Outer Space

China's Jade Rabbit lunar rover, or Chang'e 3

China’s Lunar Rover Just Melodramatically Announced Its Impending Demise

A mechanical failure could mean the end of China's Jade Rabbit

Ceres, as seen by Hubble.

An Oasis in the Void: Dwarf Planet Ceres Is Venting Water

Ceres is a dwarf planet in the asteroid belt, between Mars and Jupiter

Not the best place to get diarrhea.

What Does Space Do To Your Microbiome?

Nobody wants E. coli on a trip to Mars

International Space Station to Get a Four Year Life Extension

Then, in 2024, it has to crash into the ocean

I heard you like stars.

Astronomers Find What May Be a Star Within a Star

The best candidate yet for an elusive Thorne-Żytkow Object

The GeoEye-1 satellite

This App Tells You When Satellites Are Watching You

For the paranoid among us, an app that says when you may be being watched

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How Did Mars Become the Red Planet?

A new NASA spacecraft, MAVEN, will explore the geologic history of our planetary neighbor

A digital rendering of Curiosity, set to land on Mars early Monday morning.

Curiosity, NASA’s Most Advanced Rover Yet, Is About to Land on Mars

The mobile laboratory will learn about the red planet's climate and geology, hoping to determine whether it once could have supported life

A backup duplicate of the original Telstar satellite, housed in storage at the National Air and Space Museum

Fifty Years Ago Today, the First Communications Satellite Was Launched Into Space

On this date in 1962, Telstar was launched, ushering in a new era of communications technology

One of the many mysteries baffling astronomers is how galaxies such as the Milky Way are able to form new stars at an unsustainable rate.

Top Ten Mysteries of the Universe

What are those burning questions about the cosmos that still baffle astronomers today?

Billions of miles from Earth, the probes prepare to break out of the “bubble” of solar particles.

Timothy Ferris on Voyagers' Never-Ending Journey

With the spacecraft poised to leave our solar system, the writer who helped compile the time capsules they carry reflects on our foray into outer space

The Voyagers are still within the heliosheath, the outer layer of the solar system

Voyager Probes Not Out of the Solar System Just Yet

New data show that nearly 35 years after their launches, NASA's Voyager probes are now at the outermost reaches of the solar system

The Golden Record consists of 115 analog-encoded photographs, greetings in 55 languages, a 12-minute montage of sounds on Earth and 90 minutes of music.

What Is on Voyager’s Golden Record?

From a whale song to a kiss, the time capsule sent into space in 1977 had some interesting contents

After decades of space exploration, there are now more than 500,000 pieces of artificial debris greater than half an inch in size.

Space Garbage: The Dark Cloud Above

A mass of debris from satellites and space missions is orbiting our planet—and it may be growing all the time

A composite image of S106, from the Hubble Space Telescope and Japan's Subaru Telescope

A Holiday Angel Among the Stars

The star-forming region Sharpless 2-106 bears a certain resemblance, particularly during this time of year

In this image from December 15, 2011, Comet Lovejoy appeared to be headed towards sure destruction in a collision with the Sun

A Comet’s Close Call

Scientists predicted that Comet Lovejoy would collide with the Sun

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The Latest Destination for Human Spaceflight

The latest proposed destination for human space missions illustrates the essential hollowness of the current direction of our civil space program

Technicans work on the Mars Science Laboratory, aka Curiosity

Curious About Curiosity? What to Read on the Mars Science Laboratory

The traveling science laboratory launched successfully on Saturday and is scheduled to touch down on the red planet in August 2012

The Very Large Array in New Mexico

Name That Telescope

The Very Large Array needs a new, more exciting name

We no longer think of the stars as points of light on the tapestry of the night but now know that they're burning balls of gas billions of miles away in the black expanse of space.

Readers Respond: Why I Like Science

Science is the partner of art and the quest for truth

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