Voyager 1 fires up thrusters after 37 years

If you tried to start a car that's been sitting in a garage for decades, you might not expect the engine to respond. But a set of thrusters aboard the Voyager 1 spacecraft successfully fired up Wednesday after 37 years without ...

Recurring martian streaks: flowing sand, not water?

Dark features on Mars previously considered evidence for subsurface flowing of water are interpreted by new research as granular flows, where grains of sand and dust slip downhill to make dark streaks, rather than the ground ...

Lava or not, exoplanet 55 Cancri e likely to have atmosphere

Twice as big as Earth, the super-Earth 55 Cancri e was thought to have lava flows on its surface. The planet is so close to its star, the same side of the planet always faces the star, such that the planet has permanent day ...

Juno spacecraft spots Jupiter's Great Red Spot

Images of Jupiter's Great Red Spot reveal a tangle of dark, veinous clouds weaving their way through a massive crimson oval. The JunoCam imager aboard NASA's Juno mission snapped pics of the most iconic feature of the solar ...

Merging galaxies have enshrouded black holes

Black holes get a bad rap in popular culture for swallowing everything in their environments. In reality, stars, gas and dust can orbit black holes for long periods of time, until a major disruption pushes the material in.

'Iceball' planet discovered through microlensing

Scientists have discovered a new planet with the mass of Earth, orbiting its star at the same distance that we orbit our sun. The planet is likely far too cold to be habitable for life as we know it, however, because its ...

Ceres' temporary atmosphere linked to solar activity

Scientists have long thought that Ceres may have a very weak, transient atmosphere, but mysteries lingered about its origin and why it's not always present. Now, researchers suggest that this temporary atmosphere appears ...

Investigating the mystery of migrating 'hot Jupiters'

The last decade has seen a bonanza of exoplanet discoveries. Nearly 2,000 exoplanets—planets outside our solar system—have been confirmed so far, and more than 5,000 candidate exoplanets have been identified. Many of ...

Saturn Moon's Activity Could Be 'Curtain Eruptions'

New research using data from NASA's Cassini mission suggests most of the eruptions from Saturn's moon Enceladus might be diffuse curtains rather than discrete jets. Many features that appear to be individual jets of material ...

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