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

The OSIRIS-REx mission made its first sampling test run (the "checkpoint rehearsal") on 14 April. The actual sampling run has been delayed until 20 October. More...

The ESA BepiColombo Mercury mission made a flyby of Earth on 10 April. It used this opportunity to make observations of the Earth-facing side of the Moon. Closest approach was at 04:25 UT at an altitude of about 12,700 km.

The European Space Agency has announced that, in part due to effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the launch of the ExoMars 2020 mission - now designated ExoMars 2022 - will be delayed until the next Mars launch opportunity in 2022.