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Astrophysics

NASA's GLAST satellite launched into orbit on 05 June. More....

NASA's Swift satellite has caught a star going supernova in the act. While astronomers were taking images of SN 2007uy in the galaxy NGC 2770, they noted an extremely bright, five-minute X-ray outburst from another location in the same galaxy. The visible light from what is now designated as SN 2008D appeared a few days later. More....

A supernova that occurred 140 years ago in the Milky Way galaxy has been discovered by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and NRAO's Very Large Array. The supernova remnant, designated G1.9+0.3, was previously undiscovered due to obscurration by dust and gas. More....

Heliophysics

NASA's THEMIS mission, five identical spacecraft dedicating to tracking the causes of magnetospheric substorms, was successfully launched at 18:01 EST on 17 February. More...

Lunar and Planetary Science

The MESSENGER spacecraft made its second Mercury flyby on Monday, 6 October at 08:40:22 UT (4:40 a.m. EDT), passing within 200 km (125 miles) of the surface. The first data will be transmitted to Earth on October 7.

Snow has been detected in the martian atmosphere by the Phoenix lander. As local winter approaches, output from the solar panels will soon drop to levels too low to power the lander, ending the mission in a few months. More....

The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) Mission has been selected as the next NASA Mars Scout mission, planned for launch in late 2013. For more, see the NASA press release.