Space News

According to photographer Shawn Malone form Michigan, the aurora this fall have already been "insane!" "We had a very strong auroral event here on October 2nd and 9th on Lake Superior in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan,"...

"The Last Days on Mars," set for limited theatrical release in the United States on Dec. 6, follows a band of astronauts during an ill-fated mission to a base on Mars. In the words of the movie's tagline, "the search for...

What did I learn about Curiosity at last week's Division for Planetary Sciences meeting? There were a few talks, most of which concerned soil and atmsospheric chemistry. I can summarize their conclusions with one sentenc...

Last year, daredevil Felix Baumgartner, sponsored by Red Bull, took a balloon up to a height of 39 kilometers (24 miles) and jumped out. Protected by a pressure suit, he quickly reached a speed of over 1300 km/hr (840 mi...

The one-year contract is valued at $16 million and is all but certain to be followed by full Electra development.

Black holes may not be bald after all. In a challenge to traditional models of the universe's gravitational monsters, new research suggests black holes could be quite "hairy," with more tangled features than previously b...

This stunning space wallpaper, not unlike a pointillist painting, shows the star-studded center of the Milky Way towards the constellation of Sagittarius.

Stars are born in private. Hidden in dust and gas clouds, these bright beacons in the universe slowly coalesce. All that debris makes it hard to spot the stars, but mapping out the pockets of starbirth is a good start to...

Apologies to baseball fans and others for the theme of this week's Planetary Radio preview, which has star player Emily Lakdawalla on deck.

A stargazer in Ohio captured this incredible view of the Orion Nebula while waiting for another cosmic night sky sight.

After a 300-day cruise through space, India's Mars probe will circle the planet.

Every day, I get a question from somebody about whether Curiosity has been shut down. It hasn't, and here's the thing: you can determine that for yourself

An update from Yale's Debra Fischer about the Alpha Centauri planet hunt, partially sponsored by The Planetary Society, as well as her team's efforts to remove "noise" from parent stars to help find exoplanets.

Can existing technology take humans to Mars?

The U.S. dominated the commercial launch market in the early 1980s but lost most of that ground to Europe and Russia over the last two decades. China remains a bit player now, but that won't be the case for long, SpaceX ...

In fall of 2012, scientists with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III) announced the discovery of hundreds of stars rapidly moving together in long, looping orbits around the center of our Galaxy. "The best explana...

Discovering life beyond Earth might just be the holy grail of science. And even though we have yet to find evidence for little green men or blobs of bacteria, astronomers continue to search for elusive signs of life. A n...

This Hubble Picture of the Week is dedicated to the over 200 000 Facebook fans of ESA/Hubble, who share our passion for the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and the discoveries it brings....

Is the U.S. losing its spaceflight dominance to China?

India's first spacecraft bound for Mars is counting down toward a late October launch, a mission that -- if successful -- could make the country's space agency one of the elite few of space powers to have explored the Re...

What happens when an unstoppable force (like, say, "Gravity") meets an immovable object (like, say, Congress)? Yeah, pretty much this: I laughed, but like all good satire, the undertone is raw -- and painful -- truth.

The Space Shuttle Atlantis returns after mission STS-30, landing at Edwards Air Force Base.