60-second Space

Three teenage Texas model rocketeers beat out teams from France and the U.K. to claim top honors at this year's International Rocketry Competition. John Matson reports

Looking at the Himiko Galaxy as it was just 800 million years after the big bang offers a glimpse at how the most massive galaxies took shape. John Matson reports

Segue 2, one of dozens of "companion" galaxies that orbit the Milky Way, is now the smallest galaxy known. Michael Moyer reports

A side benefit of NASA's Curiosity rover mission is that we now know about how much radiation an interplanetary traveler would face. John Matson reports

Isotopic analysis of water trapped in volcanic glass in lunar samples show that the moon has more water than thought, and the water there and on Earth had the same origins. Karen Hopkin reports

After nine (Earth) years of slowly traversing Mars, Opportunity broke the U.S. off-world rover record held by Apollo 17's lunar buggy since 1972. John Matson reports.

Silicon-rich rocky material was found around white dwarfs in the Hyades star cluster by the Hubble Space Telescope, despite the fact that almost no known planets exist in star clusters. John Matson reports

Based on the Milky Way's effect on the motion of a nearby dwarf galaxy, our galaxy seems to have more mass than we previously thought. John Matson reports

NASA's orbiting Kepler telescope recently spotted three exoplanets in or near their stars' so-called habitable zones, the temperate region where a planet could accommodate liquid water. John Matson reports

Using imagery taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2007, amateur astronomers located an object that could be a Russian lander that went dark after a few seconds on Mars in 1971. John Matson reports

Saturn's rings and moons contain a uniform distribution of water ice, which seems to reflect their common origins billions of years ago. John Matson reports

New data from the European Planck satellite indicate that the universe is 13.8 billion years old rather than a mere 13.7 billion years old. John Matson reports

An incomplete version of Chile's ALMA telescope array found that star formation was in full swing earlier than had been thought. John Matson reports

A study of the star HD 140283, only about 190 light-years away from us, finds that it formed in short order after the big bang. John Matson reports

The Van Allen Probes recently found a third belt of charged particles circling Earth, which was then destroyed by a solar shock wave. John Matson reports

Heat radiating from an asteroid imparts a tiny push to the rock, meaning that we could subtly steer an asteroid by changing its reflectance. John Matson reports

The Russian city of Chelyabinsk was awakened on February 15 when a meteor exploded overhead, with an energy equivalent to about 300 kilotons of TNT

Even as a few of its sensors cause problems, the Curiosity rover became the first robotic visitor to bore into the Martian surface. John Matson reports

The star TW Hydrae should be too old to still have planets forming around it, but its gas and dust indicate it still has planetary potential. John Matson reports

Tree-ring data from A.D. 774 show a sudden spike in radioactive carbon 14, pointing to a burst of charged particles or high-energy radiation that struck Earth. A relatively nearby gamma-ray burst could be the culprit. John Matson reports