A new planet-hunting instrument has been installed on the WIYN telescope, on Arizona’s Kitt Peak. NEID spectrometer (pronounced 'NOO-id') is one of the first instruments of its kind with the precision to detect small, terrestrial planets around nearby…
Astronomers from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and Curtin University, in collaboration with colleagues from Europe, Canada, and South Africa published the most accurate catalog of measurements towards mapping the Milky…
University of Iowa researchers have reported on November 4, 2019, that the spacecraft Voyager 2 has entered the interstellar medium (ISM), the region of space outside the heliosphere or the protective bubble particles and magnetic fields produced by the Sun….
JAXA's Hayabusa2 spacecraft has released MINERVA-II2 with its last rover toward asteroid Ryugu on Thursday, October 3, 2019. The rover is expected to land by October 8 as part of its final mission before returning to Earth, according to Japan Aerospace…
The unmanned Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa2 has arrived at asteroid Ryugu, currently located 284 million km (176 million miles) away from Earth. The spacecraft will attempt 3 brief touch-and-go landings over the next 18 months to collect samples and return them to…
NASA's New Horizons spacecraft doesn't zoom past its next science target until New Year's Day 2019, but the Kuiper Belt object, known as 2014 MU69, is already revealing surprises. Scientists have been sifting through data gathered from observing the…
Researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute in Germany have discovered a spectacular system consisting of two stars with three rotating planet-forming accretion discs around them. This is a binary star system where each star has its own planet-forming disc and in…
NASA's Juno spacecraft has executed the first of 36 orbital flybys on August 27, 2016, when it came about 4 200 km (2 500 miles) above Jupiter's swirling clouds. It was Juno's first flyby with instruments switch on and it sent back first-ever images of…
NASA's Solar Probe Plus mission has moved one step closer to its launch, scheduled for summer 2018, after passing a design review. After the successful review, the mission will transition to final assembly and implementation. It is the first mission into the…
A new dark spot, dark vortex in the atmosphere, has been discovered on Neptune and confirmed this month by the Hubble Space Telescope. Though similar features were seen during the Voyager 2 flyby of Neptune in 1989 and by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1994, this…
