Space
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Planetary Science
A Grand Slam
A 372-kilogram copper projectile released from NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft successfully slammed into Comet Tempel 1 on July 4, producing some heavenly fireworks.
- Astronomy
Rumblings from a dead star
The burned-out cinder left behind when a massive Milky Way star exploded recently underwent its own outburst.
- Planetary Science
Pebbles from Heaven: Tracking planets in the making
Recording radio waves from the region around a young star, astronomers have for the first time documented the making pebbles, a key step in the rocky road to planethood.
- Planetary Science
Flashy news from Mars
A streak across the Martian sky observed by the rover Spirit was most likely a meteor associated with a comet called Wiseman-Skiff.
- Astronomy
Panning Distant Dust
Astronomers are using hundreds of newly detected debris disks found around a variety of nearby stars to hunt for planets and learn about the evolution of our solar system.
- Planetary Science
Opportunity rolls out of Purgatory
After being stuck for nearly 5 weeks, the Mars rover Opportunity has freed itself from a sand trap on the Red Planet.
- Planetary Science
Planet Hunt Strikes Rock: Hot kin of Earth orbits nearby star
Astronomers have found the closest known cousin to Earth, a solid world just 15 light-years beyond the solar system.
- Astronomy
Making waves
Locked in a deadly embrace, two white dwarf stars may be the strongest source of gravitational waves now flooding our galaxy.
- Astronomy
The supernova that wasn’t
A brilliant stellar outburst once thought to be a supernova explosion actually left the star intact.
- Astronomy
Andromeda gets bigger
A new study reveals that the diameter of the Andromeda galaxy's disk spans some 220,000 light-years, three times as big as had been estimated.
- Astronomy
Peering into a disrupted stellar nursery
A new infrared portrait of the Carina nebula star-forming region shows a clutch of baby stars tucked inside pillars of thick dust.
- Planetary Science
Renegade moon
Saturn's outlier moon Phoebe didn't coalesce from material near the ringed planet but was captured from the distant Kuiper belt.
