXT 1 of 10 Pluto: More Than Expected Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute New images beamed down from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft show a stunning variety of complicated surface features on Pluto. [Read the whole story. ] 2 of 10 Across the Universe Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls An outstanding new […]

Artist’s concept illustrating an icy planet-forming disk around the star TW Hydrae, located about 175 light-years away in the constellation Hydra. Astronomers found huge stores of cool water vapor (illustrated in blue) in the frigid outer regions of the star system, where comets will take shape.Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech This article was originally published on The Conversation . […]

A Soyuz spacecraft carrying cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, the European Space Agency’s Andreas Mogensen and Kazakhstan’s Aidyn Aimbetov lands in Kazakhstan on Sept. 11, 2015.Credit: NASA TV Three astronauts returned to Earth from the International Space Station Friday evening (Sept. 11), taking the orbiting lab’s population back down to its normal level of six crewmembers. A […]

Graduate student Jean Paul Santos holds the 4×4 prototype antenna that may help Mars rovers speak directly to Earth, bypassing the orbiter that currently serves as a middleman.Credit: UCLA Talking to rovers on the surface of Mars could become much easier, thanks to a new type of antenna that would send messages directly between the […]

Matt Damon, as Ares III astronaut Mark Watney in “The Martian,” wears Under Armour sportswear to train.Credit: 20th Century Fox There is now a new way to dress like an astronaut, or at least a fictional future Mars crew member, thanks to a joint marketing promotion between the movie “The Martian” and the sports outfitter […]

Theory said small irregular galaxies shouldn’t have concentrations of bass and heavy elements dense enough to give birth to bright clusters of new stars. But ALMA astronomers have located clouds within in a nearby galaxy nicknamed WLM with potential to create these ‘stellar chandeliers.’ Credit: NRAO To source