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The NASA New Horizons spacecraft – the fastest robotic explorer ever built – is celebrating its sixth anniversary flying through space. The probe is heading for Pluto, but won't get there until 2015. At this point, all systems are nominal, and everything is going according to plan.Officials from the ... |
20 January 2012
10:41 GMT |
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A new photograph of Ligeia Mare depicts the landscape feature in beautiful colors that remind us of Earth. Yet, the sea is located on Titan, Saturn's largest moon, and is filled with liquid hydrocarbons such as methane and ethane, rather than water.
Even so, Titan and Earth are not that different. Granted, atm... |
30 December 2011
03:23 GMT |
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The Jovian moon Io is one of the most promising candidates for supporting life in the solar system. Other celestial bodies, such as Jupiter's Europa and the Saturnine moons Enceladus and Titan, are also good candidates, but only Io could potentially support extreme lifeforms.
One of the things that separate th... |
28 December 2011
10:55 GMT |
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A group of scientists proposed in a new scientific paper that Earth has two moons, the familiar one we see in the sky at night, influencing our planet's tides, and another one, only as big as a very small car.
The asteroid is not always the same, the team behind the paper believes. They say that there is a spac... |
23 December 2011
10:35 GMT |
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The NASA Cassini spacecraft carried out a new flyby of Saturn's moon Dione on Monday, December 12. While the main science data obtained during the maneuver have yet to be compiled, researchers say that the flyby did provide some interesting new views of the Saturnine moon system.
Experts at the NASA Jet Propul... |
13 December 2011
02:57 GMT |
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As the fastest spacecraft ever built is heading towards Pluto, mission controllers met with planetary scientists to discuss how to safeguard the New Horizons probe from instant destruction as it reaches the dwarf planet. This is scheduled to occur in July 2015.
While the object and its four moons are well understoo... |
29 November 2011
08:59 GMT |
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The Russian Federal Space Agency's (RosCosmos) Phobos-Grunt mission, which took off from Baikonur a couple of days ago, is still stranded in Earth's orbit. Engineers are now trying to figure out what happened that the spacecraft's main thrusters did not ignite on time.
While the failure comes as a blo... |
10 November 2011
13:01 GMT |
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According to the conclusions of a study published in the August 4 issue of the top scientific journal Nature, it would appear that our planet had two moons when it first formed. These objects then collided with each other to form the Moon as we know it now, the team behind the research argues. The second moon would h... |
4 August 2011
05:36 GMT |
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The Hubble Space Telescope can add another impressive achievement under its belt. Experts using the observatory to check for rings around the dwarf planet Pluto announce the discovery of a new moon orbiting the distant object, the fourth one so far. Pluto is known to have one large moon called Charon, which is around... |
20 July 2011
09:51 GMT |
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One of the most debated mysteries surrounding the large asteroid/protoplanet Vesta is whether the celestial body has a moon or not. As Dawn gets ready to enter orbit around the space rock, the issue is about to be resolved, scientists on both sides of the fence believe. There are many things that experts hope the NAS... |
11 July 2011
08:27 GMT |
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Exactly five years ago today, astronomers at the Boulder, Colorado-based Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) decided on what to call two of Pluto's moons, that were discovered barely a year before. After nearly 12 months on debates about possible names, the team decided on Hydra and Nix. Both of these diminutive... |
21 June 2011
03:07 GMT |
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A team of scientists led by expert Gaetan Borgonie of the University of Ghent managed to discover some amazing creatures recently. They identified multicellular, complex organisms living as much as 1 kilometer under the crust of the planet. Investigators were conducting researches deep down in order to understand how... |
2 June 2011
10:56 GMT |
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Following new studies conducted on the Saturnine moon Enceladus, astronomers determined that this object is the most likely in the solar system to contain life. It exceeded its companion moon Titan in this area only recently.Until now, astrobiologists believed that they had the highest chances of finding life at othe... |
2 June 2011
04:47 GMT |
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In-depth analysis of a series of datasets collected by a NASA spacecraft last year revealed a surprising level of activity on and near the surface of the Saturnine moon Enceladus. The investigation was conducted on information collected on March 12, 2010, by the Cassini orbiter.This spacecraft has been in orbit aroun... |
14 February 2011
09:09 GMT |
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An orbiter operated by the European Space Agency (ESA) around Mars has recently captured a new series of images of one of the least reflective bodies in the solar system, the moon Phobos. The object is the target of an upcoming Russian sample-return mission. Phobos is the largest moon around the Red Planet, experts s... |
25 January 2011
15:01 GMT |
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Not many people know that Mars has two small moons. And not many astronomers know the reason why these two space bodies exist in orbit around the Red Planet. Now, a debate on their origin brings three competing theories seeking to explain their existence face to face. The discussion is focused on the Martian moon Pho... |
6 January 2011
09:56 GMT |
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A team of astronomers announced a new theory seeking to explain the interesting equatorial ridge that sets the Saturnine moon Iapetus apart from the crow. Speaking at a conference yesterday, December 15, experts said that an impact with a mini-moon around the space body may have been responsible. In all fairness, Ia... |
16 December 2010
03:07 GMT |
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A team of astronomers challenges the established idea that Saturn's massive rings formed when a comet passed too close to the planet, or when such a body struck one of its moons. The new idea holds that the structures appeared as a result of a collision between Saturn and a very large moon.
The group believes... |
13 December 2010
02:34 GMT |
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The international astronomical community is currently trying to assess whether a space body called 2002 VE68 can indeed be classified as a Venusian moon. The second planet from the Sun never had a satellite before, so experts want to be sure that they get the calculations right.The case of Earth is pretty clear-cut, ... |
10 December 2010
04:47 GMT |
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Experts from NASA announce that new data on Saturn's inner moons seem to indicate that the large amount of scars they have on their surfaces was produced by a cosmic bombardment.These cosmic events mostly affected the gas giant's inner, mid-sized moons, including Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys, Dione and Rhea. Al... |
8 October 2010
02:19 GMT |
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Saturn is surrounded by a host of moons, some of them large and very interesting, and others arguably less so. But the gas giant also features some very weird moonlets, cosmic objects that are too small to merit any additional investigation, but which exist around the planet nonetheless. In a groundbreaking new study... |
10 June 2010
03:28 GMT |
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The appearance of gas giants has puzzled scientists ever since the first clear photos of their surface became available. This is especially true in the case of Saturn and Jupiter, both of which feature prominent stripes. Researchers now believe they may have just discovered one of the mechanisms that might have led t... |
12 May 2010
19:01 GMT |
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Using their Chile-based Very Large Telescope (VLT), astronomers from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) managed to conduct a unique survey of Neptune's moon Triton. The investigation, which was made in infrared wavelengths, revealed an astounding fact, namely that the southern hemisphere of the small space ... |
7 April 2010
17:41 GMT |
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When the NASA/ESA spacecraft Cassini first discovered that the Saturnine moon Enceladus was spewing out plumes of ice and water vapors from cracks at its south pole, they were amazed. This was a one-of-a-kind observation, and it changed the way astronomers looked at the gas giant's rings. Cassini revealed that s... |
24 March 2010
07:10 GMT |
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Today, officials at the European Space Agency (ESA) have released images snapped by the orbiter Mars Express of the Martian moon Phobos. The flyby mission took place on March 7, and it brought the spacecraft the closest to the space rock of any other flights to the area. The instruments aboard the ESA orbiter manage... |
15 March 2010
07:41 GMT |
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First seen on March 19, 1915, the planet Pluto has been the subject of much debate even before it was discovered. While analyzing perturbations in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune, astronomers hypothesized that another celestial body, dubbed Planet X, must be influencing the two. After Pluto was found, the tenth obje... |
18 February 2010
18:01 GMT |
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One of the things that have always fascinated astronomers about Uranus, the seventh planet from the Sun, is the fact that its axis of rotation is tilted sideways, to a large extent. In fact, it nearly reaches the plane of its revolution around the star, which is something unique to the ice giant. After the planet sta... |
3 December 2009
14:01 GMT |
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The joint NASA/ESA mission Cassini-Huygens, currently in orbit around Saturn, has recently beamed back some amazing photos of a beautiful geyser eruption that took place on the moon Enceladus. The experts who investigated the images say that the emissions consisted mainly of water vapors, bringing further proof that ... |
5 November 2009
02:23 GMT |
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Recent images of some of Saturn's moons have revealed strange patches of color on the surface of the five innermost natural satellites, Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys, Dione, and Rhea. Some of the unusual patterns have been seen before during previous flights, but others are totally new, the investigators for the miss... |
20 October 2009
16:31 GMT |
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The image most of us have of Saturn is that of a gas giant closely surrounded by its rings, which are very thin, yet very wide. Now, astronomers prove us wrong, showing that the planet indeed has another, massive ring around it, which extends as much as 13 million kilometers away from it, around the moon Phoebe. This... |
7 October 2009
05:40 GMT |
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After more than seven years of efforts poured into this initiative, experts can now finally boast the first geological map of Jupiter's moon Ganymede. This is only the third moon in the solar system to get such an “honor,” in addition to the Moon, and Jupiter's cratered Callisto. The detailed do... |
16 September 2009
03:32 GMT |
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Between 1949 and 1961, the comet 147P/Kushida-Muramatsu was considered to be a moon of Jupiter. The large gas giant captured the celestial body in an irregular orbit around it, and its influence only became dim enough to let the comet escape after about 12 years of “captivity.” Dr. David Asher will presen... |
14 September 2009
05:48 GMT |
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Ever since the 17th century, when Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei discovered that Saturn had rings around it, astronomers and astrophysicists have been trying to come up with a plausible explanation for how they were formed and why. To this day, the answer has eluded them, and each new scientific find about the pl... |
24 August 2009
16:51 GMT |
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Saturn's moon Enceladus is, in many aspects, one of the most peculiar celestial bodies in the solar system. Once regarded as nothing more than a ball of frozen ice and dust, it revealed itself in 2006 to be still active, and potentially even harboring liquid water underneath the surface. Additionally, its weird ... |
21 July 2009
06:39 GMT |
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Some 234 years before the planet was officially found, Galileo may have made the earliest observations of Neptune, a new study of the famous astronomer's diary and notebooks reveals. Professor David Jamieson, the head of the University of Melbourne School of Physics, made the astonishing claim, after studying in... |
10 July 2009
02:18 GMT |
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Every now and then, the moons of Saturn align themselves in such a manner that they either throw their shadows on the surface of the planet, making them look like they're chasing each other, or they cast them on the giant planet's rings, creating vertical structures that are beautiful to look at. One such i... |
15 June 2009
20:01 GMT |
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Jupiter's ice-covered moon Europa is one of the safest bets in the Universe of finding life, or, otherwise put, it's one of the few places other than the Earth that astronomers believe it's able to sustain life to some extent. The experts are not talking about mammals, or other higher creatures, but ab... |
6 May 2009
06:17 GMT |
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Over the recent years, an increased number of concepts referring to the “handedness of life” have begun to appear, and in areas of research few would have thought possible. For instance, astronomers are now working with scientists on the creation of a new means of looking for life on other planets, throug... |
28 April 2009
20:01 GMT |
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The Hubble Space Telescope proves, indeed, to be invaluable for both NASA and ESA, as evidenced by one of its recent snapshots of Saturn, which has been photographed in a rare alignment with four of its moons. The configuration only occurs once in 14 to 15 years, and the last time astronomers and other observers were... |
18 March 2009
02:48 GMT |
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Not many people know that the Red Planet, which has been intensely-scrutinized over the past few years with several rovers and orbiters, also has two very small moons, Deimos and Phobos. Discovered in 1877 by Asaph Hall, the two celestial bodies orbiting Mars are thought to be captured asteroids that can no longer es... |
10 March 2009
04:15 GMT |
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Despite the fact that Jupiter has a number of approximately 63 named satellites, only four of them are generally referred to as the planet's moons. These four celestial bodies, Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, are also dubbed the Galilean Moons, in honor of the great Italian astronomer. Now, researchers have e... |
9 March 2009
04:28 GMT |
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Every time you point the telescope towards Jupiter you'll most certainly see one of its four large satellites discovered by Galileo in the early 1600s. Usually, two or three of the moons can be easily spotted and sometimes even all four of them. On a small telescope, Jupiter's moons appear as small stars sh... |
16 May 2008
09:27 GMT |
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Such strange flying-saucer-shaped objects mostly common in Saturn's rings have puzzled scientists. It appears that they form from gathering particles of ice and dust from the rings, much in the same way planets form by buiding up matter from accretion disks spinning around stars, and could provide us with valuab... |
7 December 2007
02:54 GMT |
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