Roscosmos prepare to launch first female cosmonaut in 17 years

(Wilmore, Samokutyaev and Serova – Photo Credit: NASA)

Later this year, Yelena Serova will fly to the International Space Station as part of Expedition 41/42, making her the first female cosmonaut in 17 years, as well as the fourth Russian woman to fly in space.

Cracks in Charon, Plutos moon, could indicate it once harbored an underground ocean

(Artists conception of Pluto and some of its moons – Photo Credit: NASA, ESA and G. Bacon)

NASA’s New Horizon mission is set to arrive in the Pluto system in 2015, and scientists on Earth hope that the craft could figure out if Charon, the dwarf planet’s largest moon, could have once hosted a subsurface ocean.

Details of near-Earth asteroid revealed

(Photo Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Arecibo Observatory/USRA/NSF)

Recently, a huge near-Earth asteroid, nicknamed “The Beast”, whizzed less than a million miles away from our planet. In order to find out more, NASA researchers bounced radio signals off the asteroid, creating some of the most detailed radar views of an asteroid ever captured.

Image of the Day: 18/6/14

(Photo Credit: NASA/Hubble/Chandra)

Across 250 hours of observation, NASA’s Chandra Xray Observatory has compiled this photograph of Messier 51, otherwise known as the Whirlpool galaxy, which is located 30 million light-years from Earth.