Astronomy | featured news

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....

Spurred by the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize, 29 teams have signed up for a competition to become the first private venture to land on the Moon.

Gerald Kulcinski has a big problem. The nuclear engineering professor at the University of Wisconsin needs a rare element to fuel his research into a fusion reactor. But the cost of the isotope -- helium-3 -- is rising faster than a rocket headed to space. A few years ago it was $1,000 a gram, this year it is $7,000 and next year, well, he assumes it will be tens of thousands of dollars.

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.

NASA's Dawn spacecraft on Saturday became the first probe ever to enter orbit around an object in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

An unused pad at the nation's West Coast launch complex is being retrofitted to send up the world's most powerful rocket. Private rocket maker Space Exploration Technologies is spending between $20 million and $30 million to renovate the site that will be home to its Falcon Heavy, the largest rocket since the retired Saturn V that hurled astronauts to the moon.

Astronauts unlikely to match amount of work or danger involved for generations to come.

In a flight full of passion, Atlantis made the final docking in shuttle history Sunday, pulling up at the International Space Station with a year’s worth of supplies. The station’s naval bell chimed a salute as Atlantis docked 240 miles above the Pacific. “Atlantis arriving,” called out space station astronaut Ronald Garan Jr. “Welcome to the International Space Station for the last time.”

Though thunderstorms threatened, Atlantis was launched for NASA’s 135th and final shuttle flight, bound for the International Space Station with four astronauts.