Remember when I said back in October that Voyager 1 might have finally left the solar system? Well, it turns out that the spacecraft, which has been skirting the edge of the solar system for a long time now, is finding it difficult to say goodbye. According to scientists working on the mission, Voyager 1 [...]

It was on my first birthday that the Voyager 1 spacecraft turned around and took a picture of the pale blue dot we call home. That picture was Voyager’s last glimpse of Earth before its camera was switched off and it began to sail, uninterrupted, towards interstellar space. Around the same time Voyager 2 finished [...]

On its 35th birthday, the Voyager 1 spacecraft is a little closer to home than we had hoped it would be at this point. The Voyagers, 1 and 2, are right at this moment speeding away from us towards interstellar space. But a paper out in Nature today reports that, despite recently showing signs that [...]

Here’s an eruption from the sun that happened just a few days ago. It is a coronal mass ejection that loops out from the sun, looking slightly like a lightbulb that has just switched on. But it’s a far cry from a 60 watt bulb – the temperature of the solar corona where the bubble [...]

In five billion years the sun is going to blow up into a red giant, then collapse back down again into a white dwarf – a dying star roughly the same size as Earth itself. All of the solar system planets up to, and including, Earth will probably be vaporised during this stellar ballooning. We’ll [...]

The Dragon spacecraft finally set off to the International Space Station on Tuesday morning. On Friday, Dragon docked with the ISS and NASA streamed it live. If you want to relive the disappointment/excitement take a look at the NASA coverage. In the run up to the launch, WIRED had a series of Q&As with experts [...]

A glowing fireball descended through the sky over North Africa last July, accompanied by two sonic booms. Observers saw the fireball turn from yellow to green, then split into two parts before one fell to the ground in a valley and the other crashed into a mountain. And then… nothing, for a while. The rocks [...]

Objects half a mile in diameter have been spotted punching through Saturn’s outermost ring, the F ring, and leaving glittering trails as they drag icy particles behind them. Scientists are calling these trails mini-jets. The scientists were actually looking at Prometheus, one of Saturn’s small moons, when they saw the first of the trails. They [...]

If I lived elsewhere in the multiverse, this is the news and cool space stuff I’d have been covering this week. Unfortunately, in this universe I didn’t have the time. Last weekend, Cassini dipped down close to Enceladus to “taste” the jets that erupt from its surface. For some background on Enceladus, see my entry [...]

Two thousand comets a day collide around nearby star Fomalhaut creating a continually replenished dust belt in the outskirts of the star’s system, according to a new paper recently published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. Fomalhaut is a young star. It is twice as massive as the sun and sits 25 light years away [...]

It’s only 240,000 miles away, yet this high wilderness still surprises and delights with clues about the origins of the solar system, Earth’s own water, and it even  supplies the occasional brilliant explosion. If you’ve been paying attention recently you’ll have noticed that the Moon is getting a lot of press. One reason is that [...]

                      Grasping for an understanding of the true scale of the cosmos is a vital part of how we try to conceptualize reality and our place among it all. But it’s tremendously difficult, whether we’re seeking that ‘oh wow’ moment, or trying to gain intuition [...]

New analysis of data taken by the Cassini mission during its encounter with Jupiter in 2000 reveal that exceptionally clear atmospheric ‘hotspots’ effectively ride up and down in the Jovian skies as they are formed by what’s known as a Rossby wave – a phenomenon familiar to us here on Earth. The authors of the [...]

NASA’s Deep Impact probe has captured images of Comet C/2012 S1 (ISON), as it moves past the orbital distance of Jupiter on what may be its first trip inwards to the Sun, and possibly a spectacular show. Comets are notoriously fickle beasts. Chunks of primordial rock, dust, and volatile ices that formed some 4.5 billion [...]

Are you sick of reading about the transit of Venus this year? Yes? Me too. But the fact is that when astrophysical objects move between us and something else, like the convenient blaze of a star, there is an extraordinary amount that can be learned. I won’t go far into the delights of a venusian [...]

It seems that the Saturnian system just keeps on giving when it comes to amazing imagery. Of course it helps to have a $3 billion space mission in place like Cassini to record everything going on. From Saturn The Movie, to The Austere Beauty Of Other Worlds, and Raw Footage From An Alien World, I’ve [...]

Exactly how many planets orbit any given star is still a major unknown in exoplanetary science. The two primary techniques for detecting planets and quantifying their characteristics have significant limitations that blinker us to the full contents of other solar systems. Radial velocity measurements pick up the tell-tale motion of a star around a system’s [...]

Have you ever wondered what it would really be like for a person to journey to a truly distant and alien place; another planet, even another planetary system? What kind of things would we first see through our windows, or our cameras? What would our sensory experience be in such a distant realm? Would we [...]

The notion of what constitutes a typical planetary system has undergone some serious revision in the past twenty years. Our own solar system, once seen as a timeless and almost mechanical entity, is now known to be on the margins of chaos. Long term modeling of its dynamical evolution suggests that orbits of an inner [...]

We live in interesting times. Just as NASA’s most recent budgetary rearrangements seemingly threaten the very core of solar system exploration, with cuts that might pull the agency out of its participation in exciting efforts with Europe on the ExoMars project, the private space industry appears to be on an accelerating course to more real [...]

Tracking the location of the Voyager 1 spacecraft can be exhausting for a science journalist, and I can only imagine how confusing it gets for the interested reader. The relevant question pertaining to Voyager 1’s location is this: Has the venerable NASA spacecraft exited the heliosphere, the sun’s plasma cocoon in space, and crossed into [...]

As it flares out of the distant Oort Cloud, the newly discovered comet C/2012 S1 (ISON) appears to be heading on a trajectory that could make for one of the most spectacular night-sky events in living memory. Why is this comet expected to be so unique? Two reasons: Astronomers predict that the comet will pass [...]

It’s been a long, strange trip out of the solar system for NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft, and it may be a bit longer still. Voyager 1, which launched 35 years ago today, has ventured farther from Earth than any other spacecraft in history. Voyager 1 is now 18.2 billion kilometers from Earth—so distant that it [...]

In April 2010, amid mounting criticism that his space plan lacked direction, President Barack Obama gave a speech in Florida to lay out a few ambitious goals he had in mind for NASA. The details of how those targets would be met remain somewhat sketchy even today, but the goals themselves were clear—sometime around 2025, [...]

PASADENA—They say that null results never get published, either in science or in journalism. Well, I’m about to break that rule. Some of the most interesting results to come out of the Division for Planetary Sciences meeting this week concern non-discoveries. In recent years, planetary scientists have gotten excited by the prospect that Mars and [...]

FAJARDO, Puerto Rico—I first heard about Matt Hedman’s talk while going out to dinner on Tuesday night. Best talk of the meeting, I was told. Everywhere I went yesterday, I kept hearing about this guy Matt Hedman. A former professor of mine chided me for missing his presentation. The problem with the Division for Planetary [...]

This week, the space probe Voyager 1 turned 35. In the years since its launch, it completed its mission to document Saturn and Jupiter and has continued on to the brink of our solar system. Now, it is poised to reach farther than any man-made object to date, exiting the solar system and entering the [...]

Story 5 Astronauts from five different space agencies are participating in the CAVES project, an underground training exercise beneath the island of Sardinia. Links: Astronauts Heading Deep Underground for Spaceflight Training Story 4 Scientists have discovered a two-star solar system orbited by two planets, an astronomical first. Links: Two Alien Planets Found with Twin Suns [...]