Press Releases & Feature Stories Archive - Astrophysics Science Division

NASA’s Webb Telescope Will Provide Census of Fledgling Stars in Stellar Nursery

12.12.2018

The dazzling glow of young stars dominates images of the giant stellar nursery NGC 346, in the neighboring dwarf galaxy called the Small Magellanic Cloud.

NASA’s First Stellar Observatory, OAO 2, Turns 50

12.11.2018

Launched on Dec. 7, 1968, NASA's Orbiting Astronomical Observatory 2, nicknamed Stargazer, was the agency's first successful cosmic explorer — a direct ancestor of Hubble and many other astronomy satellites.

Honeycomb Mirrors Makes NASA’s Webb the Most Powerful Space Telescope

12.07.2018

James Webb's mirrors' honeycomb like arrangement allows for Webb to have the largest possible reflective surface area to make observations, with the least amount of dead space in between each.

NASA Goddard Year in Review - 2018

12.07.2018

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center is home to the nation's largest organization of scientists, engineers and technologists who build spacecraft, instruments and new technology to study Earth, the Sun, our solar system and the universe. Looking back over 2018, here is just a small sampling of our year's highlights and memorable moments.

Celebratory Galaxy Photo Honors 25th Anniversary of NASA's First Hubble Servicing Mission

12.04.2018

One especially photogenic galaxy located 55 million light-years away holds a special place in Hubble history.

The 'Camera That Saved Hubble' Turns 25

12.04.2018

Twenty-five years ago this week, the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) was installed on the Hubble Space Telescope to correct a devastating error in the telescope's primary mirror.

Hubble Celebrates 25 Years Since First Repair Mission in Space

12.02.2018

Twenty-five years ago today, a group of astronauts ascended in the space shuttle to accomplish a feat of unprecedented proportions: to fix Hubble, in space.

Hubble Captures Tangled Remnants of a Supernova

11.30.2018

This dark, tangled web is a supernova remnant, created after a massive star ended its life in a cataclysmic explosion.

NASA Awards Optical Telescope Assembly for Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope Mission

11.30.2018

NASA has awarded a contract to Harris Corporation of Rochester, New York, for the Optical Telescope Assembly (OTA) for the agency’s Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) mission.

Hubble Uncovers Thousands of Globular Star Clusters Scattered Among Galaxies

11.29.2018

Astronomers using Hubble found a whopping 22,426 globular star clusters in a nearby neighborhood of galaxies.

NASA’s Fermi Traces the History of Starlight Across the Cosmos

11.29.2018

Scientists using data from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have measured all the starlight produced over 90 percent of the universe’s history.

Behind the Scenes of Recovering NASA’s Hubble

11.27.2018

Hubble is back to exploring the universe with three working gyros, thanks to the hard work of a multitude of people on the ground.

NASA's Webb Takes a Carriage Ride to Testing Chambers

11.27.2018

The James Webb Space Telescope takes a carriage ride from one place to another during testing.

Hubble Captures Stars Across Generations

11.23.2018

Star clusters are common structures throughout the universe, each made up of hundreds of thousands of stars all bound together by gravity.

Hubble Hooks a Cosmic Jellyfish

11.16.2018

At first glance, a bright blue crescent immediately jumps out of this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image.

Astronomers Find Possible Elusive Star Behind Supernova

11.15.2018

Astronomers may have finally uncovered the long-sought progenitor to a specific type of exploding star by sifting through NASA Hubble Space Telescope archival data.

NASA’s Webb Telescope Will Investigate Cosmic Jets From Young Stars

11.14.2018

James Webb Space Telescope will study objects like Herbig-Haro (HH) 212, located about 1,400 light-years away in the constellation Orion.

Hubble Spots a Lonely Blue Dwarf

11.09.2018

This captivating image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 shows a lonely dwarf galaxy 100 million light-years away from Earth.

Multimessenger Links to NASA’s Fermi Mission Show How Luck Favors the Prepared

11.08.2018

In 2017, NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope played a pivotal role in two important breakthroughs occurring just five weeks apart.

Astronomers Unveil Growing Black Holes in Colliding Galaxies

11.07.2018

These images reveal the final stage of unions between pairs of galactic nuclei in the messy cores of colliding galaxies.

NASA Brings its Science and Supercomputing Advances to SC18

11.05.2018

From designing rocket launch pad components and safer rotorcraft to improving flood and drought forecasts to modeling the formation of planetary disks, NASA will highlight supercomputing advances at SC18, the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis, Nov. 12 to 15 in Dallas.