A newly unveiled company with some high-profile backers — including filmmaker James Cameron and Google co-founder Larry Page — is set to announce plans to mine near-Earth asteroids for resources such as precious metals and water. Continue reading
Several million stars are vying for attention in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of a raucous stellar breeding ground in 30 Doradus, located in the heart of the Tarantula nebula. Continue reading
No matter how exciting your plans are for New Year’s, two NASA spacecraft have you beat – they’ve got a date with the moon. After more than three months of spaceflight, NASA’s twin Grail probes are set to start orbiting the moon this weekend, with Grail-A arriving Saturday (Dec. 31) and Grail-B following on Sunday (Jan. 1). Continue reading
NASA’s Kepler mission has confirmed its first planet in the “habitable zone,” the region around a star where liquid water could exist on a planet’s surface. Kepler also has discovered more than 1,000 new planet candidates, nearly doubling its previously known count. Continue reading
The youngest planet yet discovered has been found orbiting within the disk of dust and gas surrounding the star Lk Ca 15. The planet is more than just young: it may still be in the process of formation. Continue reading
ESA’s Venus Express spacecraft has discovered an ozone layer high in the atmosphere of Venus. Comparing its properties with those of the equivalent layers on Earth and Mars will help astronomers refine their searches for life on other planets. Continue reading
The United States desperately needs a way to get its astronauts to space and back — and one solution could be taking NASA’s space shuttle fleet out of retirement, famed moonwalkers Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernan told Congress today. Continue reading
A Russian-built Soyuz space capsule landed safely back on Earth late Thursday (Sept. 15), returning an American astronaut and two cosmonauts home after more than five months in space. The Soyuz TMA-21 spacecraft touched down at about 9:59 a.m. Friday local time at their landing site on the steppes of Kazakhstan in central Asia. Continue reading
A “Trojan” asteroid has been discovered sharing Earth’s solar orbit by astronomers studying observations taken by NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission. Trojans are asteroids that are gravitationally bound to a planet, but are not moons, because they do … Continue reading
This week I recommend to follow @NASATweetup for interesting tweets about space and info about upcoming NASA Tweetups. For more Twitter follow suggestions see our astronomy list @TheAstroBlog/astronomy Weekly Stumbles: Moons like Earth’s could be more common than we thought … Continue reading
