Astronomy | featured news

Sarah Brightman, the world's biggest selling soprano, says she has booked a trip to the International Space Station... Brightman, a UNESCO ambassador, said the trip would also serve as a way to promote the U.N. agency's message, in particular by encouraging women's education in the sciences and environmental awareness. She hinted at the possibility of doing a promotional "space concert."

A privately built robotic space capsule arrived at the International Space Station early Wednesday, making the first routine commercial cargo delivery to the orbiting lab under a billion-dollar deal with NASA.

Ooh, shiny! NASA's Curiosity rover has spotted something curious on the Martian soil, likely "a shred of plastic" from the rover, says the space agency. Still, NASA is taking a hard look at the mystery object.

You know that scene in the film Contact where the “Machine” is spooling up, its three spinning rings kicking out crazy light and an electromagnetic field powerful enough to pitch nearby Navy battleships sideways, as Ellie (Jodie Foster) waits, terrified, in her tiny spherical craft above the space-time bedlam, to plummet into the vortex?

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, topped by a Dragon cargo capsule, rises from its launch pad at Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida during preparations for Sunday's scheduled launch to the International Space Station.

The NASA rover Curiosity has beamed back pictures of bedrock that suggest a fast-moving stream, possibly waist-deep, once flowed on Mars -- a find that the mission's chief scientist called exciting.

The eXtreme Deep Field (XDF) focuses on a small patch of the constellation Fornax, containing some 5,500 galaxies. The image was culled from 10 years of photos of the same region of space shown in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, which was last updated in 2009, based on data gathered in 2003 and 2004.

NASA's Curiosity rover reached out and touched a Martian rock with its huge robotic arm for the first time, then took off on its longest Red Planet drive to date. Curiosity spent the past several days investigating a strange pyramid-shaped stone named "Jake Matijevic," testing out some of the gear at the end of its 7-foot-long (2.1-meter-long) arm. These tools include the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer, or APXS, which measures elemental composition; and the Mars Hand Lens Imager close-up camera, or MAHLI.

Space shuttle Endeavour landed safely at the Los Angeles International Airport Friday after a whirlwind aerial tour around California landmarks. Strapped to the back of a 747 jumbo jet, the pair touched down around 1 p.m. after a nearly five-hour flyover. One of the crew members stuck an American flag out of the hatch of the jet. The flyover took Endeavour over the state Capitol, Golden Gate Bridge, Hollywood Sign and other icons en route to the Los Angeles airport, where the shuttle will be prepped for a slow-speed journey to its museum home next month.

NASA's youngest shuttle departed Kennedy Space Center at sunrise on the first leg of its flight to California. It's bolted to the top of a jumbo jet.