NASA and the ESA have teamed up to conduct studies looking at the value of artificial gravity for the health of astronauts. The study starts with test subjects in Germany that will be confined to a bed for 60 days starting on March 25. The research is jointly funded between the two space agencies.
The European Space Agency has conducted a series of tests that involve blowing up batteries as part of research into preventing space debris. The work took place in bunkers and involved engineers using a variety of methods to destroy lithium-ion space batteries, including short-circuiting them, shooting them, and causing them to overcharge and overheat.
Last year Mars Express detected water under Mars' south pole - now it's become more clear to which extent that water represented Mars' watery past. According to new findings with the ESA and Mars Express here in the present, early Mars had water - lots and lots of water, on the surface, in liquid form. Researchers found evidence of massive amounts of water by studying 24 individual deep, enclosed craters in the planet's northern hemisphere. They found features that couldn't have formed in any way other than in the presence of liquid water.
Groundbreaking analysis of a distant, fast-moving comet has revealed new details in how asteroids form, shedding light on the formation of unusual shapes and, potentially, paving the way for more effective protection of the Earth from meteor impacts. The asteroid, Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, is around 2.7 miles across and moving at as much as 84,000 miles per hour, but scientists have long been fascinated by its unusual shape.
The European Space Agency has announced the Metalysis-ESA Grand Challenge, a new competition seeking innovation for future space missions. The space agency is offering 500,000 Euros as rewards for European innovations that focus on the lunar surface and how it could help humanity move toward a more sustainable, long-term future in space -- both on the moon and beyond.
Massive amounts of data are generated by orbiting scientific platforms like the Hubble, and the ESA's Gaia satellite; so much data that it often takes years for researchers to pour through. An international team of astronomers were pouring through Gaia data recently and discovered a massive "ghost" galaxy hiding behind the shroud of the Milky Way's disc. The new galaxy has been named Antila 2 or Ant 2 and is said to be an extremely low-density galaxy.
The ESA is working on a mission that will put another rover on the surface of Mars with launch aiming at 2020. The ExoMars Landing Site Selection Working Grop has now issued its recommendation on a landing site for that mission; the landing site is a location called Oxia Planum. The final step in the selection process is an internal review by the ESA and Roscosmos.
Earlier this morning, the two astronauts on board the Russian Soyuz spacecraft had a close call on what was an otherwise routine mission. The spacecraft experienced a booster failure just a couple of minutes after launching, resulting in a launch abort. Luckily, the two astronauts on board - Alexey Ovchinin and Nick Hague - made it back to Earth safely, narrowly avoiding tragedy.
Gaia is a star mapping mission that the ESA is conducting, and it recently discovered something very interesting. Gaia has found that the Milky Way galaxy is still facing the effects of a near collision that set millions of stars to rippling like water in a lake. ESA scientists believe that the near collision happened in the past 300-900 million years.
The European Space Agency has teamed with Nissan to develop an off-road mobile observatory capable of traveling to the world's darkest regions. The new vehicle, which is described as a concept at this time, is named the Nissan Navara "Dark Sky." According to the space agency, this concept includes a trailer featuring a high-powered observatory-class PlaneWave telescope.
Striking new images from the Hubble Space Telescope have revealed the vast auroras fluttering atop its North Pole, the best shots ever captured of the glowing halo. The new images are in fact an amalgamation of seven months of capture by Hubble, and are already giving astronomers the opportunity for new insights into the light shows.
As group photos go, NASA's latest snapshot of 15,000 galaxies across the universe has to be one of the biggest, with the epic image spanning not only distance but time, too. Captured using the Hubble Space Telescope, the new photo is dominated by forming stars: newly blooming points of light that stud freshly-created galaxies.