To understand how stars explode, astronomers are studying the debris in detail with sensitive instruments.

This winter, some members of the rover team were busy analyzing the martian atmosphere for xenon, a heavy noble gas.

Our week through the lens: 30 March – 3 April 2015

ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet will fly to the International Space Station next year on a six-month adventure of science in weightlessness. Now Thomas wants you to think of a name for his flight – and it will appear on the mission patch he will wear in space.

Hubble finds phantom objects near dead quasars

The glowing filaments indicate that these active galaxy cores were once emitting more energy or changed very rapidly, which they weren’t supposed to do.

Scientists believe non-gaseous planets are as prevalent around binaries as around single stars.

Out of more than 15 entries, the St. Louis Astronomical Society wins Astronomy’s annual award honoring astronomy outreach programs.

Highlights from Sentinel-1A’s first 365 days in orbit

NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, at Mars since 2006, made an unplanned switch on Wednesday from one main computer to a redundant one onboard, triggering a hiatus in planned activities.

NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, at Mars since 2006, made an unplanned switch on Wednesday from one main computer to a redundant one onboard, triggering a hiatus in planned activities.

Join us Friday, 3 April, at 10:00 CEST for the ‘Earth from Space’ video programme. This week features a multitemporal Sentinel-1A image of Irkutsk and Lake Baikal

By studying a young star in images 18 years apart, scientists have been able to see exactly what their models predicted.

A recent study shows that RR Lyrae stars may not be as lonely as previously thought.

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover has climbed uphill from an outcrop it studied for six months and found a site with two-tone mineral veins forming “ice-cream sandwich” ridges.

New NASA data find the snowpack in the Tuolumne River Basin currently contains just 40 percent as much water as it did near this time at its highest level of 2014.

NASA will air an event on Tuesday, April 7, about recent discoveries of water and organics in our solar system, our sun’s role in water-loss in neighboring planets, and our search for habitable worlds.

Technology image of the week: a new way to add augmented reality to a drone’s eye view

Pinpointing when and how they formed should provide insight into the process of galaxy cluster evolution, including the role played by dark matter in shaping these cosmic metropolises.

Cassini’s orbits had carried it high above the planet’s poles over the past two years, during which the mission’s ability to encounter the moons, apart from Titan, was limited.

If an asteroid were spotted headed towards Earth, what could humanity do about it? ESA’s latest mission is part of a larger international effort to find out.

NASA’s Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) project will be flying a rocket-powered, saucer-shaped test vehicle into near-space from the Navy’s Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai, Hawaii, in June.

NASA’s Curiosity rover is using a new experiment to better understand the history of the Martian atmosphere by analyzing xenon.

NASA has announced the release of Vesta Trek, a free, web-based application that provides detailed visualizations of Vesta, one of the largest asteroids in our solar system.

Astronomers mine data from the Planck and Herschel missions to find a treasure chest of galaxy clusters.

Human spaceflight and operations image of the week: Concordia crewmember at work in Antarctica

By combining observations of the distant Universe made with ESA’s Herschel and Planck space observatories, cosmologists have discovered what could be the precursors of the vast clusters of galaxies that we see today.

A new study suggests carbon from comets breaking apart acts like a stealth darkening agent on the innermost planet.

Even though cosmic magnetic fields are much weaker than Earth’s magnetic field, they have an important effect in regulating how stars form.

A dual view of Saturn’s icy moon Rhea marks the return of NASA’s Cassini spacecraft to the realm of the planet’s icy satellites.

Space Science Image of the Week: Herschel and Spitzer uncover the tumultuous heart of the Large Magellanic Cloud

The earlier episode at Jezero Crater formed clay minerals, and then later surface water activity transported them.

In a new report, scientists show that using a particular class of type Ia supernovae that occur near youthful stars can improve measurements of cosmic distances.

Europe now has eight navigation satellites in orbit after the launch of Galileos 7 & 8

Replay of the separation of Galileo satellites 7 and 8 from their Fregat upper stage

The EU’s Galileo satellite navigation system now has eight satellites in orbit following the launch of the latest pair. 

Replay of the launch transmission of Soyuz ST-B carrying Galileo satellites 7 and 8, 27 March at 22:46 GMT, from Europe’s Spaceport

Liftoff of Soyuz ST-B carrying Galileo satellites 7 and 8, at 21:46 GMT, from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana

The team operating the Mars Rover Opportunity learned that it experienced a brief amnesia event related to its flash memory, the first since a reformatting a week earlier.

The team operating the Mars Rover Opportunity learned that it experienced a brief amnesia event related to its flash memory, the first since a reformatting a week earlier.

The rotating “golden lasso” reflector antenna on NASA’s new soil moisture mapping mission is now fully spun up to its design rate in preparation for science operations.

A series of observations from Mars orbit show how dark blast zones that were created during the August 2012 landing of NASA’s Curiosity rover have faded inconsistently.

Our week through the lens: 23-27 March 2015

Check out some of the scientific results in these colourful images from this week’s Fringe Workshop on detecting surface movements with radar satellites

ESA’s recovered IXV spaceplane arrived at the Port of Livorno in Italy yesterday and is set to be taken to Turin for final analysis.

It is most likely to be a young star with a massive core that is still accreting material.

Dark matter does not slow down when colliding with each other, which means that it interacts with itself even less than previously thought.

Millions of images of celestial objects, including asteroids, observed by NASA’s NEOWISE spacecraft now are available online to the public.

Tune in to a live, interactive broadcast from JPL where a test vehicle for NASA’s Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator project is being prepped for its next test flight in June.

A new report identifies top-of-the-line tools for studying the fabric of space.

NASA Wednesday announced more details in its plan for its Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM), which in the mid-2020s will test a number of new capabilities needed for future human expeditions to deep space, including to Mars.

Watch the launch of Europe’s next two Galileo satellites on Friday 27 March. Streaming starts at 21:24 GMT (22:24 CET)

It takes a lot of ingenuity – not to mention a massive quantity of sheer force – to get satellites into orbit. Now space engineers are applying comparable ingenuity to the challenge of getting their missions out of there, too.

Join us Friday, 27 March, at 10:00 CET for the ‘Earth from Space’ video programme. This week features a multitemporal Sentinel-1A image of the Aral Sea

The dwarf galaxy is the least abundant in metals in the nearby universe and one of the most akin to the primeval galaxies.

The finding validates a long-suspected feedback mechanism enabling a supermassive black hole to influence the evolution of its host galaxy.

Human spaceflight and operations image of the week: Spacecraft attached to the International Space Station at sunset

Astronomers using ESA’s Herschel space observatory have found that the winds blowing from a huge black hole are sweeping away its host galaxy’s reservoir of raw star-building material.

Sentinel-1A captured the fast-moving Pine Island glacier, which flowed about 100 m in less than two weeks

Technology image of the week: BBC Stargazing Live host Dallas Campbell atop ESA’s Electrodynamic Shaker

A look back at SpaceUp Cologne at ESA’s astronaut centre, 21-22 March

The new work addresses why the terrestrial planets in our solar system have such relatively low masses compared to the exoplanets orbiting other Sun-like stars.

Scientists have long thought that nitrates would be produced on the Red Planet from the energy released in meteorite impacts, and the amounts they found agree with estimates from this process.

Thousands of engineers have worked on the seventh and eighth navigation satellites of Europe’s Galileo constellation in recent years, but last Friday marked the very last time the spacecraft were glimpsed by human eyes. 

One of the four Cluster satellites has shifted its orbit to ensure a safe reentry when the time comes, as well as providing a rare opportunity to study how a satellite’s exhaust plume interacts with the solar wind.

NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity completed its first Mars marathon Tuesday — 26.219 miles (42.195 kilometers) – with a finish time of roughly 11 years and two months.

A team using the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument suite aboard NASA’s Curiosity rover has made the first detection of nitrogen on the surface of Mars from release during heating of Martian sediments.

NASA’s new soil moisture mapping mission has moved a step closer to starting science operations following the partial spin-up of its “golden lasso” reflector antenna.