An image gallery gift from Swift satellite

(Phys.org)—Of the three telescopes carried by NASA's Swift satellite, only one captures cosmic light at energies similar to those seen by the human eye. Although small by the standards of ground-based observatories, Swift's ...

New data compare, contrast Pluto's icy moons

A newly downlinked spectral observation of Pluto's moon Nix from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft provides compelling evidence that its surface is covered in water ice, similar to what the New Horizons team discovered recently ...

NASA loses two hurricane monitoring satellites on launch

Two small NASA satellites that were meant to study hurricane development failed to enter orbit Sunday when their Astra rocket shut off before reaching the necessary altitude, the US space agency said.

Rocket 'terminated' in fiery explosion over Pacific Ocean

A privately designed, unmanned rocket built to carry satellites was destroyed in an explosive fireball after suffering an "anomaly" off the California coast during its first attempt at reaching Earth's orbit.

ESA's tiny pinhole thruster is ready for production

Rocket propulsion technology has progressed leaps and bounds since the first weaponized rockets of the Chinese and Mongolian empires. They were nothing more than rocket-powered arrows and spears but they set the foundations ...

NASA engineers push limits of physics to focus light

A pair of precision-orbiting small satellites will attempt to capture the first views ever of small-scale features near the surface of the sun that scientists believe drive the heating and acceleration of solar wind.

Hubble watches star clusters on a collision course

(Phys.org) -- Astronomers using data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have caught two clusters full of massive stars that may be in the early stages of merging. The clusters are 170,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic ...

Pioneering a way to keep very small satellites in orbit

A cubesat, largely built by undergraduate students and scheduled to launch on Sunday, will explore the feasibility of a new propulsion method that could enable very small satellites to move around Earth's orbit without carrying ...

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