Artist’s illustration of two merging neutron stars.
National Science Foundation/LIGO/Sonoma State University/A. Simonnet.
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.
Off to court…
D Mitriy/wikipedia
Future Mars colonists may want to form their own legal system. What would stop them?
Olympus Mons, biggest volcano in the Solar System.
Justin Cowart
They erupted for billions of years and make Earth’s volcanoes look like molehills. Here’s what we know and what we don’t know about them.
Without satellites, modern technologies such mobiles phones and GPS would not exist.
Flickr/NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
We’ve all seen videos of satellites being blasted off into space - but once they’re locked in orbit around the earth, how do we bring them back down?
A girl takes a close look at the world’s first artificial.
satellite, the Soviet-made Sputnik I.
China Photos/Reuters
Our fascination with space shows no signs of slowing down, 60 years after the Soviet Union launched the world’s first satellite, Sputnik.
evenstubble.
Private companies are increasingly challenging national space agencies in a new space race, which comes with great opportunities but also huge risks.
shutterstock.
Space inspires, and the establishment of a Space Agency in Australia is well positioned to drive engagement in STEM.
An illustration of Cassini as it plunges into Saturn’s atmosphere.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
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
The Cassini space probe discovered several new moons on its mission to Saturn, and revealed fresh views of the moons we already knew about.
An illustration of Cassini diving between Saturn and the planet’s innermost ring.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
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
How exactly do the stars twinkle in the night sky? As it turns out, the answer is full of hot air… and cold air.
Both Voyager spacecraft are only in communication with Earth via a Canberra tracking station.
NASA/JPL
The Voyager space probes sent back some amazing images of the planets in the outer Solar System, and they’re still talking to Earth every day via Australia’s tracking station.
What message would you send to outer space?
NASA/JPL-Caltech
Humanity is the real target for these recordings which continue to inspire us to better understand ourselves and our place in the cosmos.
A watercolour of a dingo, pre-1793, from John Hunter’s drawing books.
By permission of The Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons, London.
In Indigenous culture, dingoes were prized as companions, garments and hunting aids. Europeans later tried to tame dingoes as ‘pets’ but their wild nature has prevailed.
The Sun is currently middle-aged, having celebrated its 4,568,000,000th birthday at some point in the last million years.
Flickr/ChopWood CarryWater
In five or seven billion years time, the Sun’s life will come to an end. And it will be really spectacular - if you’re watching from far enough away.
The raw images of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot taken this week by the Juno probe.
NASA/SwRI/MSSS
The images are in from the Juno probe’s closest flyby so far of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot. Citizen scientists are now getting involved in processing those images.
No flush.
Author provided
It’s a dirty scientific job – but it could save lives.
Rivals in the Kenya election Uhuru Kenyatta (left) and Raila Odinga.
Reuters/Thomas Mukoya
Although some complain that the differences between Kenyatta and Odinga are more rhetorical than real, one thing is clear: Kenyans have a real choice to make at the ballot box.
NASA
Studying mysterious neutron stars could uncover the secrets of exotic physics – and a way to navigate the stars.