About half the size of a football field and 21 stories tall, the largest optical telescope ever constructed will use almost 1,000 mirrors to hunt for exoplanets -- and maybe even unlock the secrets of spacetime.
Chemical elements observed around a burned-out star known as a white dwarf offer evidence Earth-like planets once orbited it, suggesting that worlds like our own may not be rare in the cosmos, scientists said Thursday.
Experts who study mergers and acquisitions know deals have a dark secret: Most of them destroy shareholder value. The question is why, and the answer, according to David Harding, has a lot to do wi...
In a solar system of heavenly bodies, scientists have discovered an ugly duckling -- an oblong-shaped rock in the vicinity of Pluto that may one day light up Earth's sky as a giant comet.
Dozens of rocky bodies that are part of a sea of small rocky fragments never observed before have been spotted in the suburbs of our solar system beyond planet Neptune, thanks to a novel technique.
About half the size of a football field and 21 stories tall, the largest optical telescope ever constructed will use almost 1,000 mirrors to hunt for exoplanets -- and maybe even unlock the secrets of spacetime.
Chemical elements observed around a burned-out star known as a white dwarf offer evidence Earth-like planets once orbited it, suggesting that worlds like our own may not be rare in the cosmos, scientists said Thursday.
Experts who study mergers and acquisitions know deals have a dark secret: Most of them destroy shareholder value. The question is why, and the answer, according to David Harding, has a lot to do wi...
In a solar system of heavenly bodies, scientists have discovered an ugly duckling -- an oblong-shaped rock in the vicinity of Pluto that may one day light up Earth's sky as a giant comet.
Dozens of rocky bodies that are part of a sea of small rocky fragments never observed before have been spotted in the suburbs of our solar system beyond planet Neptune, thanks to a novel technique.
In July, the space shuttle Discovery is slated to deliver two tons of hardware and supplies to the partially built international space station. This mission is paid for.
NASA Administrator Michael Griffin defended his agency's budget Thursday before the House Committee on Science against charges it guts science missions to pay for the shuttle program, international space station and a new generation of manned spacecraft.
The Bush administration's 2007 budget calls for $16.8 billion for NASA, a 3.2 percent increase over this year's allocation. But the space agency still finds itself having to make tough funding choices in order to accomplish all the tasks on its "to-do list."
German astrophysicists have concluded a space body located in the outer reaches of the solar system has a diameter 435 miles (700 kilometers) larger than Pluto, the smallest planet.
NASA's New Horizons spacecraft roared into space Thursday afternoon bound for the planet Pluto. The spacecraft is the fastest ever launched, according to NASA.
NASA officials have scrubbed Wednesday's launch attempt of the New Horizons spacecraft because of an unresolved power outage. Tuesday's launch was scrubbed because of strong winds.
NASA is set to launch a space probe called New Horizons today to capture the first up-close imagery of Pluto, its moons and a region of the outer solar system called the Kuiper Belt.
Astronomers announced Friday that an object they discovered in the distant reaches of the solar system is large enough to be the 10th planet -- a claim likely to reignite a debate over just how many objects should be called planets.
NASA has unveiled preliminary details of a mission to Jupiter that would enable scientists to conduct their most in-depth study of the solar system's largest planet.
Wherever there might be Earth-like planets, there are likely to be asteroids, too. And now astronomers have found evidence for an asteroid belt around another star similar to our Sun.
The Cassini spacecraft is making its fourth flyby of Saturn's moon Titan on Tuesday, passing just 982 miles (1,580 kilometers) above the moon's surface, according to NASA.
A small space probe launched from NASA's Cassini spacecraft late Friday is making a beeline for the surface of Saturn's hazy moon Titan, taking an historic trip to unlock the stubborn mysteries of a perplexing place -- discoveries that might even shed light on Earth's own origins.
Scientists in the United States and Europe may get what they want for Christmas if the Huygens probe successfully separates from the Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn on Christmas Eve.
Scientists have proposed a scheme to introduce a series of planetary parks on Mars that would see areas of the Red Planet transformed into conservation zones.
NASA's infrared eyes are probing the beginnings of both stars and planets. In two separate observations, the Spitzer Space Telescope has uncovered a possible stellar infant and an icy disk where planets may one-day form.
New observations of dust around young stars suggest collisions of large asteroid-like objects and fledgling planets are frequent. But that doesn't likely stop the formation of rocky planets like Earth, a process that may well be common, the results suggest.
A group of European-led astronomers has made a photograph of what appears to be a planet orbiting another star. If so, it would be the first confirmed picture of a world beyond our solar system.
In a discovery that has left one expert stunned, European astronomers have found one of the smallest planets known outside our solar system, a world about 14 times the mass of our own around a star much like the sun.
Jupiter's atmosphere still contains remnants of a comet impact from a decade ago, but scientists said last week they are puzzled by how two substances have spread into different locations.
Scientists aren't sure what the interiors of Jupiter and Saturn look like or how the planets formed. But a new study of their insides suggests they took different paths to giant status.
The spacecraft Cassini is sending back the finest images ever captured of Saturn's rings, giving scientists new insights into the planet, the origin of our solar system and even the formation of galaxies.
NASA's Cassini probe has threaded through a gap between two of Saturn's rings and fired its engine in a critical maneuver towards becoming the first spacecraft ever to orbit the giant planet about 930 million miles (1.44 billion km) away from Earth.
As the Cassini-Huygens mission prepares to go into orbit around Saturn, project scientists are eager to begin an eye-opening look at the planet and its environment.
After years of whittling away prospective designs for a NASA mission to search for earth-like planets around stars, the space agency narrowed the choice to two very different observatories.
A new twist on an emerging theory says the sun was born amid massive, short-lived stars that sculpted our solar system with intense radiation and violent explosions that may have affected the origin of life.
In a preliminary analysis of new data, astronomers say they may have imaged a planet outside our solar system for the first time by using a tricky new method to ferret out dim objects from the light of a star.
The Mars rover Opportunity is sending fresh data, including new photographs taken on the vehicle's parachute trip to the planet's surface, to mission control.
The Spirit rover has stopped transmitting data from Mars, NASA mission controllers said Thursday, but there were signs it is still operating at a basic level.
Saying "the desire to explore and understand is part of our character," President Bush Wednesday unveiled an ambitious plan to return Americans to the moon by 2020 and use the mission as a steppingstone for future manned trips to Mars and beyond.
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