The US space agency releases a spectacular new picture of Saturn, acquired by the Cassini spacecraft on "the day the Earth smiled".

The first traces of life found in glass from an impact crater supports the idea that microbes travelling on space rocks could have seeded the solar system
    

An asteroid with a record number of dusty tails may be rotating so fast it is falling apart, which could help us understand the way asteroids die
    

Recently given up for dead, NASA's Kepler space telescope might get a new lease of life that will broaden the planet-hunting king's view of the sky
    

The Hubble telescope has spotted an asteroid radiating six comet-like tails, making it resemble a "rotating lawn sprinkler".

The Hubble Space Telescope has spotted a strange asteroid spewing six comet-like tails of dust. This could be a sign that the asteroid is breaking apart.

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It's not often that astronomers stumble across a celestial interloper that they can only describe as "weird and freakish." Hubble researchers say they were "literally dumbfounded" when they took a close-up look at an object that lives in the asteroid belt but superficially looks like a comet. It has no less than six dust tails that seem to be forming sequentially. The entire structure rotates like a bicycle wheel with spokes on one side.

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have observed a unique and baffling object in the asteroid belt that looks like a rotating lawn sprinkler or badminton shuttlecock. While this object is on an asteroid-like orbit, it looks like a comet, and is sending out tails of dust into space.

Astronomers viewing our solar system's asteroid belt with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have seen for the first time an asteroid with six comet-like tails of dust radiating from it like spokes on a wheel.

Efforts to listen in to primordial dark matter are helping to refine recent models that suggest some of the elusive particles can build dark atoms
    

If life is common in the universe, we will have found signs of it by the middle of the next decade, thanks to a new generation of space telescopes
    

The threat of another asteroid strike like the one that hit Russia this year has been underestimated, a study suggests.

The Russian meteorite was the largest to hit Earth in a century. From sunburns to exotic chemistry, it sparked a flurry of forensic research
    

A dizzying display shows all 3538 known and candidate exoplanets in multi-planet systems that NASA's planet-hunting space telescope has discovered so far
    

A team of NASA and international scientists for the first time have gathered a detailed understanding of the effects on Earth from a small asteroid impact.

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the start of a very fruitful relationship between ESO and Chile that has allowed both European and Chilean astronomy to push the boundaries of science, technology and culture forward into the future.

Olivine in an unexpected location on Vesta’s surface

Nature 504, 7478 (2013). doi:10.1038/nature12665

Authors: E. Ammannito, M. C. De Sanctis, E. Palomba, A. Longobardo, D. W. Mittlefehldt, H. Y. McSween, S. Marchi, M. T. Capria, F. Capaccioni, A. Frigeri, C. M. Pieters, O. Ruesch, F. Tosi, F. Zambon, F. Carraro, S. Fonte, H. Hiesinger, G. Magni, L. A. McFadden, C. A. Raymond, C. T. Russell & J. M. Sunshine

Olivine is a major component of the mantle of differentiated bodies, including Earth. Howardite, eucrite and diogenite (HED) meteorites represent regolith, basaltic-crust, lower-crust and possibly ultramafic-mantle samples of asteroid Vesta, which is the lone surviving, large, differentiated, basaltic rocky protoplanet in the Solar System. Only a few of these meteorites, the orthopyroxene-rich diogenites, contain olivine, typically with a concentration of less than 25 per cent by volume. Olivine was tentatively identified on Vesta, on the basis of spectral and colour data, but other observations did not confirm its presence. Here we report that olivine is indeed present locally on Vesta’s surface but that, unexpectedly, it has not been found within the deep, south-pole basins, which are thought to be excavated mantle rocks. Instead, it occurs as near-surface materials in the northern hemisphere. Unlike the meteorites, the olivine-rich (more than 50 per cent by volume) material is not associated with diogenite but seems to be mixed with howardite, the most common surface material. Olivine is exposed in crater walls and in ejecta scattered diffusely over a broad area. The size of the olivine exposures and the absence of associated diogenite favour a mantle source, but the exposures are located far from the deep impact basins. The amount and distribution of observed olivine-rich material suggest a complex evolutionary history for Vesta.

Astronomy: Explosions in the young Universe

Nature 503, 7474 (2013). doi:10.1038/503009c

The biggest ever thermonuclear blasts happened in the early Universe, when primordial gas clumps collapsed and created the seeds of supermassive black holes.Arising even before many stars and galaxies had time to form, the origins of big black holes have been a puzzle. Daniel

Astronomers have estimated how many of the 100 billion stars in our galaxy hosts a potentially habitable planet.

X-rays top space agenda

Nature 503, 7474 (2013). http://www.nature.com/doifinder/10.1038/503013a

Author: Elizabeth Gibney

European agency selects mission themes, with X-ray telescope the biggest winner.