Space
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Planetary Science
Saturnian sponge
The first close-up portrait of Saturn's icy moon Hyperion reveals a spongy-looking surface unlike that of any other known moon.
- Planetary Science
What whacked the inner solar system?
Planetary scientists have determined that the cavalcade of space debris that hammered the inner solar system for the first 700 million years of its existence were main-belt asteroids, not comets.
- Astronomy
Crisis in the Cosmos?
Baby galaxies that hail from the early history of the cosmos but are full of old stars and are nearly as massive as the Milky Way is today may challenge the standard theory of galaxy formation.
- Astronomy
Cosmic Ray Font: Supernova remnants rev up ions
High-resolution X-ray images of the Tycho supernova remnant offer new evidence that supernova shock waves generate most cosmic rays that bombard Earth.
- Planetary Science
Sun grazers: A thousand comets and counting
An amateur astronomer analyzing images from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory has found the 999th and 1,000th comets detected by the craft.
- Planetary Science
Fresh Mars: Craft views new gullies, craters, and landslides
A comparison of images taken just a few years apart by a Mars orbiting spacecraft reveals recent landslides, freshly carved gullies, and a 20-meter-wide crater gouged in the planet's surface no earlier than 25 years ago.
- Planetary Science
Icy world found inside asteroid
New observations of Ceres, the largest known asteroid, hint that frozen water may account for as much as 25 percent of its interior.
- Astronomy
Keeping Hubble from being hobbled
NASA late last month shut down one of the aging Hubble Space Telescope's three gyros in an effort to extend its life.
- Astronomy
Farthest Bang: A burst that goes the distance
The most-distant gamma-ray burst ever found hails from 900 million years after the birth of the universe, around the time when stars and galaxies first flooded the universe with light.
- Planetary Science
Top of the Martian hill
After a 14-month climb up a Martian hill, NASA's rover Spirit took a panoramic image of the view from the top.
- Planetary Science
Satellites could detect quakes on Venus
Strong seismic activity on Venus could cause brief but detectable temperature increases high in that planet's atmosphere.
- Astronomy
Deep Impact
Data from the Deep Impact mission reveal that the bullet that slammed into Comet Tempel 1 on July 4 excavated material that likely hadn't seen the light of day since the birth of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago.
