Announcements

NEOWISE Spies Its First Comet

Project News • February 28th, 2014

NASA's Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) spacecraft has spotted a never-before-seen comet -- its first such discovery since coming out of hibernation late last year.

NASA's Kepler Mission Announces a Planet Bonanza, 715 New Worlds

Project News • February 26th, 2014

NASA's Kepler mission announced the discovery of 715 new planets. These newly-verified worlds orbit 305 stars, revealing multiple-planet systems much like our own solar system.

NASA-Sponsored 'Disk Detective' Lets Public Search for New Planetary Nurseries

Project News • January 30th, 2014

NASA is inviting the public to help astronomers discover embryonic planetary systems hidden among data from the agency's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission through a new website, DiskDetective.org. Disk Detective is NASA's largest crowdsourcing project whose primary goal is to...

Where the Wild Stars Are

Project News • January 29th, 2014

A storm of stars is brewing in the Trifid nebula, as seen in this view from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE.

Recently Reactivated NASA Spacecraft Spots Its First New Asteroid

Project News • January 7th, 2014

NASA's Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) spacecraft has spotted a never-before-seen asteroid -- its first such discovery since coming out of hibernation last year. NEOWISE originally was called the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), which had made the most...

NASA's Asteroid Hunter Spacecraft Returns First Images after Reactivation

Project News • December 19th, 2013

NASA's Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE), a spacecraft that made the most comprehensive survey to date of asteroids and comets, has returned its first set of test images in preparation for a renewed mission.

WISE Catalog Just Got Wiser

Project News • November 14th, 2013

NASA's WISE mission has released a new and improved atlas and catalog brimming with data on three-quarters of a billion objects detected during two full scans of the sky.

NASA Spacecraft Reactivated to Hunt for Asteroids

Project News • August 21st, 2013

A NASA spacecraft that discovered and characterized tens of thousands of asteroids throughout the solar system before being placed in hibernation will return to service for three more years starting in September, assisting the agency in its effort to identify the population of potentially...

Kepler Discovers its Smallest Habitable Zone Planets

Project News • April 18th, 2013

NASA's Kepler mission has discovered two new planetary systems that include three super-Earth-size planets in the "habitable zone," the range of distance from a star where the surface temperature of an orbiting planet might be suitable for liquid water.

Gravity-Bending Find Leads to Kepler Meeting Einstein

Project News • April 4th, 2013

NASA's Kepler space telescope has witnessed the effects of a dead star bending the light of its companion star. The findings are among the first detections of this phenomenon -- a result of Einstein's theory of general relativity -- in binary, or double, star systems.