Space News

MIT Kavli Institute:

China's first space station, Tiangong-1, is expected to fall to Earth sometime in late 2017. We've known for several months that the orbital demise of the 8-metric ton space station was only a matter of time. But Chinese...

Astronauts Kate Rubins and Takuya Onishi are continuing more eye checks today in the middle of day-long orbital plumbing work. Commander Anatoly Ivanishin packed trash in a resupply ship and researched a variety of Earth...

Ever since NASA's New Horizons spacecraft flew by Pluto last year, evidence has been mounting that the dwarf planet may have a liquid ocean beneath its icy shell. Now, by modeling the impact dynamics that created a massi...

What lies beneath Pluto's icy heart? New research indicates there could be a salty "Dead Sea"-like ocean more than 100 kilometers thick. "Thermal models of Pluto's interior and tectonic evidence found on the surface sugg...

On Sept. 15th, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation met to consider legislation formally introduced by a bipartisan group of senators. Among the bills presented was the NASA Transition Authorizat...

Expedition 48 Commander Jeff Williams (feet) and Flight Engineer Kate Rubins (right) of NASA conducted a six-hour and 48-minute spacewalk on Sept. 1, 2016....

NASA has awarded a sole-source bridge contract to LJT and Associates Inc. of Columbia, Maryland, to continue critical launch range operations support at the agency's Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Virginia.

NASA has awarded a contract to RiverTech, LLC, of Colorado Springs, Colorado, for a range of security services at the agency's Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.

SpaceX said Friday that evidence points to a large breach in the rocket's helium system during a routine prelaunch test that turned into a devastating fireball three weeks ago.

The Solar System is filled with what are known as Trojan Asteroids - objects that share the orbit of a planet or larger moon. Whereas the best-known Trojans orbit with Jupiter (over 6000), there are also well-known Troja...

Ever since NASA's New Horizons spacecraft flew by Pluto last year, evidence has been mounting that the dwarf planet may have a liquid ocean beneath its icy shell. Now, by modeling the impact dynamics that created a massi...

International teams of astronomers have used the ESO's Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to explore the distant corner of the Universe first revealed in the iconic images of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field ...

The second new moon in a single month is known as the Black Moon. It occurs about once every 32 months. Find out more here.

When astronauts in Orion venture far beyond Earth into deep space, they will expand humanity's frontier and push the boundaries of exploration....

Elon Musk and his SpaceX rocketeers are blueprinting a plan to land humans on Mars in 2025 and to land payloads onto the Red Planet's surface at each 26 month opportunity starting in 2018.

Four individual satellites of NASA's Magnetospheric Multiscale mission (MMS) set a record for the closest flying formation ever achieved by a multi-craft space mission. The satellite quartet orbits Earth, studying magnet...

On Saturday (Sept. 24), the crewmembers of the Mars 80 mission -- who hail from France, Japan, Russia, Australia, India and Canada -- will begin work at the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS), a facility in Utah run by ...

In this edition of Mobile Astronomy, we'll travel the celestial and see ancient starlight with our own two eyes.

Brief but powerful outbursts seen from Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko during its most active period last year have been traced back to their origins on the surface....

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center:

Our moon is a laboratory: "An archive of solar system history, the signatures of meteorites, comets and the solar wind are written in the dust. A moon village would give scientists the means to explore the body, a lump o...