Scientists have exposed some of the mystery behind the northern lights. ...more

July 25, 2008

China plans to conduct its first spacewalk in October. The European Space Agency is building a roving robot to land on Mars. India recently launched a record 10 satellites into space on a single rocket. ...more

July 13, 2008

We've seen the federal government at its worst over the past six months. Consider the controversies over contaminated tomatoes and meat, tainted toys, toxic trailers, counterfeit heparin, aircraft groundings, veterans' care, missing warheads and unrelenting contract fraud. For every NASA success on the surface of Mars, there seems to be a failure back on Earth. ...more

July 13, 2008

A new analysis of volcanic glass recovered from the moon decades ago found the rocks contain traces of the constituents of water, challenging a long-held notion that the moon is perfectly dry. ...more

July 10, 2008

The Apollo-era launch pad used to shoot space shuttle Discovery into orbit two weeks ago may have been flawed from the day it was built, and will need weeks if not months of work to fix all the liftoff damage, NASA said Thursday. ...more

June 13, 2008

NASA's Phoenix Mars lander was not the only one doing the shaking. ...more

June 12, 2008

The Phoenix lander's first dig into the Martian soil for scientific study was delayed Wednesday because of a communications glitch on a spacecraft that relays commands from Earth to the Red Planet. ...more

June 5, 2008

NASA's Phoenix lander got extra playtime in the Martian dirt on Tuesday, doing another practice dig as scientists tried to perfect the technique ahead of the actual excavation. ...more

June 4, 2008

Scientists for the Phoenix Mars Lander are wrestling with an intermittent short circuit on the craft. ...more

May 31, 2008

Consider it the great cosmic ice breaker. That's how scientists describe tonight's planned touchdown of the Phoenix Mars Lander, the first robot to dig into ice on the Red Planet. If all goes well, the $386 million craft will plunge through the atmosphere and settle atop the northern arctic plain, where researchers hope to find treasure below the surface: frozen water. ...more

May 25, 2008