Science, Space | featured news

Some people seem born under an unlucky star. But some stars are equally unlucky themselves. Astronomers have spotted a star in another galaxy plunging toward a giant black hole and being ripped to shreds, sparking a flare so brilliant that observers detected it from a distance of 2.1 billion light-years.

A group of high-tech tycoons wants to mine nearby asteroids, hoping to turn science fiction into real profits. The plan is to use commercially built robotic ships to squeeze rocket fuel and valuable minerals like platinum and gold out of the lifeless rocks that routinely whiz by Earth. One of the company founders predicts they could have their version of a space-based gas station up and running by 2020.

The tidy Swiss want to clean up space. Swiss scientists said Wednesday they plan to launch a "janitor satellite" specially designed to get rid of space junk, the orbiting debris that can do serious and costly damage to valuable satellites or even manned space ships.

A glimpse beyond our solar system reveals the neighborhood just outside the sun's influence is different and stranger than expected, scientists reported Tuesday....

Firing on all engines, NASA's latest rover to Mars executed a course adjustment Wednesday that put it on track for a landing in August.

Scientists detect two distant worlds they think are the roasted remains of once giant planets that became engulfed by their parent star.

A NASA rover scouting for signs of past water on Mars has found the strongest evidence yet -- a vein of gypsum, a mineral deposited by water, protruding from an ancient rock.

The most Earth-like planet ever discovered is circling a star 600 light years away, a key finding in an ongoing quest to learn if life exists beyond Earth, scientists said on Monday. "We are homing in on the true Earth-sized, habitable planets," said San Jose State University astronomer Natalie Batalha, deputy science team lead for NASA's Kepler Space Telescope that discovered the star.

Don’t get too close. Astronomers are reporting that they have taken the measure of the biggest, baddest black holes yet found in the universe, abyssal yawns 10 times the size of our solar system into which billions of Suns have vanished like a guilty thought. Such holes, they say, might be the gravitational cornerstones of galaxies and clues to the fates of the violent quasars, almost supernaturally powerful explosions in the hearts of young galaxies, that dominated the early years of the universe.

The one-ton, car-sized Curiosity rocketed from Kennedy Space Center Saturday. The vehicle is on a two-year mission to determine whether life could have existed on Mars.