• Visualizing milestones of the ExoMars 2016 mission

    The European Space Agency (ESA) has established the ExoMars programme to research the question if life ever existed on Mars. The programme will investigate the Martian environment through two missions. The first one, consisting of an Orbiter plus and Entry, Descent…

  • Isolated hills on Pluto floating in the sea of frozen nitrogen

    NASA's New Horizons missions collected images and data indicating the isolated hills on Pluto may be fragments of water ice from the planet's surrounding uplands. The hills are thought to float in a sea of frozen nitrogen and move just like the icebergs in…

  • China publishes new high-quality images of the Moon’s surface

    The China National Space Administration has published hundreds of previously unseen high-quality images, videos and scientific data of the Moon. The information was gathered by the Chang'e-3 lunar rover and is now available to anyone who is interested in it. …

  • Jason-3 mission launch replay – January 17, 2016

    SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket will attempt to deliver the Jason-3 satellite to low-Earth orbit at 18:42 UTC on January 17, 2016. If all goes as planned, the Jason-3 satellite will be deployed approximately one hour after launch. This mission also marks an…

  • Cassini makes final close flyby images of Saturn’s moon Enceladus

    NASA's Cassini spacecraft made its 22nd and the final close flyby of Saturn's moon Enceladus on December 19, 2015 at 17:49 UTC and will now continue to observe the moon from a much greater distance. The spacecraft passed Enceladus at a distance of 4 999 km…

  • Blazar bonanza

    A long time ago in a galaxy half the universe away, a flood of high-energy gamma rays began its journey to Earth. When they arrived in April, NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope caught the outburst, which helped two ground-based gamma-ray observatories detect…

  • Two new studies offer new clues to Ceres’ bright spots and origins

    Two new studies reveal some of Ceres' well-kept secrets, including highly anticipated insights about mysterious bright features found all over the dwarf planet's surface. In one study, scientists identify this bright material as a kind of salt, while the…

  • New close-up pictures of Pluto – the best for decades to come

    NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has sent back the first in a series of the sharpest views of Pluto obtained during its July flyby. These close-up pictures of Pluto may be the best ones for decades to come. Each week New Horizons transmits data stored on its…