The new planet-hunting telescope TESS was successfully launched today by NASA, and Australia will play a key role in checking out any new worlds it discovers.
TESS will soon be our eye in the sky.
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
When NASA first started planning the Kepler mission, no one knew if the universe held any planets outside our solar system. Thousands of exoplanets later, the search enters a new phase.
Google's artificial intelligence has been taught to look for planets around other stars. It's already making new discoveries that scientists have missed.
The discovery of tiny ripples in space from the violent collision of dense stars could help solve many mysteries – including where the gold in our jewellery comes from.
The last signals from Cassini space probe before it burns up in Saturn's atmosphere will tracked by the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex.
Cassini makes the first radio occultation of Saturn’s rings producing this simulated image with green for particles smaller than 5cm and purple where particles are larger.
NASA/JPL
The Cassini space probe took us up close and through the beautiful rings of Saturn. It captured some amazing images, and even the sound of the rings during its mission.
A Cassini portrait of five of Saturn’s moons. Janus (179km across) is on the far left, Pandora (81km across) orbits between the A ring and the thin F ring, Enceladus (504km across) is centre, Rhea (1,528km), is bisected by the right edge of the image and the smaller moon Mimas (396km) is seen beyond Rhea also on the right side of the image.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
With only days to go before NASA's Cassini space probe ends its two-decade mission to explore Saturn, what has it revealed about the ringed planet, the second largest in our solar system?
Lasers being shone from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile.
These lasers help remove the twinkles in the night sky and help astronomers see stars clearer on Earth than ever before.
F. Kamphues/ESO
Jake Clark, University of Southern Queensland; Belinda Nicholson, University of Southern Queensland; Brad Carter, University of Southern Queensland, and Jonti Horner, University of Southern Queensland
How exactly do the stars twinkle in the night sky? As it turns out, the answer is full of hot air... and cold air.