Turtles in space? Yes, really. The Soviet Union launched two tortoises in the 1960s in a space probe that orbited the moon. But the United States has prepared its own group of space-worthy “turtles,” the nickname for a class of 11 people who graduated from NASA’s astronaut program Friday.
Read more
A California-based NASA contractor agreed to pay $375,000 to settle whistleblower claims that it falsely certified support equipment for a rocket launch system conformed to the agency’s specifications.
Read more
NASA said Monday that its planet hunter satellite TESS had discovered an Earth-sized world within the habitable range of its star, which could allow the presence of liquid water.
Read more
Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft won’t achieve its mission objective of docking with the International Space Station, NASA said Friday, dealing a blow to the agency’s plans to end U.S. dependence on Russian rockets for astronaut taxi rides.
Read more
A NASA spacecraft recently achieved the remarkable feat of mapping the elusive winds that blow high above the surface of Mars – providing astronomers long-sought data for the first time in history, according to a new study.
Read more
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, having survived its closest encounter so far with the Sun, has sent back a “spectacular trove” of data on its corona, the super-hot outer edge of its atmosphere, scientists said Wednesday.
Read more
Spacewalking astronauts ventured out for the second week in a row Friday to repair a cosmic ray detector, this time actually cutting into the $2 billion instrument.
Read more
The most distant world ever explored, 4 billion miles away from Earth, finally has an official name: Arrokoth. It means “sky” in the language of the Native American Powhatan people, NASA said Tuesday.
Read more
For two years a NASA aircraft scoured from the sky in search of deadly gas, but the mission was not over an alien planet: it searched for sources of methane in California.
Read moreThe world’s first all-female spacewalking team made history high above Earth on Friday, replacing a broken part of the International Space Station’s power grid.
Read more
An American, a Russian and the first person from the United Arab Emirates to fly into space landed safely on Thursday after a six-hour flight from the International Space Station.
Read more
The origin story behind a massive, newly discovered exoplanet and the small red dwarf star it orbits is difficult to explain using the standard theories on how the cosmos was formed billions of years ago, astronomers said in a study released Thursday.
Read more
NASA researchers said Monday that explosions of heated nitrogen in the crust of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, created the deep basins that later became methane-filled lakes, currently the only other sites of stable liquid in our solar system.
Read more
The Mars Helicopter was affixed to the Mars 2020 rover Wednesday as a preparation to make aeronautical history when it becomes the first aircraft to fly on the surface of another planet.
Read more
NASA scientists are crisscrossing Greenland on a mission to track melting ice.
Read more
To prepare for the next mission to Mars in 2020, NASA has taken to the lava fields of Iceland to get its new robotic space explorer ready for the job.
Read more
Scientists using a planet-hunting NASA satellite announced Monday the discovery of three new planets orbiting a nearby star, including one that may have had liquid water oceans.
Read more
Mission scientists and program managers from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration kicked off their joint field campaign Tuesday to study how U.S. wildfires and agricultural fires affect air quality and climate.
Read more
By studying craters near the poles of Mercury and the moon, scientists have identified what they believe to be millions of metric tons of water trapped as ice according to a study released Monday.
Read moreFifty years ago the world stopped to watch in awe as Apollo 11 astronauts walked on the moon. The semi-centennial has rekindled NASA’s interplanetary ambitions. Tapping into a vibrant U.S. space industry, it’s eyeing the moon as a stepping stone to Mars.
Read more