Scientists from Moscow Institute for Physics and Technology, Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IKI), and Pulkovo Observatory discovered a unique... more
NASA's Juno probe discovered a giant new storm swirling near Jupiter's south pole last month, a few weeks after pulling off a dramatic death-dodging maneuver. more
With more than fifty years of experience operating spacecraft, ESA has built up an incredible web of state-of-the art operations systems and technologies across the globe. more
On 17 December, ESA will launch a first-of-its-kind space laboratory, OPS-SAT. The small, low-cost test satellite has been specifically designed for operational experiments in space, and includes the most powerful flight computer on board any current ESA spacecraft. more
Proton aurora, a type of Martian aurora first identified in 2016, forms when protons from the solar wind interact with hydrogen in the extended... more
NGC 3175 is located around 50 million light-years away in the constellation of Antlia (the Air Pump). The galaxy can be seen slicing across the frame in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, with... more
After a year scoping out asteroid Bennu's boulder-scattered surface, the team leading NASA's first asteroid sample return mission has officially selected a sample collection site. more
Calling all radio amateurs! ESA is challenging anyone with amateur radio equipment to catch the first signals from OPS-SAT, ESA's brand new space software laboratory. more
Tune in to ESA Web TV from 08:30 GMT (09:30 CET) Tuesday 17 December to watch ESA’s exoplanet mission soar into space on a Soyuz-Fregat rocket from Europe’s... more
Jupiter's south pole has a new cyclone. The discovery of the massive Jovian tempest occurred on Nov. 3, 2019, during the most recent data-gathering flyby of Jupiter by NASA's Juno spacecraft. It was the... more
Video: 00:03:18 On 17 December, ESA will launch a first-of-its-kind space laboratory, OPS-SAT. The small, low-cost, test satellite has been specifically designed for operational experimentation in space, and... more
Image: The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over the green algae blooms swirling around the Baltic Sea.'Algae bloom' is the term used to describe the rapid multiplying of phytoplankton – microscopic marine... more
Video: 00:00:00 In this week's edition of the Earth from Space programme, Copernicus Sentinel-2 takes us over the green algae blooms swirling around the... more
When astronomers see something in the universe that at first glance seems like one-of-a-kind, it's bound to stir up a lot of excitement and attention. Enter comet 2I/Borisov. This mysterious visitor from the depths of space... more
Comet 2I/Borisov is a mysterious visitor from the depths of space -- the first identified comet to arrive here from another star. Hubble images capture the... more
On this week’s show: Tracing the roots of epilepsy, and watching lightning, terrestrial gamma ray bursts, and elves from the iInternational sSpace sStation more
The thermosphere of Mars is the interface through which the planet is continuously losing its reservoir of atmospheric volatiles to space. The structure and dynamics of the thermosphere is driven by a global circulation that redistributes... more
This mysterious visitor from the depths of space is the first identified comet to arrive here from another star. We don't know from where or when the comet started heading toward our Sun, but it won't... more
Image: It's confirmed! ESA is building its fourth deep space antenna – much like the Cebreros dish pictured here – that will ensure upcoming missions like... more
Physicists have successfully developed a new instrument that significantly reduces quantum-level noise that has thus far limited experiments' ability to spot gravitational waves. Collisions between massive black holes... more
Just a year ago, the National Science Foundation-funded Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory, or LIGO, was picking up whispers of gravitational waves every month or so. Now,... more
Astrophysicists are redrawing the textbook image of pulsars, the dense, whirling remains of exploded stars, thanks to NASA's Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER), an X-ray telescope aboard the International... more
A newly published study, presented on Dec. 12 at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting, reveals that a type of Martian aurora originally detected by NASA's MAVEN spacecraft is in fact the... more
Calling all radio amateurs! ESA is challenging anyone with amateur radio equipment to catch the first signals from OPS-SAT, ESA’s brand new space software... more
The space-borne storm-hunter on Europe’s Columbus laboratory is continuously monitoring thunderstorms as it flies 400 km overhead on the International Space Station. more
Sue Smrekar really wants to go back to Venus. In her office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, the planetary scientist displays a 30-year-old image of... more
A U.S. Naval Research Laboratory-built camera mounted on the NASA Parker Solar Probe revealed an asteroid dust trail that has eluded astronomers for decades. more
For eleven years from 2009 through 2019, the planes of NASA's Operation IceBridge flew above the Arctic, Antarctic and Alaska, gathering data on the height, depth, thickness, flow and change... more
Terrestrial gamma-ray flashes (TGFs) are transient gamma-ray emissions from thunderstorms, generated by electrons accelerated to relativistic energies in electric fields. Elves are ultraviolet and optical emissions... more
Blue Origin, the space company owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, launched the 12th crewless test of its New Shepard rocket on Wednesday, pushing the first flights with passengers to... more
A surprising new study shows that heat energy can leap across a few hundred nanometers of a complete vacuum, thanks to a quantum mechanical phenomenon called the Casimir... more
If you use a vacuum-insulated thermos to help keep your coffee hot, you may know it's a good insulator because heat energy has a hard time moving through... more
Where should the first people on Mars land? A new paper provides a map of water ice believed to be as little as an inch (2.5 centimeters) below the surface of the... more
Tropical Storm Belna weakened after it made landfall in northwestern Madagascar, and infrared imagery from NASA showed how the area of strong storms within had diminished. Cold cloud top temperatures... more
A team of researchers from Denmark, Norway, Spain and Italy has found that both terrestrial gamma-ray flashes and ionospheric ultraviolet emissions are... more
From robotics and more efficient batteries to wheel animals with extraordinary survival skills, life and technology are intertwined on the International Space Station. The last deliveries of the year arrived... more
Many technologies that are essential for daily life—from communications to GPS navigation to weather forecasting—rely on the thousands of satellites that are orbiting Earth. When those satellites run... more
Two decades ago, on Dec. 10, 1999, an Ariane 5 rocket climbed into the morning sky from Kourou, French Guiana. It carried into orbit the X-ray Multi-Mirror Mission (XMM-Newton), the largest scientific... more
The evidence for that was obvious when the lights of the city were viewed from space after the Canterbury earthquakes, says disaster economist Cuong Nguyen who graduates this week with... more
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer) spacecraft recently observed several particle ejection events on the surface of the... more
Curiosity won't be NASA's only active Mars rover for much longer. Next summer, Mars 2020 will be headed for the Red Planet. While the newest rover... more
NASA has big plans for returning astronauts to the Moon in 2024, a stepping stone on the path to sending humans to Mars. But where should the first people on the Red... more
Image: The Christmas tree is up at ESA’s ESTEC technical heart in the Netherlands, seen here reflected in the main mirror of a tenth scale model of the NASA-ESA-CSA James Webb Space Telescope.The Christmas... more
Cold cloud top temperatures can tell forecasters if a tropical cyclone has the potential to generate heavy rainfall, and that is exactly what NASA's Aqua satellite... more
New time-lapse videos of Earth's glaciers and ice sheets as seen from space -- some spanning nearly 50 years -- are providing scientists with new insights into how the planet's frozen regions... more
Snowstorms can wreak havoc across the United States, but especially on the East Coast. Snow is the least-understood form of precipitation, with major snowstorms among the... more
Image: This box of holiday cheer is actually tubes of plasma containing suspended microparticles exposed to an electrical current to form 3D crystal structures.Called Plasma Kristall-4, this ESA–Roscosmos experiment has been helping... more
Black holes in the early universe pose a bit of a problem. Based on observations from telescopes on Earth and in space, we know that some black holes grew to be a... more
New time-lapse videos of Earth's glaciers and ice sheets as seen from space—some spanning nearly 50 years—are providing scientists with new insights into how the planet's frozen regions are changing. more
Video: 00:03:00 A powerful space telescope, due for launch from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana on 17 December 2019, will give scientists a new insight into... more
Press Release N° 24–2019 Cheops, ESA’s ‘Characterising Exoplanet Satellite’, is scheduled to be launched on a Soyuz-Fregat rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, at 09:54 CET on 17 December 2019. Representatives... more
Satellite data from the European Space Agency (ESA) has now been used as the basis for new insights on the deep structure of the continent Antarctica. more
NASA has completed the giant rocket that will take US astronauts back to the Moon, the space agency's head announced Monday, pledging the mission would take place in... more