Astronomy, Nasa | featured news

A space capsule has returned to Earth, ending the first commercially contracted re-supply mission to the International Space Station (ISS). The capsule was sent by the California-based company SpaceX, the first of 12 missions it will perform for US space agency Nasa... SpaceX says it is just a few years away from being able to provide an astronaut "taxi" service.

For years, astronomers have known about the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy, but these pictures from NASA's NuSTAR telescope show a rare view of the usually sleeping giant gobbling down a cosmic snack.

The surface of Saturn's huge moon Titan has the consistency of soft, wet sand with a fragile crust on top, a new analysis of a nearly eight-year-old space probe landing suggests.

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?

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.

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.

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.

Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientists aren't sure what to expect, but they think it's nearing interstellar space. In 1977, Jimmy Carter moved into the White House, "Star Wars" and "Saturday Night Fever" premiered in theaters and the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft launched from Florida's Cape Canaveral to explore the outer solar system.

Getting a six-wheeled car-size rover safely onto the surface of the red planet? Daunting, sure. But NASA did it with Curiosity. Sending humans on a mission to Mars? That requires overcoming even more outlandish obstacles.