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 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

On May 10, the NASA OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, with its sample collected from asteroid Bennu, successfully fired its main thrusters to leave Bennu and return to Earth. The maneuver, occurring at approximately 20:00 UT (4:00 p.m. EDT), was confirmed at Earth at 20:24 UT. For more detail see the May 6 NASA Press Release.

Michael Collins, Apollo 11 Command Module pilot, passed away on April 28 at age 90.

The NASA Mars 2020 Ingenuity helicopter's first flight was successful on Monday, April 19, at 07:34 UT (3:34 a.m. EDT). The rotorcraft reached an altitude of 3 meters and hovered for 30 seconds. See pictures and video of the flight. For more detail see the NASA Press Release.