Space News

When is a star also a planet? Apparently, when it's a brown dwarf. For years, astronomers have known about a class of tiny stars they called brown dwarfs (named this because they're unusually small and dim compared to mo...

We knew SpaceX CEO Elon Musk was powerful, but now he's gone all Ironman on us. Last week on Twitter he posted a teaser, saying, "Will post video of designing a rocket part with hand gestures & immediately printing in ti...

Avid astrophotographer Terry Hancock captured these brilliant images of the Bubble Nebula from the Down Under Observatory in Fremont, Mich. See how he did it.

Once again, we are giving away 10 promo copies of Star Walk by Vito Technology. Whereas we provided 10 free copies for the iPhone, this contest is for 10 free copies for your iPad. What a great teaching tool this app can...

The Virgin Galactic vehicle climbed to an altitude of 65,000 feet and successfully tested its feather system on September 5th, 2013.

From sols 373 to 383 (August 23 to September 3, 2013), Curiosity traveled about 250 meters toward Mount Sharp over five drives, trying out her new AutoNav capability.

In the latest preview to the upcoming movie starring Sandra Bullock and Georgo Clooney, the film's International Space Station, Soyuz vehicle, Space Shuttle and Hubble Space Telescope are either damaged or destroyed.

Is that the smell of rocket fuel in the air, or customer excitement? The reported 600+ customers waiting in line for a trip to space aboard SpaceShipTwo (nickname: Enterprise) surely must have been excited when the subor...

It’s long been a mystery for astronomers: why aren’t galaxies bigger? What regulates their rates of star formation and keeps them from just becoming even more chock-full-of-stars than they already are? Now, using a w...

The space tourism company Virgin Galactic performed the second rocket-powered flight test of its SpaceShipTwo passenger spacecraft Thursday (Sept. 5), marking a major milestone for the spaceflight company. See how the fl...

The best look yet at mysterious brown dwarfs, strange cosmic oddities that blur the lines between stars and planets, now has revealed just how large and cold they really are. The weird 'failed stars' only get as hot as a...

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center: Like the wind adjusting course in the middle of a storm, 11 spacecraft over four decades show that the particle wind streaming in to the solar system from interstellar space has change...

Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics: September 05, 2013: Astronomers are constantly on the hunt for ever-colder star-like bodies, and two years ago a new class of such objects were discovered by researchers using...

Sky watchers worldwide are in for a treat Sunday evening September 8, 2013 as the waxing crescent Moon passes near the dazzling planet Venus. And for a select few, the Moon will actually pass in front of Venus, in what i...

I love science fiction films and I especially love it when the “science” part leans closer to fact than fiction. (Yes, I’m looking at you, Europa Report.) Now I’ve never seen an actual catastrophe in orbit (and I...

In a prelude to its first conversation with a human astronaut, a talking Japanese robot has uttered its first words in space. A new video shows Kirobo delivering its first message on Aug. 21.

In an enthralling article for Esquire magazine, astronaut Mike Massimino writes about nearly failing to repair the Hubble Space Telescope, and how the people of Earth came to his rescue.

The talking robot launched to the International Space Station in August has sent its first audio/visual message to Earth. Kirobo, the mini Japanese robot — which appears to have the bravado of Buzz Lightyear and the cu...

This beautiful space wallpaper taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows an example of a bipolar planetary nebula. This object, which is known as Hubble 12 and also catalogued as PN G111.8-02.8, lies in the co...

People are often curious about "alignments" of planets and right now there is quite a bit of a planetary alignment going on. But you won't be able to see it because the celestial meet-up occurs during the daytime, with t...

Does Mars need protection from our microbes? Conventional wisdom says yes, as does space law--the United Nations Outer Space Treaty prohibits the contamination of potentially fertile worlds with... --

The world's first talking robot in space, speaks his first words aboard the ISS. It's Designed to help scientists study robot-human interaction. Translation: 'On August 21, 2013, a robot took one small step toward a brig...