Latest Space science Stories

Detailed observations made by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have found an answer to the flash of light seen June 3 on Jupiter. It came from a giant meteor burning up high above Jupiter's cloud tops. The space visitor did not plunge deep enough into the atmosphere to explode and leave behind any telltale cloud of debris, as seen in previous Jupiter collisions.Astronomers around the world knew that something must have hit the giant planet to unleash a flash of energy bright enough to be seen...

NASA has warned that the Earth could endure a once-in-a-generation "space storm," bringing widespread power blackouts and leaving people without critical communications signals for a long time. National power grids could overheat and air travel could be disrupted while electronic systems, navigation devices and major satellites could stop working after the Sun reaches its maximum power in a few years. Senior space agency scientists say the Earth will be hit with unprecedented levels...

Earth and space are about to come into contact in a way that's new to human history. To make preparations, authorities in Washington DC are holding a meeting: The Space Weather Enterprise Forum at the National Press Club on June 8th. Richard Fisher, head of NASA's Heliophysics Division, explains what it's all about:"The sun is waking up from a deep slumber, and in the next few years we expect to see much higher levels of solar activity. At the same time, our technological society has...

HAMPTON, Va., June 4 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A NASA scientist knows what he is looking for and what he may find under or in the Milky Way tonight. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) On Tuesday, June 8, at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, space scientist William Borucki will present "Kepler Space Mission: Progress in the Detection of Earth-size Planets in the Habitable Zone of Solar-like Stars" at 2 p.m. in the Reid Conference Center. Borucki, Kepler...

PALO ALTO, Calif., May 26 /PRNewswire/ -- The immense volume of data generated by the suite of instruments on NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) requires new tools for efficient identifying and accessing data that is most relevant to research investigations. Scientists at the Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory of the Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) Advanced Technology Center (ATC) in Palo Alto have developed the Heliophysics Events Knowledgebase (HEK) to fill this need. The HEK system...

A surprising discovery that hydrogen gas clouds found in abundance in and above our Milky Way Galaxy have preferred locations has given astronomers a key clue about the origin of such clouds, which play an important part in galaxy evolution."We've concluded that these clouds are gas that has been blown away from the Galaxy's plane by supernova explosions and the fierce winds from young stars in areas of intense star formation," said H. Alyson Ford of the University of Michigan,...

The Planetary Sciences Group at the UPV/EHU-University of the Basque Country with its headquarters at the Faculty of Engineering in Bilbao and led by Professor Agustín Sánchez Lavega, has published the first results of research into one of the recent events that has sparked off maximum interest in the world of astronomy: the impact of a large-sized celestial body on the planet Jupiter last July. Sánchez Lavega's work, in which the researchers of his group Santiago Pérez Hoyos and...

Scientists from the University of Leicester have used observations from NASA's STEREO and ACE satellites to come up with more accurate predictions of when blasts of solar wind will reach Earth, Venus and Mars.  Anthony Williams will present the results at the RAS National Astronomy Meeting in Glasgow on Wednesday April 14th.We have recently been experiencing an unusually quiet and long-lasting solar minimum, and solar storms caused by Coronal Mass Ejections have been scarce.  Despite...

Two studies released on Monday provide increasing evidence that water exists not just on the moon, but on Mars as well.According to Reuters, one study showed that "ice deposits at least 6 feet thick can be found in some small craters on the moon" while the other "suggested that ice has recently melted and re-frozen on Mars, widening some of the characteristic gullies on its surface."The first report, written by researchers at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston...

The solar system's innermost planets are about to put on a beautiful show.This week, Mercury is emerging from the glare of the sun and making a beeline for Venus. By week's end, the two planets will be just 3o apart, an eye-catching pair in the deep-blue twilight of sunset.The best nights to look are April 3rd and 4th. Go outside at the end of the day and face west. Venus pops out of the twilight first, so bright it actually shines through thin clouds. Mercury follows, just below and to the...