NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is speeding towards Pluto for the first-ever flyby on July 14, 2015. Scientists are eager to collect data on the dwarf planet’s chemical and atmospheric makeup, and the Ralph spectrometer will do just that. Instrument scientist Dennis Reuter discusses Ralph, Pluto, and

John Glenn, NASA astronaut, U.S. Senator and the first American to orbit the planet, died on December 8, 2016 at the age of 95. Senator John Glenn, an american hero and role model for young americans who admire the work of NASA and would like to make a career of space exploration, was the first amer...

This is a full-resolution version of the NASA Curiosity rover descent to Mars, taken by the MARDI descent imager. As of August 20, all but a dozen 1600x1200 frames have been uploaded from the rover, and those missing were interpolated using thumbnail data. The result was applied a heavy noise reduct...

On July 20, Blue Origin will fly its 16th New Shepard flight to space, and its first with astronauts on board. Broadcast starts at T-90 minutes to launch.

On December 21, 2015, SpaceX landed back their space ship base component, saving millions of dollars for future missions. Elon Musk’s company released a new video of their recent reusable rocket landing at Cape Canaveral. It also announced that it will try once again to land the rocket on a sea bar

The goal of 3-D printing is to take this capability to microgravity for use on the International Space Station. In space, whatever astronauts have available on orbit is what they have to use -- but just like on Earth, parts break or get lost. When that happens, there's a wait for replacement parts, ...

Seven Earth-sized planets have been observed by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope around a tiny, nearby, ultra-cool dwarf star called TRAPPIST-1. Three of these planets are firmly in the habitable zone. Over 21 days, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope measured the drop in light as each planet passed in fro

NASA announced that its Curiosity rover had discovered organic material—carbon containing molecules that are essential building blocks for life—within Gale Crater, a 3.5 billion-year-old bedrock that scientists believed might have held a lake. The Curiosity rover also confirmed signs of methane—the

Observations of the orbits of six small objects have led researchers to propose a very large 9th planet--100s of astronomical units (AU) away from the sun. Far enough away that this Neptune-sized planet takes ~15,000 years to complete one orbit.

SpaceX's Inspiration4, the first all-civilian spaceflight in history splashes down in the Atlantic Ocean after completing a three-day orbital flight around the Earth.