This NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory image shows a giant sunspot group on the sun, from where an X-class flare erupted on January 7, 2013. A large coronal mass ejection has reached Earth – days after the Sun sent a massive burst of solar wind and electromagnetic radiation towards our planet. While causing no major geomagnetic storm, it has produced spectacular auroras in northern Europe. The... 

The sale of two intelligence satellites to the UAE by France for nearly a billion dollars could go south after they were found to contain American technology designed to intercept data transmitted to the ground station. The equipment, costing 3.4 billion dirhams ($930 million), constitutes two high-resolution Pleiades-type Falcon Eye military intelligence satellites, which a top UAE defense source... 

Europe has launched a billion dollar state of the art space telescope, that should bring back home the most detailed 3D map of our galaxy. The five-year-long space voyage of the telescope named Gaia has started from Kourou in French Guiana, where it has taken off on top of a Russian-built Soyuz-Fregat rocket. The European Space Agency has dubbed the Gaia telescope “the billion star surveyor” which... 

Images from Cassini spacecraft gave astronomers a great deal of new information about the seas of Titan, a moon of Saturn. The study of Ligei Sea showed that it is mainly composed of liquid methane. The amount of methane in that sea is about 9,000 cubic meters, which is 40 times greater than all proven oil and gas reserves on Earth. The sea is about 160-170 meters deep. In addition to methane, it... 

Scientists have found the “clearest evidence yet” that the universe we inhabit is a giant hologram, paving the way towards reconciling one of physics’ most pressing issues: the relationship between Einstein’s theory of relativity and quantum physics. In other words, we could be living inside a giant 3D projection of what is actually a two-dimensional space, similar to an IMAX movie theater... 

An International Space Station coolant system has malfunctioned. A valve in one of the International Space Station’s cooling systems has malfunctioned, says the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). NASA said on Wednesday that the situation did not represent a life-threatening emergency for crew members, but may require a repair spacewalk. “The crew was never in any danger,” NASA... 

An Indian spacecraft bound for the Red Planet has left Earth’s atmosphere, set for a 300-day mission to Mars. The probe will cost $72 million, and the spacecraft should reach its destination on September 24, 2014. The spacecraft is called the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), also known as Mangalyaan, and will cruise some 680 million kilometers. The probe has completed six orbits around Earth before Sunday’s... 

Russia has presented a new humanlike robot, which may be delivered to the International Space Station to perform 90 percent of risky operations in open space instead of cosmonauts. The SAR- 401 prototype was revealed to journalists at the Yury Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Moscow Region’s Star City on Wednesday. The robot was developed in 2013 and is currently being tested terrestrially,... 

NASA is bravely venturing into new scientific territory with a plan to start growing plants on the moon no later than 2015. The experiment is designed to yield important knowledge about life’s long-term chances in space – including for us. The initiative comes courtesy of the Lunar Plant Growth Habitat team – a small group of scientists, students, volunteers and contractors – who plan to install... 

Nov. 17, 2013, At Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 41 a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket stands ready to boost the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, or MAVEN, spacecraft on a 10-month journey to the Red Planet. NASA successfully launched its Maven orbiter into space from Cape Canaveral, Florida on Monday as part of the agency’s latest operation aimed at exploring... 

This 23 March, 2004 NASA Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) image shows a crater in Utopia Planitia on Mars. There used to be an ocean on Mars about three billion years ago and its remains can still be observed, Russian scientists said. “Our studies have shown that an ocean existed in the Utopia Planitia region on the Red Planet,” Mikhail Ivanov from Space Research Institute of... 

A unique space cannon developed for Japan’s Hayabusa 2 spacecraft has successfully test-fired on Earth in preparation for a 2014 mission. During its upcoming journey into space, the cannon will blast an asteroid and mine samples of its soil. The test took place in the Japanese prefecture of Gifu, paving the way for the Hayabusa 2 spacecraft to extract soil samples from the asteroid, the Japan Aerospace... 

A potentially catastrophic asteroid has been discovered by astronomers, who say there’s a slim chance that the 410-meter-wide minor planet will crash into Earth in 2032, creating a blast 50 times greater than the biggest nuclear bomb. The asteroid, described as 2013 TV135, was found in the Camelopardalis (Giraffe) constellation by the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory in southern Ukraine, the Minor... 

The largest-discovered fragment of a Russian meteorite, weighing around 570 kilograms, has been lifted from the bed of Lake Chebarkul in the Urals. The huge meteorite chunk split into three pieces when scientists tried to weigh it. The precise weight could not be established because the heavy object broke the scales. “The preliminary examination… shows that this is really a fraction of the... 

The image was captured from the International Space Station by Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano. His colleague Mike Hopkins tweeted: ‘Saw something launch into space today. Not sure what it was but the cloud it left behind was pretty amazing’ On October 11th, ESA/Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano posted some bizarre photos via his Twitter account from the International Space Station. A mystery...