site.news_by_theme NASA

Three astronauts returned safely to Earth from the International Space early Saturday, aboard a Russian capsule which landed on the freezing Kazakhstan steppe.

NASA's Curiosity rover, which has been exploring Mars since it landed to much fanfare last August, should be running at full capacity next week, after a memory glitch set the robot back.

So much for Mars being "The Red Planet."

NASA, universities and private groups in the US are working on asteroid warning systems that can detect objects from space like the one that struck Russia last week with a blinding flash and mighty boom.

NASA is keeping close tabs on a sizable asteroid set to whiz past our planet Friday in what the US space agency says is the closest flyby ever predicted for such a large object.

The United States launched its latest Earth observation satellite Monday, enhancing an array of orbiting eyes that help with everything from climate change study to urban planning.

Hold on to your hats: an asteroid will zoom within spitting distance of Earth next week, in what NASA said Thursday is the closest flyby ever predicted for an object this large.

After more than 55 days flying over Antarctica, NASA's huge Super-TIGER scientific balloon has broken the record for the longest flight of its kind, bringing back a wealth of data.

A US spacecraft orbiting Mars has provided evidence of an ancient crater lake fed by groundwater, adding further support to theories that the Red Planet may once have hosted life.

The US and European space agencies announced a new partnership Wednesday pairing a European cargo module with NASA's Orion space capsule, which aims to take astronauts into deep space.

The Mars rover Curiosity will soon begin to drill into the Red Planet for the first time, mission officials said Tuesday ahead of the highly anticipated endeavor.

The Milky Way contains at least 17 billion planets the size of Earth, and likely many more, according to a study out Monday that raises the chances of discovering a sister planet to ours.

A fist-sized meteorite nicknamed "Black Beauty" could unlock vital clues to the evolution of Mars from the warm and wet place it once was to its current cold and dry state.

NASA will smash two tiny probes into the Moon on Monday after they spent months gathering data from orbit miles above the lunar surface.

The Hubble Space Telescope is giving scientists a look at the oldest galaxies ever seen, dating back some 13.3 billion years -- providing a glimpse into how the cosmos must have looked right after the Big Bang.

NASA suffers from a "mismatch" between its goals and the budget it has been given to achieve them, according to a panel that said the US space agency may need a complete overhaul.

NASA plans to send a new rover to Mars in 2020 as it prepares for a manned mission to the Red Planet, the US space agency said Tuesday.

Scientists Thursday announced new evidence that Mercury, the planet orbiting nearest the Sun, hosts massive caches of ice and revealed new information on how water reached our solar system's inner planets.

NASA downplayed Wednesday talk of a major discovery by its Martian rover after remarks by the mission chief raised hopes it may have unearthed evidence life once existed on the Red Planet.

The unmanned SpaceX capsule made a safe splashdown in the Pacific Sunday after successfully delivering its first commercial payload to the International Space Station.