John Manning, the president of the Sun City Center Astronomy Club, compares astronauts involved in space exploration to Christopher Columbus coming to the New World. ...more

October 21, 2009

NASA has a flight gap coming. Can the private sector fill it? The space agency is planning to retire the shuttle fleet in 2010, but the next generation of spacecraft is not likely to be ready to fly astronauts to the International Space Station and beyond until 2015. During the pause in American flights, the United States will rely on Russia to get astronauts to the station. ...more

January 2, 2009

Oxygen, key to life on Earth today, began to appear on the planet millions of years earlier than scientists had thought, new research indicates. ...more

September 30, 2007