Astronomy | featured news

The first results from Nasa's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (Ibex) spacecraft show unexpected features at our Solar System's edge.

Viewers didn't see the plume of dust that was supposed to arise after a rocket smacked into a crater. But scientists are hopeful they'll get enough data to determine if water is present on the moon.

For as long as man has looked up, the moon has inspired romance, poetry and songs. Man also likes blowing things up. Now we get to do both — in the name of science. The aim of Friday's deliberate crash of two unmanned NASA spacecraft into ...

An asteroid once predicted to have a reasonable chance of striking Earth in 2036 is now far more likely to be a "near miss".

Completing an orbit in less than an Earth day, planet Wasp-18b should have burned up, according to accepted theory. Scientists have discovered a planet that shouldn't exist. The finding, they say, could alter our understanding of orbital dynamics, a field considered pretty well settled since the time of astronomer Johannes Kepler 400 years ago.

It may not be possible to travel back in time, but seeing stars and galaxies as they looked millions or even billions of years ago is no problem thanks to telescopes, the closest thing we have to time machines.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft buzzed Titan last year, coming close enough to taste the Saturnian moon's atmosphere. The data acquired has implications for our understanding of life throughout the galaxy, as well as Earth's own past.

A meteorite
the size of a huge watermelon on Mars is revealing new clues to the planet's
environment.

NASA and the European Space Agency have unveiled a joint plan for exploring Mars in the latter half of the next decade. ESA will build a trace-gas orbiter, able to map plumes of methane in the atmosphere, for launch in 2016.

A tool bag lost by a spacewalking astronaut last year met its fiery demise in Earth's atmosphere Monday after months circling ever closer to the planet.