News

Japanese craft to get second chance after missing Venus in 2010

9 February 2015 Stephen Clark

Five years after a balky valve kept it from entering orbit around Venus, Japan’s Akatsuki space probe is again approaching the sweltering planet for another shot at completing its science mission in December.

Milky Way’s dark-matter-dominated companion galaxy found

9 February 2015 Astronomy Now

Analysis of near-infrared data from the European Southern Observatory’s VISTA telescope provides evidence for a dark-matter-dominated dwarf galaxy 300,000 light-years away predicted to exist in 2009.

Twinkle satellite’s fast-track mission to unveil exoplanet atmospheres

7 February 2015 Astronomy Now

A team of UK scientists and engineers announce plans to launch a small satellite called “Twinkle” within four years, an ambitious mission to provide insights into the chemistry, formation and evolution of planets orbiting other stars.

Planck reveals first stars were born later

6 February 2015 Astronomy Now

New maps from ESA’s Planck satellite uncover the ‘polarised’ light from the early universe across the entire sky, revealing that the first stars formed much later than previously thought.

Dawn gets closer views of Ceres

5 February 2015 Astronomy Now

Now just one month away from entering into orbit around Ceres, NASA’s Dawn spacecraft reveals new pictures and a movie — the sharpest images to date of the Texas-sized dwarf planet.

A new VISTA through the Milky Way

4 February 2015 Astronomy Now

While mapping the central regions of the Milky Way in infrared light searching for new and hidden objects, the 4.1-metre VISTA telescope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile looked through a familiar object to wonders beyond.

Ageing Mars rover could be shut down

4 February 2015 Stephen Clark

NASA’s Opportunity Mars rover and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, working well past their expected lifetimes, could be shut down in fiscal year 2016 as the agency tries to balance funding for older missions and development of modernised new space probes, officials said Monday.