China Starts Construction of One of World’s Largest Cosmic Ray Observatories

China has started its construction of one of the world’s largest observatories studying the origins of cosmic rays, local media reported on Thursday.

Number of exoplanets doubles as NASA confirms 1,284 new worlds

U.S. space agency NASA said Tuesday its Kepler mission has verified the existence of nearly 1,300 new planets, almost doubling the number of known planets outside our solar system.

Most Earth-like worlds have yet to be born

New analysis of data suggests Earth is actually an early bloomer, and 92 percent of the habitable planets that will ever exist are yet to be born.

European comet probe wakes up from hibernation

European Space Agency's Philae probe has woken up and made contact with controllers, seven months after it went into hibernation on the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

NASA's Messenger Will Crash Into Mercury (video YT)

The first spacecraft to orbit Mercury, the closest planet to our Sun, will run out of fuel and crash on its surface Thursday, ending its 11-year mission.

Philae may not have energy to send results to Earth, says ESA

Europe's robot lab Philae may not have enough power to send to Earth the results of today's drill into the surface of its host comet, mission scientists have said.

The Rosetta comet landing has made history (Space probe, Philae, reaches comet’s surface first time in history)

After 10 years of hard work and one nerve-wracking night, the Rosetta mission has made history by landing on the surface of a comet.

Water on earth originated outside the solar system, scientists prove

Human beings have always obsessed over whether they are alone in the universe. Now scientists say they’ve proved that at least some of the water on Earth has to have originated from outside the solar system (and they add that it’s older than the sun).
The news has set the flying-saucer-sphere abuzz with the thought that other planets in the universe are therefore more likely to have had water, at some stage at least, and to therefore have developed life.

Rosetta space probe makes historic rendezvous with comet

European scientists announced the historic rendezvous on Wednesday between a comet and the Rosetta spacecraft after a 10-year, six billion-kilometre (3.7-billion-mile) chase through the solar system.

The scout Rosetta has now become the first envoy to orbit one of these wanderers of the solar system in deep space, the European Space Agency (ESA) said.

Scientists and spectators at ESA’s mission control in Darmstadt, Germany, cheered after the spacecraft successfully completed its final thrust to swing alongside comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

Une planète soeur de la Terre découverte par la Nasa

Une équipe internationale d'astronomes a découvert la première planète hors du système solaire d'une taille comparable à la Terre et sur laquelle les températures permettent à l'eau d'exister à l'état liquide et d'être ainsi propice à la vie.

Cette découverte, réalisée grâce au télescope spatial américain Kepler, conforte la probabilité de trouver des planètes soeurs de la Terre dans notre galaxie, la Voie Lactée, estiment ces scientifiques dirigés par une astronome de la Nasa et dont les travaux sont publiés dans la revue américaine Science jeudi."C'est la première exoplanète de la taille de la Terre trouvée dans la zone habitable d'une autre étoile", souligne Elisa Quintana, une astronome du SETI Institute au centre de recherche Ames de la Nasa, qui a mené cette recherche.

Japan's newest rocket Epsilon lifts off carrying a telescope for observation of the solar system from space (Video)

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Japan has successfully launched a new solid-fuel rocket carrying a telescope for observation of the solar system from space, following last month’s setback.

The rocket lifted off at 2.00 p.m. (0500GMT) on Saturday from the Uchinoura Space Center in Kagoshima, southwestern Japan.

A previous launch scheduled for August 27 was suspended nearly 20 seconds before countdown after a ground control computer falsely detected a positional abnormality.