Space News

The SpaceX Dragon is set for its 'Return to Flight' mission on Friday, April 8, packed with nearly 7000 pounds (3100 kg) of critical cargo and research experiments bound for the six-man crew working aboard the Internatio...

SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 this afternoon. The rocket's first stage returned from space and landed on an automated drone ship offshore a few minutes later. Meanwhile, the second stage successfully placed a Dragon spacecr...

SpaceX successfully launched a Dragon cargo spacecraft to the International Space Station April 8 and landed the rocket's first stage on a ship in the ocean after four previous unsuccessful attempts. SpaceNews.com

It might seem incongruous to find water ice in the disk of gas and dust surrounding a star. Fire and ice just don't mix. We would never find ice near our Sun. But our Sun is old. About 5 billion years old, with about 5 b...

Tucked in the trunk of the latest commercial cargo spacecraft to head for the International Space Station is an expandable structure that has the potential to revolutionize work and life on the space station.

NASA's Space to Ground is your weekly update on what's happening aboard the International Space Station....

NASA: Kepler News and Features:

SpaceX stands ready to resume station deliveries for NASA and it couldn't have a more attention-grabbing payload: the first inflatable room ever built for astronauts.

Host: Fraser Cain (@fcain) Guests: Kimberly Cartier (@AstroKimCartier ) Morgan Rehnberg (MorganRehnberg.com / @MorganRehnberg ) Dave Dickinson (.astroguyz.com / @astroguyz) Their stories this week: Blue Origin, take thre...

For decades, scientists have agreed that comets are mostly water ice, but what kind of ice--amorphous or crystalline--is still up for debate. Looking at data obtained by ESA's Rosetta spacecraft in the atmosphere, or com...

NASA has selected 13 proposals through NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC), a program that invests in transformative architectures through the development of pioneering technologies.

Scientists blast comet-like ice with radiation like that in space, creating a key building block for life --

"By analyzing interstellar dust, we can understand our own origins," said Andrew Westphal, a planetary scientist at the University of California at Berkeley. "Just as people go to Africa to look for fossil hominids, say,...

Observations by Researchers working at France's National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) support the idea that some of the molecules crucial to the origins of life could have formed in interstellar ices, and were t...

Concerned that regulatory uncertainty could block its plans to launch a lunar lander mission next year, Moon Express has proposed an alternative approach for carrying out a required payload review that could keep its pla...

ESA Top News:

Crisp, clear images of a "hot Jupiter" system were vital in determining that a newly found planet inhabits a three-star system, a phenomenon documented only a few times before. The team that discovered KELT-4Ab, a so-cal...

Our week through the lens: 4-8 April 2016

ESA Top News:

NASA's April 7 prelaunch briefings highlighted some of the science investigations and technology demonstrations, and provided media with a preview of the SpaceX launch of its 8th commercial resupply mission (CRS-8) headi...

A slideshow of ESA astronaut Tim Peake's views of Europe at night from the International Space Station

When re-analysing catalogued and updated observational data of brown dwarfs in the solar neighbourhood, astronomers from Potsdam have found that a significant number of nearby brown dwarfs should still be out there, awai...