Space News

The U.S. Air Force contends United Launch Alliance needs as many as 22 RD-180 rocket engines to compete against SpaceX for dozens of national security launches that start going out for bid later this year, according to a...

Until barely two weeks ago, Pluto tantalized humanity for eight decades with mysteries we could only imagine – seen as just a point of light or fuzzy blob in the world's most powerful telescopes. Now the last explored ...

Foreign nationals did indeed have access to restricted defense technology at NASA's Ames Research Center in 2008 and 2009, but it is impossible to tell if they shared technical details about that technology with anyone o...

(Phys.org)--In September 2016, NASA plans to launch its first-ever asteroid sample return mission loaded with tasks that will help us better understand the composition of asteroids, their origin, and possibly even Earth'...

Oxygen is the third most abundant element in the universe (after hydrogen and helium) and of course it is important: all known life forms require liquid water and its oxygen content. For over thirty years, astronomers ha...

Scientists and engineers had to work at breakneck speed to get New Horizons launched during a brief window in January 2006, or the probe's highly anticipated Pluto encounter would have been pushed into 2016 at the earlie...

The definition of "Blue Moon" has evolved slowly to the modern "2nd full moon in a month" formulation. But what sky-watchers usually see is the same old grayish-white - unless a volcanic eruption filters the Sun's reflec...

Like Scotty pulling a bit of extra power out of the Enterprise, the "Star Trek: Axanar" fan film easily warped past its initial $250,000 goal this weekend. Now, its creators plan to ask an old "Star Trek" ally for help.

The dream of returning humans to the moon could become a reality for the relatively low price of $10 billion, as long as NASA is willing to buy from private spaceflight companies, a new report shows.

NAOJ Top News:

Astronomers have long known that powerful cosmic winds can sometimes blow through galaxies, sweeping out interstellar material and stopping future star formation. Now they have a clearer snapshot of how it happens....

Brace yourselves for Blue Moon madness. The month of July 2015 hosts two Full Moons: One on July 2nd and another coming right up this week on Friday, July 31st at 10:43 Universal Time (UT)/6:43 AM EDT. In modern day vern...

Contractors in the hunt to build the GPS satellites the U.S. Air Force will launch next decade are already touting their work on a fully digital navigation payload, an upgrade lawmakers want the Air Force to include when...

Summer camp students at the Great Lakes Science Center in Cleveland and students from the city's MC2 STEM High School will speak with Expedition 44 crew members aboard the International Space Station at 11:40 a.m. EDT Fr...

ESA's new chief had served notice well before assuming his post that, to streamline and save money, he wanted a broad reorganization that would slash the number of division directors. Johann-Dietrich Woerner is finding o...

From agricultural monitoring to charting changing lands, early images from Europe's new Sentinel-2A satellite show how the 'colour vision' mission's critical observations can be used to keep us and our planet safe.

"Data from orbiting telescopes like NASA's Kepler Mission hint that the tally of habitable planets in our galaxy is many billion. If E.T.'s not out there, then Earth is more than merely special - it's some sort of miracl...

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover is examining a valley where at least two types of bedrock meet, for clues about changes in ancient environmental conditions recorded by the rock....

The Perseid meteor shower will peak on Aug. 12th and 13th with raining debris from Comet Swift-Tuttle. Venus and Mars make an appearance in the morning sky, and Saturn is an evening planet. Also, Cygnus (the Swan) and Ly...

NASA Ames researcher, former astronaut muse on the challenges and advantages of spending time on the high-gravity planet --

It is estimated that there are millions of Earth-like planets in our Galaxy. However, most of these are out of our observational abilities for the coming decades, and probably many centuries. Only a small fraction of the...

The U.S. Air Force may need to guarantee SpaceX and United Launch Alliance a set number of national security launches if the service hopes to have to two financially viable families of rockets available in the future, ac...