Planets | featured news

Researchers from the Geneva astronomical observatory have discovered a planet which they say is one of the best candidates for the ability to support life.

Astronomers have spotted an exotic planet that seems to be made of diamond racing around a tiny star in our galactic backyard.

Clouds may make a world orbiting a nearby star suitable for life, reports an international astronomer team.

NASA's surviving Mars rover Opportunity has reached the rim of a 14-mile-wide crater where the robot geologist will examine rocks older than any it has seen in its seven years on the surface of the red planet, scientists said Wednesday....

NASA is on the verge of launching a new solar-powered spacecraft all the way to Jupiter....

In a spectacle that might have beguiled poets, lovers and songwriters if only they had been around to see it, Earth once had two moons, astronomers now think. But the smaller one smashed into the other in what is being called the "big splat."...

NASA's upcoming mission to Jupiter can't get much greener than this: a solar-powered, windmill-shaped spacecraft....

A massive, long-ago extinction was once thought to have been caused by a destructive wave of volcanic activity. Scientists now point their fingers at another culprit. A giant, deadly “Earth burp.”

US and European efforts to send joint missions to Mars in 2016 and 2018 are slowed by an inability on the part of the Americans to provide a full financial commitment to the projects.

The Milky Way galaxy may be filled with millions upon millions of Jupiter-sized planets that have escaped their solar systems and are wandering freely in space, researchers said Wednesday in a finding that seems certain to make astronomers rethink their ideas about planetary formation.