Last month, an international team of researchers announced a huge leap forward in the search for extraterrestrial life: the discovery of seven potentially habitable Earth-size planets just down the galactic road. Along with the breathtaking announcement of the Trappist-1 system, the scientists revealed awe-inspiring artistic renditions of the astronomic finding.

A major new study has come to a surprising conclusion about what the sun’s fierce solar storms are doing to our atmosphere. Researchers in Denmark have just made a big discovery high up in the atmosphere above us: a sign that solar storms are wreaking havoc, stripping out massive quantities of electrons, even though scientists had long believed solar storms cause an excess of electrons.

Space is a big, mostly empty place, but every once in a while a pricey piece of Earth machinery ends up in a tight squeeze with a celestial body. That’s just what happened to NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft which is currently in its third year of orbit around Mars.

For years, a North Texas doctor has been trying to find out what is causing this vision change among astronauts. His latest research provides some clues – and connects astronauts on the International Space Station, cancer patients on a roller coaster plane flight, and high-tech sleeping sacks.

New Delhi , Mar. 4 : NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission , which is in its second year of studying the Red Planet’s atmosphere, was recently forced to perform unscheduled maneuver to avert a space-wreck. In its first collision avoidance maneuver, MAVEN spacecraft carried out a rocket motor burn that boosted its velocity by 0.4 meters per second to steer clear of Mars’ moon Phobos, NASA reported.

The Advanced Plant Habitat will be used to conduct plant bioscience research on the space station to help researchers better understand how plants grow in space. Some of the components of this new system have arrived at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida and are being prepared for delivery to the station on Orbital ATK’s seventh commercial resupply mission to the station scheduled for launch on March 19, NASA said.

For the first time, scientists using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have witnessed a massive object with the makeup of a comet being ripped apart and scattered in the atmosphere of a white dwarf, the burned-out remains of a compact star. The object has a chemical composition similar to Halley’s Comet, but it is 100,000 times more massive and has a much higher amount of water.

The exact amount wasn’t specified, other than it required a “significant deposit.” The mission is set to take place during the second quarter of 2018.

PUPILS from Abingdon were just one step away from blast-off to the stars when they spent four nights living in Russia’s cosmonaut training school. During half-term 11 boys from Abingdon School and 18 girls from St Helen and St Katharine School in the town visited the Russian Space Agency’s Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre near Moscow.

Astronaut Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency cleaned U.S. spacesuit cooling loops and collected water samples for a periodic maintenance check today. Afterward, he began charging spacewalking gear including helmet lights and tool batteries.

Already known for attempting to tackle such ambitious goals as landing a reusable rocket and sending a manned mission to Mars, SpaceX announced Monday that it was planning to send a pair of private citizens on a trip around the moon by the end of next year. , the proposed orbital flight would be 100% self-funded, would take place in late 2018 and would use the Falcon Heavy booster rocket – which, it should be noted, has yet to be flown.