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 JAXA (Japan) Hayabusa 2 mission completed its first touchdown and ascent from asteroid Ryugu at approximately 22:30 UT on 21 February (7:30 a.m. JST 22 February). An image of the touchdown site shows the shadow of the spacecraft and the discolored area of the touchdown.

The Israeli Beresheet lunar lander mission launched successfully on 22 February at 01:45 UT. The mission is scheduled to land on the Moon on 11 April.

On 3 January, the CNSA (China) Chang'e 4 lunar mission made the first landing ever on the far side of the Moon and deployed the Yutu-2 rover. They successfully ended hibernation after their second lunar night at the end of February and are continuing operations.

The NASA New Horizons mission flew within 3500 km of Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU69 (nicknamed "Ultima Thule") on 1 January 2019 at 05:33 UT. Data and images from the flyby continue to trickle in. For more information, see the New Horizons Press Release.