Recent News in...

Astrophysics

Observations from HST and the Kepler space telescope have provided evidence for the first moon discovered orbiting a planet outside of our solar system. The discovery was announced on 03&nsbp;October 2018. The moon may be the size of Neptune, orbiting a planet several times the mass of Jupiter with the designation Kepler-1625b. More...

Heliophysics

The Voyager 2 became the second spacecraft (the first was Voyager 1) to escape the heliosphere and enter insterstellar space. More...

The Parker Solar Probe made its first perihelion pass on 05 November 2018, coming within 25 million km of the Sun. The probe will orbit the Sun over the course of the next seven years, ultimately coming closer than 7 million km from the Sun's surface.

Lunar and Planetary Science

The CNSA (China) Chang'e 4 lunar farside mission launched successfully, at 2:23 a.m. Beijing time, 08 December (18:23 UT, 07 Dec.). It subsequently went into lunar orbit at 08:45 UT on 12 December.

The OSIRIS-REx mission successfully arrived within about 20 km of asteroid Bennu at about 17:00 UT (12:00 noon EST) on 03 December. It has made its first flyby of the asteroid, 7 km above the north pole. More...

The NASA InSight mission landed on Mars in the Elysium Planitia region on 26 November at 19:52:59 UT (2:52:59 p.m. EST), returned its first image (with the transparent dust cover still on, as planned), and opened its solar panels. More...

NASA has announced that the landing site for the Mars 2020 Rover will be Jezero Crater, a geologically diverse terrain holding remains of an ancient lake bed and river delta. More...