Outer Space

Illustration of the water plumes coming off of Enceledus

NASA Detects Microbe-Friendly Food Spouting From Saturn's Moon Enceladus

The Cassini spacecraft has detected the ingredients for life in sprays from the icy world

An artist's rendition of Maven as it spies on Mars' atmosphere.

Mars Has Metal in Its Atmosphere

Metallic ions have a permanent presence in the red planet’s atmosphere—kind of like on Earth

Expedition 50 Flight Engineer Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency photographed the Rocky Mountains from his vantage point in low Earth orbit aboard the International Space Station.

NASA Puts Earth Up for Adoption

Pockmarks, wrinkles, and all

Scientists Capture Beautiful, Explosive Collision of Young Stars

The high-resolution images could hold clues about the early stages of star formation

This snapshot shows Jupiter's swirling, banded atmosphere and signature vortices.

“Great Cold Spot” Discovered on Jupiter

The ancient storm was hiding in plain sight

Sergei Korolev was technically still a political prisoner when he began working on the Soviet rocket program.

The First Manned Space Flight Was the Rocket Designer’s Victory as Much as Yuri Gagarin’s

Sergei Korolev designed the entire Soviet rocket program. But nobody knew his name until after he died

Uranus and its aurora

Take a Peek at the Auroras on Uranus

This composite image gives the best view yet of the seventh planet's atmospheric lights and ring

This snapshot shows Jupiter's swirling, banded atmosphere and signature vortices.

Hubble Snags Splendid Snapshot of Jupiter

The perfect photographic conditions make for a grand view of the gas giant

SpaceX launches it's first re-used Falcon 9 rocket

Watch SpaceX's Recycled Rocket Stick Its Landing

The reused Falcon 9 booster rocket may usher in an era of cheaper and more frequent trips into space

Behold the glory of the middle of the Milky Way—thanks to an even better photo database at NASA.

NASA Launches the Galaxy’s Most Glorious Space Database

Now you can easily peruse more than 140,000 of the agency's photos, videos and visualizations

Mount Etna's glowing lava flow can be spotted at bottom left.

Mount Etna’s Fiery Eruptions Are Visible From Space

Astronaut Thomas Pesquet captured an image of the volcano's glowing lava

The latest iteration of the four-legged LEMUR exploration robot clings to a test rock surface in Aaron Parness’ lab in a recent test of its microspine capabilities.

A New Generation of Interplanetary Rovers Is Crawling Toward the Stars

These four-legged, wheel-less robots will explore asteroids and the frigid outer worlds of our Solar System

Shortly after the announcement of the TRAPPIST-1 system, NASA crowdsourced its Twitter followers for possible planet names. The actual process of naming new planets, however, is a bit more involved.

How Do New Planets Get Their Names?

Sorry, Planet McPlanetface: Asteroids, moons and other celestial bodies go through a strict set of international naming guidelines

This grapefruit-sized object is Vanguard TV-3, an exact replica of Vanguard 1 that failed to launch into orbit. It's now on display at the National Air and Space Museum.

The World’s First Solar-Powered Satellite is Still Up There After More Than 60 Years

This tiny grapefruit-sized satellite will still be up there well into the 2100s if we don’t take it down

Computer-simulated global view of Venus.

The Case for Going to Venus

Sending a probe to Earth’s lifeless twin could help us understand how life rises—and falls—on faraway planets

This 230-foot-tall antenna helped NASA locate a long-lost spacecraft.

NASA Spots India's Long-Lost Lunar Orbiter

Chandrayaan-1 had been missing for eight years

Planet launched 88 more satellites in February.

How Daily Images of the Entire Earth Will Change the Way We Look At It

With more satellites than any other company, Planet Labs gives environmental researchers daily data

An artists rendering of how a solar sail might be powered by a radio beam from the surface of a planet

Are Fast Radio Bursts from Alien Spacecraft? It's Unlikely, but Possible

A new paper raises the (distant) possibility that the unusual high-energy bursts from the cosmos are from intergalactic ships

First image from NASA's Geostationary Lightning Tracker

Next-Gen Lightning Tracker Photographs Storms From Space in Stunning Detail

Part of the GOES-16 weather satellite, the geosynchronous imager promises to improve storm detection and reveal the secrets of thunderbolts

Space weather may look cool, but it could hurt astronauts.

When it Comes to Predicting Solar Storms, Space May Not Be the Place

A new study shows that earth-based observations can get warnings out sooner

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