NEWSWORTHY
NASA's Parker probe makes first close run at sun, topping 342,000 kph
A NASA spacecraft has made its first close approach to the sun, just 2½ months after liftoff. The Parker Solar Probe flew within 15 million miles (24 million km) of the sun's surface Monday night. Its speed topped 213,000 mph (342,000 kph) relative to the ...
NASA loses Dawn, second spacecraft this week, after successful probe of asteroid belt
NASA has lost a second spacecraft this week, ending a fruitful mission in the asteroid belt. Running low on fuel for some time, the Dawn spacecraft this week stopped communicating with flight controllers. Its prolonged silence prompted NASA to declare it dead Thursday, two days ...
Russia targets Dec. 3 for first manned ISS launch after accident
Russia hopes to launch three crew members for the International Space Station on Dec. 3, the first manned blast-off since an accident this month, the Roscosmos space agency said Wednesday. Russia, the only country able to ferry astronauts to the orbiting science lab, suspended all ...
NASA retires its planet hunting Kepler space telescope as it drifts 156 million km from Earth
The Kepler space telescope has run out of fuel and will be retired after a 9½ mission in which it detected thousands of planets beyond our solar system and boosted the search for worlds that might harbor alien life, NASA said on Tuesday. Currently orbiting ...
NASA will keep trying to contact stalled Mars rover Opportunity after it was covered by dust storm
NASA has changed its mind about how long it will continue to seek contact with an aging robotic vehicle that was blanketed in a dust storm on Mars back in June and has been stalled ever since. Now, the space agency plans to keep trying, ...
NASA probe sets record for closest and fastest approach to sun
NASA's Parker Solar Probe is now closer to the sun than any spacecraft has ever gotten. Parker on Monday surpassed the record of 26.6 million miles (43 million km) set by Helios-2 back in 1976. And it will keep getting closer to the sun until ...
NASA's hobbled Hubble telescope almost back on even keel again
NASA's famed Hubble Space Telescope is nearly back to normal after a failed orienting tool forced engineers to put it in safe mode earlier this month, the U.S. space agency said. The problem came from one of the pieces of equipment on board known as ...
Below-surface 'brines' on Mars likely to have enough oxygen to support microbial life: study
Salty water just below the surface of Mars could hold enough oxygen to support the kind of microbial life that emerged and flourished on Earth billions of years ago, researchers reported Monday. In some locations, the amount of oxygen available could even keep alive a ...
Gamma-ray constellation named after Japanese movie monster Godzilla
An international research group, using the orbiting Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, names a constellation of gamma ray-emitting stars Godzilla.
Greenland find billed as oldest fossils on Earth may be just rocks: study
What were billed as the oldest fossils on Earth may just be some rocks, according to a new study. Two years ago, a team of Australian scientists found odd structures in Greenland that they said were partly leftovers from microbes that lived on an ancient ...
The taxi service to the International Space Station has stopped until further notice. Neither the United States nor Russia will be able to send astronauts to the ISS until investigators determine why a Soyuz rocket experienced an anomaly after blastoff Thursday, forcing its passengers to ...
For largest rocket in NASA history, Boeing is two years behind schedule and double over budget
Boeing Co.'s construction of the largest rocket in NASA's history is projected to cost $8.9 billion — double the initial budget. While taxpayer-funded cost overruns are common in the U.S. military industrial complex, the massive aerospace company is also two years behind schedule — ...
