One planet called Kepler 16 was discovered some time ago but two new planets called Kepler 34 and Kepler 35 have just been found. Each of these planets revolve around their own double Suns. These discoveries imply that planets revolving around binary stars (Suns that exist as a pair) are common throughout the galaxy. This [...]

I don’t know how it does it but the Mars rover opportunity continues to send back results from Mars. This one could be very significant as opportunity has found slivers of a bright material that could be gypsum (calcium sulphate). If this is confirmed it will be the most unambiguous sign of water yet found [...]

Look out for the Mars science laboratory launch on November 26, 2011. Curiosity, which is a Rover , will search for elements that are needed to support life which are mainly water and any carbon-based materials. This will give us a good indication of whether Mars was habitable or will be habitable in the future. [...]

The hurricanes that we experience on Earth are nothing compared to other alien worlds. Astronomers have observed extreme changes in brightness on a brown dwarf not that far away. These changes may indicate a storm that is bigger than seen on any planet so far. Brown dwarfs and giant planets have similar atmospheres and therefore [...]

Scientists have been meeting to talk about the prospects of finding life on Mars. Questions still linger positively or negatively about whether life exists on Mars because the right instruments haven’t been available. The instruments needed are being developed now and  are being refined for future missions. The main challenge is to get them on [...]

A new large million-dollar NASA project started by theUniversityofMichiganaims to find out if microbial life could exist on Mars. Recently flowing water has been seen on Mars as reported in this weirdwarp post. Beads of water were first photographed on the Mars Phoenix lander’s legs about three years ago. Water could mean life, not little [...]

The Opportunity rover has reached the crater Endeavour and is now sitting near its edge, looking across at the bowl and hills around its rim. Images from the Rover are shown below. (Don’t forget to click on them to make them bigger).      

Where there is water there should be life. NASA has been looking for water for a long time in its long quest searching for life in the solar system. It looks as though now the Mars reconnaissance orbiter has found flowing water during the warmest months on Mars. Dark, finger-like features appear and extend down [...]

For the first time it has been shown that the Cassini-Huygens probe’s sampling of icy spray shooting from Saturn’s moon Enceladus contains large salt rich grains. The spray was sampled by Cassini in 2005. The plumes were coming from the so-called “tiger stripe” surface fractures at the moon’s south pole. These tiger stripes are thought [...]

Five new projects have been announced by the NASA astrobiology science and technology for exploring planets program (ASTEP). ASTEP promotes the search for life on other planets and supports research and exploration of the Earth’s most remote places. New technology is used by ASTEP to seek, identify and characterise life that exists or did exist [...]

The Kepler telescope, which has been looking for planets outside our solar system, has found a new rocky planet a bit like a scorched molten Earth. It orbits around a sun like star called Kepler-10 in only 45 days. It is so close to its parent star it is not expected to have any liquid [...]

Planetary scientists use the look of planets and moons to find out information about their past. New maps of the moon have been put together that reveal the slopes and roughness of the moon’s surface. These maps are based on data which has been collected by the lunar orbiter laser altimeter on NASA’s lunar reconnaissance [...]

A massive search for alien life on 86 exoplanets has just started. The search will use a large radio telescope in West Virginia to listen for signs of life. These 86 planets have been picked from a list of 1235 planets which have been identified by NASA’s Kepler space telescope. 24 hours of data will [...]

Deep fractures have been found around the giant Isidis impact basin on Mars. This area called NiliFossae is of interest to scientists because telescopes on Earth measured an increase in methane in Mars’s atmosphere over this area. This could mean life or it could be geological. Some of these incisions are up to 500 m [...]

Are manned missions just a waste of time? Space agencies and presidents insist that manned missions are necessary and will always be in their programmes. The reason normally given is that an astronaut embodies the spirit of the space programme and can also act swiftly and creatively in ways that machines cannot. The critics dismiss [...]

NASA’s Messenger spacecraft (MErcury Surface,Space Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging) has become the first craft to enter orbit around Mercury and now we have the first picture from orbit. Messenger has taken six years to get into orbit around Mercury. If the Messenger probe had been sent to Mercury on a direct course it would have [...]

Opportunity (NASA’s Mars exploration Rover) has been exploring a crater on Mars called Santa Maria and has nearly finished its three-month examination. The picture has been taken from orbit of opportunity posing  just on the edge. The pictures were taken by the high resolution imaging science experiment (HIRISE). The tracks from the west that opportunity [...]

The moons far side has been imaged in extreme detail by the lunar reconnaissance orbiter (LRO). A mosaic is being made of the moon by the LRO and this image is one of many building up into a map providing a global view of the moon to a resolution of 100 m per pixel. (Click on [...]

Cassini has recorded internal heat produced by the south polar terrain of Enceladus to be extremely more than was predicted. The internal heat is about 15.80 GW which is about the power output of 20 coal fuelled power stations. This doesn’t mean that a bunch of aliens have built 20 coal fuelled power stations on [...]

Some great news from the planet front has just arrived. As was expected Kepler has found lots of new planets. These planets are really planetary candidates and have to be positively confirmed but a high percentage definitely will be planets. The recent findings increase the number of planets found by Kepler to 1235. 68 of [...]