Space News & Blog Articles

The Sun's surface has unveiled a new secret: ultra fine magnetic "curtains" that create striking patterns of bright and dark stripes across the solar photosphere. Thanks to groundbreaking observations from the NSF Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii, scientists have captured the sharpest ever images of these previously unseen structures, revealing magnetic field variations at scales as small as 20 kilometres.

As astronomers found more and more exoplanets in recent years, they've observed an unusual gap in the population. It's called the Neptunian Desert, a curious scarcity of Neptune-sized exoplanets orbiting close to their stars. Researchers just discovered an exoplanet in the Neptunian Desert around a Sun-like star. Can it help explain the Desert?

Since 2001, NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter has been studying the Martian surface and atmosphere to look for evidence of past or present water and ice, and study the planet's geology and radiation environment. As the longest-running mission to orbit another planet, this robotic probe has taken some impressive images of the Red Planet and its major surface features. In a new panorama, the Mars Odyssey orbiter captured a spectacular view of Arsia Mons, peeking above a dense canopy of clouds just before dawn. This marks the first time one of Mars' volcanoes has been imaged on the planet's horizon.

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has captured an extraordinary image of an unusually cold exoplanet in what scientists describe as a "chaotic" and "abnormal" planetary system. The discovery offers new insights into how planetary systems can develop in dramatically different ways from our own Solar System.

In this series we are exploring NASA's top five challenges as detailed in its Civil Space Shortfall Ranking, which is basically NASA's Christmas wish list. These are the technologies that NASA believes we need to develop if we want to go to space…and stay there.

When the Mariner 9 flew past Mars in 1972, scientists were treated to the first evidence that water once flowed on the surface of Mars. Subsequent missions confirmed this theory based on the study of features that form in the presence of water (flow channels, delta fans, and sedimentary deposits), the presence of hydrated minerals and clays in impact basins, and the discovery of subsurface ice and permafrost across the planet. These findings indicate that Mars once had an atmosphere thick enough to maintain temperatures to maintain surface water in a liquid state.

Astronomers recently used a pair of powerful telescopes to zero in on a cosmic battle occurring some 11 billion light-years away from Earth. The combatants are a pair of galaxies charging at each other over and over again, at velocities upwards of 500 kilometers per second. According to one of the scientists studying the scene, one galaxy is cutting into the heart of the other with a blast of radiation. “We hence call this system the ‘cosmic joust,’” said study co-lead Pasquier Noterdaeme of the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris.