Astronomy, Nasa | featured news

The design for NASA’s newest rocket harkens back to the giant workhorse liquid rockets of the past, but the destinations will be farther and the rocket more powerful.

A pair of spacecraft rocketed toward the moon Saturday on the first mission dedicated to measuring lunar gravity and determining what’s inside Earth’s orbiting companion — all the way down to the core. “I could hardly be happier,” said the lead scientist, Maria Zuber. After two days of delays and almost another, “I was trying to be as calm as I could be.”

A report by the National Academy of Sciences encourages more resources to deal with the growing problem of space junk.

The first rock a NASA rover looked at when it arrived at a crater on Mars was unlike any looked at on the planet before, scientists said... And the first rock it looked at has already opened a new chapter in the study of Mars, NASA scientists said Thursday. On a telephone news conference, mission scientists giddily described that rock: full of zinc and bromine, elements that, at least for rocks on Earth, would be suggestive of geology formed with heat and water.

Astronauts may need to take the unprecedented step of temporarily abandoning the International Space Station if last week's Russian launch accident prevents new crews from flying there this fall....

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....

NASA says an object found and East Texas lake is from the shuttle Columbia that broke up in space in 2003, CNN reports.

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

Atlantis' landing in the faintest glimmer of dawn this morning ended the flawless final mission of NASA's space shuttle program and gave way to NASA's new era of uncertainty, with no more manned space flight launches for many years.