21 February 2019
Hayabusa2 starts descent towards Ryugu
... any samples it manages to collect and return them to Earth in 2020 for further study. After the Rosetta mission threw up a few surprises with the type of water it was mainly composed of (it had to much heavy water – deuterium...
24 April 2019
InSight detects first marsquake
... size and longer duration fit the profile of moonquakes detected on the lunar surface during the Apollo missions," said Lori Glaze, Planetary Science Division director at NASA Headquarters. Provided for InSight by the French space...
24 January 2020
New study suggests Enceladus' oceans more habitable than previously thought
... exterior could harbour the ingredients for life, but last year, a new analysis of data collected by the mission revealed the presence of silica, nitrogen and oxygen in the plumes – the latter two being organic compounds...
03 February 2020
Researchers discover "invisible" stars too dim to be seen
... the researchers who found it. Since beginning science operations in 2014, ESA’s Gaia space observatory has been on a mission to collect high-precision astrometric data, that is, positions, proper motions, and parallaxes, of around one billion...
27 April 2020
SpaceX's first full-scale Starship passes key test
Elon Musk’s Starship SN4, which the entrepreneur hopes will one day lead to a successful mission to Mars, became SpaceX’s first full-scale Starship prototype to pass a cryogenic proof test at the company’s launch ...
22 June 2020
Icy Pluto may have started off hot with an early ocean
.... In contrast, if Bierson, Nimmo and Stern, who also happens to be the principle investigator of the New Horizons mission, give Pluto a ‘hot’ beginning, Pluto produces an early, rapid phase of extension, followed by a more prolonged extensional...
