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…
On the fourth of July, many Americans will be looking skyward in celebration of their nation’s independence. On the same date, NASA, and astronomers worldwide will also look skyward in celebration of another great achievement – Juno’s arrival to…
NASA's Juno mission, launched August 5, 2011, is now just a few weeks and about 17.8 million km (11.1 million miles) away from Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system. Its mission team is using these last weeks to evaluate and re-evaluate every portion…
NASA's scientists have produced a mosaic of all the highest-resolution images of Pluto collected by the New Horizons spacecraft. The collection of images with a resolution of about 80 m (260 feet) per pixel now extends across the planet's hemisphere that…
Scientists analyzing data acquired by ESA's comet chaser Rosetta while orbiting comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko have discovered organic molecules regarded as crucial for the origin of life on Earth. The ingredients include the amino acid glycine (C2H5NO2),…
Yuri Milner, a billionaire from Russia, announced his proposal on developing a lightweight spacecraft capable of journeying about 40 trillion km through space toward Alpha Centauri, our nearest star and it's planets, at a conference held in New York City on…
A team of scientists from the University of Cape Town and University of the Western Cape in South Africa have discovered that supermassive black holes in the distant universe are spinning out radio jets in the same direction. This is the first time researchers found…
A new map of Mars' gravity was released this month, providing a glimpse into the hidden interior of the planet. The map, most detailed to date, was derived using Doppler and range tracking data collected by NASA's Deep Space Network from three NASA…
Scientists using archived NASA data have discovered a strange new kind of galactic beast in the cosmic wilderness. Dubbed "super spirals," these unprecedented galaxies dwarf our own spiral galaxy, the Milky Way, and compete in size and brightness with the…
