New Horizons Team Unravels the Many Mysteries of Ultima Thule

The farthest object ever explored is slowly revealing its secrets, as scientists piece together the puzzles of Ultima Thule – the Kuiper Belt object NASA's New Horizons spacecraft flew past on New Year's Day, four billion miles from Earth.

Trembling Aspen Leaves Could Save Future Mars Rovers

Researchers at the University of Warwick have been inspired by the unique movement of trembling aspen leaves, to devise an energy harvesting mechanism that could power weather sensors in hostile environments and could even be a back-up energy supply that could save and extend the life of future Mars rovers.

Spiraling Giants: Witnessing the Birth of a Massive Binary Star System

Scientists from the RIKEN Cluster for Pioneering Research in Japan, the Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, and the University of Virginia in the USA and collaborators used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to observe a molecular cloud that is collapsing to form two massive protostars that will eventually become a binary star system.

How Heavy Elements Come About in the Universe

Heavy elements are produced during stellar explosion or on the surfaces of neutron stars through the capture of hydrogen nuclei (protons). This occurs at extremely high temperatures, but at relatively low energies. An international research team headed by Goethe University has now succeeded in investigating the capture of protons at the storage ring of the GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung.

Energy Loss Gives Unexpected Insights in Evolution of Quasar Jets

An international team of astrophysicists observed for the first time that the jet of a quasar is less powerful on long radio wavelengths than earlier predicted. This discovery gives new insights in the evolution of quasar jets. They made this observation using the international Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) telescope, that produced high resolution radio images of quasar 4C+19.44 located over 5 billion light-years from Earth.

ESA's Hera Asteroid Mission Borrows Eyes of NASA's Dawn

The mission to the smallest asteroid ever explored will employ the same main camera as the mission to the largest asteroids of all. ESA’s proposed Hera spacecraft to the Didymos asteroid pair has inherited its main imager from NASA’s Dawn mission to the Vesta and Ceres asteroids.

New Research Module Nauka for ISS to Undergo Pre-flight Tests

A new multifunctional laboratory module Nauka (Science), which is expected to be launched to the International Space Station in 2020, will be transported from Moscow’s Khrunichev space research center to the RSC Energia for pre-flight tests in August, Dmitry Rogozin, chief of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, wrote on his official Twitter account on Saturday.

Dormant Viruses Activate During Spaceflight, NASA Investigates

Herpes viruses reactivate in more than half of crew aboard Space Shuttle and International Space Station missions, according to NASA research published in Frontiers in Microbiology. While only a small proportion develop symptoms, virus reactivation rates increase with spaceflight duration and could present a significant health risk on missions to Mars and beyond.