“Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.” Douglas Adams…
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…
Finding a star as young as AP Columbae is very rare.
Flickr/tarotastic
Astronomers have a rare new star that is just 27 light years away from Earth, making it the closest young star ever found. AP Columbae, as the red dwarf star has been named, is just 40 million years old…
The Hayabusa space capsule landed in Woomera, South Australia, last year after completing a mission to collect dust from the surface of an asteroid.
Science/Hayabusa team
Asteroid dust collected by a Japanese space capsule that landed in Woomera last year has been matched with samples of meteorites found on Earth, providing new clues about where meteorites came from. The…
As of today, we have a cataclysmic new explanation for one of solar system astronomy’s most long-standing questions: why do the near- and far-sides of the Moon look so different? This new theory, published…
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 Wales…
Solid boosters are recovered following the launch of the Space Shuttle Endeavour in 2000.
Bruce Weaver/AFP
At approximately 8pm last night (AEST), the Space Shuttle Atlantis touched down at the Kennedy Space Centre for the final time. The 14-day mission to the International Space Station (ISS) was the 135th…
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has captured images of a storm on Saturn so big, it has wrapped itself around the giant planet.
NASA
NASA has released photographs and audio of a powerful lightning storm on the planet Saturn that is eight times the surface area of Earth. The storm is so long it encircles the giant planet and its head…
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…
Has NASA’s 30-year space experiment been worth it?
EPA/NASA TV
All going well, the final Space Shuttle mission will be launched from the Kennedy Space Centre early on Saturday morning (AEST). This flight, being made by the Space Shuttle Atlantis, will be the 135th…
A computer-generated artists impression of the thousands of objects in orbit around Earth.
AFP
Since the launch of the first artificial satellite in 1957 – the Soviet Union’s Sputnik 1 – countries around the world have been putting satellites and spacecraft into Earth orbit. While the majority of…
There’s something happening, but it’s way above your head.
bluedharma/Flickr
Four planets – Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Venus – will be aligned at dawn tomorrow. What does this mean? Should we be running for the hills? You’d be forgiven for thinking so. A search on Google or YouTube…
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…
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…