Astronomy | featured news

A massive European satellite the size of a school bus that has mysteriously stopped communicating with Earth has been spotted by another satellite in orbit.

A telescope so massive that it spans a continent won't be any better than a pair of binoculars unless you can find a way to carry and sift through its data.

An asteroid the size of a passenger jet will zoom close by Earth on Sunday  just in time for April Fools' Day, but it has no chance of hitting the Earth, NASA says.

The Cassini spacecraft captures striking images from flying by three moons of Saturn, including new pictures of Enceladus's gushing geysers.

Astronomers hunting for rocky planets with the right temperature to support life estimate there may be tens of billions of them in our galaxy alone.

A discarded chunk of a Russian rocket is forcing six space station astronauts to seek shelter in escape capsules early Saturday....

Two-and-a-half billion years ago, the Earth's atmosphere was rich in hydrocarbons, similar to Saturn's moon, Titan. Before Earth's atmosphere ditched methane and began accumulating oxygen, though, our planet appears to have cycled back and forth every few million years between the two states years a hydrocarbon haze and clear skies. A sunlight-blocking haze most certainly affected the evolution of microbes that depend on light to photosynthesise and contributed to the delay before the final oxygenation of the atmosphere.

Member state delegations to the European Space Agency reiterated their desire to press ahead with missions to Mars in 2016 and 2018.

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

At about 5:45 a.m. Eastern time Thursday, the geomagnetic storm from a massive solar flare that rippled the surface of the sun on Tuesday night finally reached the Earth's atmosphere. The Facebook page for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration NWS Space Weather Prediction Center made the announcement. But so far, the storm has been a bit of a dud.