As the most visible man-made object in the night sky the International Space Station (ISS) is of significance to humankind. It takes humans from being explorers of space to being residents of space.
The…
Hands up if you want to be a citizen scientist.
__Jens__
Amateur astronomers in Russia made a discovery last week any professional would envy – it seems they may have identified the remnants of the ill-fated Soviet Mars 3 lander, 30 years after it lost contact…
The commercialisation of space is already underway.
Rick Sternbach/Keck Institute for Space Studies
Harvesting space resources will raise living standards worldwide, without further damaging Earth. So how can those resources be tapped in a way that will produce a return on investment?
That question…
The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer has produced results consistent with the presence of dark matter.
NASA
Nobel prizewinner Samuel Ting, early this morning (AEDT), announced the first results from the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) search for dark matter. The findings, published in Physical Review Letters…
Astronaut Buzz Aldrin and his colleagues on the Apollo 11 mission inspired generations to be interested in lunar exploration.
EPA/NASA
Like all relationships, our association with the moon has had its ups and downs.
In this series we’ve talked about the nature of the satellite and how we think it was formed – in a giant collision that…
What do we know about how the moon was created?
EPA/Ali Ali
The more we learn about the formation and evolution of our solar system, the more we realise it was far from a sedate, gentle process. Everywhere we look we find evidence the final stages of planetary…
The moon in total lunar eclipse as seen over Sydney in 2011.
AAP/Sydney Observatory
The moon. Our nearest neighbour. The main source of the ocean’s tides, and a beacon that drives the lives of animals across the globe. And also, to date, the only object beyond Earth on which humans have…
Observations from NASA’s Van Allen Probes have revealed that a third radiation belt can sometimes appear above Earth.
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
NASA revealed this morning (AEST) that its Van Allen Probes have discovered a third, previously unknown, radiation belt around Earth. The belt appears to be transient, depending strongly on solar activity…
NASA’s RASSOR will be able to climb hills and, more importantly, extract water, ice and fuel from lunar soil.
NASA
Earlier this week, NASA announced the development of a mining robot called RASSOR: the Regolith Advanced Surface Systems Operations Robot. RASSOR has been designed to assist in extracting water, ice and…
The red planet’s McLaughlin Crater may have contained water sourced from within the ground.
NASA
A recent article in Nature Geoscience suggests that at least one large, deep crater on Mars may once have supported an alkaline lake that was fed by water from kilometres below the planet’s surface.
This…
Voyager 1 has come across an unexpected region of the solar system – a “magnetic superhighway”.
NASA
At 18.5 billion kilometres from Earth, the Voyager 1 space probe is the most distant human-made object ever to leave our planet.
And now the spacecraft, which was launched in September 1977, has discovered…
The “Rocknest” site has been Curiosity’s laboratory for the past few months.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems
The Curiosity rover has landed on Mars, driven around, started its scientific mission and, as of 4am today (AEDT), started reporting integrated science results.
In a news conference at the American Geophysical…
Meteorites from Mars may have seeded life on Earth – or not.
NASA
In an announcement today, NASA poured cold water on rumours that its Curiosity rover had found life on Mars.
Curiosity found evidence that it had landed on an ancient riverbed, and it identified some…
It’s not everyday you get to chat with a spacecraft that’s nearing the edge of the solar system.
NASA
Interviewing a spacecraft isn’t something one does every day. It certainly wasn’t an option back in the late 1970s, when Voyager 1 and 2 set off on a mission like no other before or since: to visit some…
NASA’s latest rover has touched down successfully on the red planet.
NASA/JPL
At 3.31pm today (AEST) the NASA control room in Pasadena, California erupted after people heard these three simple words: “touchdown signal detected”. This diminutive sentence signalled that the Curiosity…
The first pictures taken by the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover after its successful landing on Mars.
Michael Nelson/EPA
The Mars Science Laboratory, otherwise known as the Curiosity rover, has safely landed on the red planet. While NASA engineers can now breath a sigh of relief, for a small army of people, the work on Mars…
When Curiosity lands on Mars next Monday, expect the social media buzz to be out of this world.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
Social media is the new frontier for space exploration, shaping an age of innovative public participation in space missions.
While online communities are a-Twitter about NBC’s poor Olympic coverage, there…
What surprises are beyond the horizon for NASA’s spacecraft during its planned encounter with Pluto and its moon, Charon?
NASA
Last week, scientists using one of the Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Cameras announced the discovery of a small moon orbiting the dwarf planet Pluto – the fifth satellite discovered in orbit around…
Asteroid impacts make for impressive images and movies, but how realistic is the threat?
NASA
By Simon O'Toole, Australian Astronomical Observatory
How many times have you read a headline about our impending doom due to a “Deep Impact”-style annihilation?
In a way it’s not surprising – we have an insatiable appetite for disaster stories, a hunger…
There’ll be a human colony on the red planet by 2023 if Mars One has its way.
Mars One
Private space venture company Mars One announced earlier this month that it intends to send people on a one-way colonisation mission to Mars in 2023, largely funded by sales of the mission’s media rights…
The 8km-high volcano, Maat Mons, is only one of the reasons to head back to Venus.
NASA/JPL
Last week the world stopped to watch as the black disc of Venus inched its way across the face of the sun.
But beyond the transits that capture our attention roughly twice per century, Venus has always…
We’re a long way off finding little green men, but we might find evidence of life on Mars within a year.
The building blocks of life have been discovered on Mars … in Martian meteorites that fell to Earth.
Let me rephrase that: according to a paper by published in Science Express on Friday, meteorites from…
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk stands in front of a Falcon 9 rocket at SpaceX’s launch site in Florida.
SpaceX
Late tomorrow evening (AEST), all going well, a Falcon 9 rocket will lift-off from Cape Canaveral, Florida. A few days after launch the craft will rendezvous in low-Earth orbit with the International Space…
You know how it is: you open the envelope, you’ve got the job, you’re walking on air.
NASA
NASA is currently poring over more than 6,000 applications for the next intake in its astronaut program – from which nine to 15 candidates will be successful. And while the Space Shuttle program is a thing…
Many exoplanets have been found, but there’s plenty left to uncover.
Dallas1200am
Over the past few months, NASA’s Kepler mission has repeatedly made headlines with announcements of new and unusual planetary systems around other stars. To name a few, we’ve had the most densely packed…
Does the US suffer from its desire to go it alone in space?
NASA
In its newly released budget request to Congress, the Obama Administration is seeking to reduce NASA’s funding by US$59m to US$17.7 billion – a reduction of just 0.03%, not that you would know that from…
The Apollo missions yielded more than just great views of our home planet.
NASA
By the time the Apollo Program ended in 1972 it had cost NASA roughly US$170 billion dollars (in today’s terms). It was seen as a waste of money by some, but almost 40 years since the launch of Apollo…
An ice-free world isn’t impossible – even though it seems the stuff of science fiction.
Alistair Knock
Last December’s meeting of the American Geophysical Union featured three of the world’s leading climate scientists: James Hansen (NASA’s chief climate scientist), Elco Rohling (National Oceanography Centre…
NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
It seems we’re about to come one step closer to putting man (and woman) on Mars. Is this exciting? Of course it is. Nothing fires the imagination quite like the prospect of walking around on a planet other…
Look on the bright side, earthlings: it’ll probably never happen.
Shanon Wise
You might want to look up. Or maybe not.
At some point between now and Saturday, a 6.5 tonne, bus-sized NASA satellite will burst through Earth’s atmosphere, breaking into fiery chunks that could land…
The brand new launch system announced by NASA last week has received wide mainstream media coverage – and why wouldn’t it? It is a plan for a giant rocket, after all.
The proposed Space Launch System…
Malcolm Walter talks space, science and NASA’s future with Dr Greg Chamitoff.
Download the full interview with Dr Chamitoff as a podcast by clicking here.
For the latest in our In Conversation series, Malcolm Walter, Professor of Astrobiology at the University of New South…
Could Stanley Kubrick’s classic offer direction for the future of space travel?
slagheap
Tomorrow morning (AEST), weather depending, the Space Shuttle Atlantis will blast off from Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, marking the end of NASA’s 30-year-old Space Transportation System.
But as the…
When a black hole devours a nearby star, bright gamma-ray flashes can result.
Mark Garlick (University of Warwick)
Some 3.8 billion years ago a star in the constellation of Draco wandered a little too close to a nearby black hole.
The star was violently torn apart by the black hole’s tidal forces, creating two massive…
Keeping the space shuttle together is a tremendous feat of engineering.
Stan Honda/AFP
The Space Shuttle Endeavour, one of the most complex machines ever created, is about to take its last trip into space.
But not just yet.
The countdown to Endeavour’s final flight began a few days ago…
Scientists believe dark matter makes up 23% of the universe.
NASA
By Jeremy Mould, Swinburne University of Technology
Dark matter has worked its way back into the news in the last few days with the completion of a detection experiment in a tunnel deep under the Italian Alps.
Researchers from Columbia University used…
Hundreds of exoplanets have been discovered, but are we any closer to finding life?
AAP
In the late 1980s, when I was a young whipper-snapper just starting out as an astronomer, it was quite obvious some fields had an incredibly high profile and others were outré.
The sexy ideas at the time…
It is inevitable that we will one day venture into space beyond the moon not just with robots but in person.
Exploration is part of the human psyche: we are risk-takers with an insatiable curiosity. No…
