Space & Astronomy News

LOS ANGELES - NASA has delayed the launch of an unmanned spacecraft to the moon to scout for potential landing sites for astronauts.

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has taken its first-ever picture of a single particle of rusty Martian dust with one of its microscopes.

NASA mission managers decided Thursday not to push for earlier launch dates for two space shuttle missions set to blast off this fall.

PARIS (AFP) - People across the world will have the chance to see a partial eclipse of the Moon on Saturday.

Seven NASA astronauts are eagerly looking forward to a risky, but pivotal, shuttle flight to the Hubble Space Telescope this fall.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - NASA announced it has pushed back the launch of the Orion, the spacecraft designed to replace the agency's aging space shuttle fleet, by one year to 2014.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla (Reuters) - NASA has abandoned plans to get its replacement for the retiring U.S. space shuttles into service by 2013 because of a lack of additional funds and technical issues, officials said on Monday.

NASA's first manned test flight of the Orion spacecraft that will replace the retiring U.S. space shuttles won't launch until 2014, a year later than the agency hoped, due to funding and technical concerns, program managers said Monday.

WASHINGTON - NASA is not properly emphasizing safety in its design of a new spaceship and its return-to-the-moon program faces money, morale and leadership problems, an agency safety panel found Monday.

WARSAW, Poland - Poland and other former Soviet satellites have expressed deep anxiety that the escalation of fighting between Russia and Georgia signals a resurgent Russia's willingness to use force to dominate the newly democratic region.

The annual Perseid meteor shower is expected to put on a good display of shooting stars in the pre-dawn hours Tuesday.

An ostensibly routine decision by satellite fleet operator SES to cancel service to a customer more than a year behind in its payments has been caught in the Washington political spotlight amid claims that "life and death situations" hang in the balance if the service is canceled.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft circling the planet Saturn is taking a new look at one of the ringed world's icy moons and its geyser-like plumes.

DAYTON, Ohio - Preservationists are squaring off with the Air Force over the fate of a World War II-era building where researchers developed the first antigravity suits for pilots and early NASA spacesuits.

The Aviation Safety Reporting System — a database maintained by NASA — has reports from pilots expressing safety concerns about airline directives pressuring them to fly with uncomfortably low fuel levels. NASA deletes names and other identifying information to encourage pilots, flight crews, dispatchers and others to identify safety problems, including their own mistakes.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft is going to get another up-close-and-personal look at Saturn's moon Enceladus on Monday. Scientists hope the glimpse at fractures on the icy moon's surface will provide clues as to how the jets spewing from them form.

Every August, just when many people go vacationing in the country where skies are dark, the best-known meteor shower makes its appearance.

The pieces are coming together for NASA's next shuttle mission: the final service call on the Hubble Space Telescope.

New Delhi - Glistening marble floors. Landscaped lawns. A golf course. This $1.5 million-a-pop housing development is one of the plushest yet in Gurgaon, a satellite city on New Delhi's edge that has become an icon of booming India.

LOS ANGELES - A privately held rocket company on Wednesday blamed a design error for its latest failure to reach orbit, which caused the loss of three government satellites and human ashes, including the remains of astronaut Gordon Cooper and "Star Trek" actor James Doohan.