The liquid helium coolant that enabled instruments on board the Herschel space observatory to collect extraordinary images and spectra has finally run out. Launched in 2009, the ESA mission collected unprecedented data of the cool as well as of the distant Universe. Herschel's observations have exceeded expectations, enabling scientists to learn more about how stars form, about the rates of star formation in galaxies across the cosmos, and about the origin and presence of water in different celestial bodies. While observations have come to an end and the spacecraft is to be propelled to a stable parking orbit around the Sun, where it will remain indefinitely, the science mission will continue for several years with many discoveries still to be made in the treasure trove of images and spectra collected by the observatory.(author unknown)

The flagship Herschel telescope, the most powerful infrared observatory ever put into orbit, has run out of coolant and stopped working.(author unknown)

The Herschel observatory, a European space telescope for which NASA helped build instruments and process data, has stopped making observations after running out of liquid coolant as expected.(author unknown)

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has provided the first direct evidence of small meteoroids crashing into Saturn's rings and breaking into streams of rubble.(author unknown)

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have shown for the first time that bursts of star formation have a major impact far beyond the boundaries of their host galaxy. These energetic events can affect galactic gas at distances of up to twenty times greater than the visible size of the galaxy - altering how the galaxy evolves, and how matter and energy is spread throughout the Universe.(author unknown)

Astronomers have used ESO’s Very Large Telescope, along with radio telescopes around the world, to find and study a bizarre stellar pair consisting of the most massive neutron star confirmed so far, orbited by a white dwarf star. This strange new binary allows tests of Einstein’s theory of gravity — general relativity — in ways that were not possible up to now. So far the new observations exactly agree with the predictions from general relativity and are inconsistent with some alternative theories. The results will appear in the journal Science on 26 April 2013.(author unknown)

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has provided the first direct evidence of small meteoroids breaking into streams of rubble and crashing into Saturn's rings.(author unknown)