Outer Space

The "Dog Star" Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky.

Night Sky Wonders to Ring in the New Year

The star Sirius is high in the sky, and comet Catalina is at its brightest

A Soyuz TMA-17M spacecraft lifts off from a launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome on July 23, 2015.

Russia Scraps Space Agency for a State-Run Corporation

Russia's federal space agency will soon be no more

Screenshot from “The story of space debris” showing the Earth's cluttered space in 2015.

Jettison Through Nearly 60 Years of Space Junk Accumulation

People have been leaving a mess out in Earth's orbit

China’s Lunar Rover Discovered a New Kind of Moon Rock

The Yutu Rover has discovered a type of basalt unlike anything else ever found on the moon

Astronomers have discovered strange chemicals in interstellar objects like the Horsehead Nebula.

Scientists Are Searching for Space Chemicals That Could Never Exist on Earth

Bizarre chemicals in deep space could help explain the origins of life

Watch a NASA Scientist School the Empire on How to Build a Better Death Star

Darth Vader could have saved a few dollars by building it around an asteroid

Poltergeist and Quijote Are Among the New Approved Names for Alien Planets

People in 45 countries submitted ideas for naming exoplanets and their host stars after legends and literature

An artist's illustration of a planet-like body in the Kuiper belt.

A Brief History of the Hunt for Planet X

The flutter over a possible new world beyond Neptune highlights the long, legitimate search for planets in the solar system's fringe

Surprising bright spots lurking in Ceres’ Occator crater, as spotted by the Dawn spacecraft

We Finally May Know the Cause of Ceres’ Bright Spots

It's not aliens

An artist's depiction of the Akatsuki spacecraft in orbit around Venus.

Japan’s Akatsuki Spacecraft May Finally Be Orbiting Venus

The five-year wait is over (almost)

An artist's rendition of what the Juno spacecraft will look like as it flies by Jupiter

NASA Needs Your Help Snapping and Processing Images of Jupiter

The public will help direct JunoCam as it twirls past Jupiter next July

The LISA Pathfinder probe on display in September, 2015.

A Space-Based Physics Lab Could Help Scientists Study How Gravity Warps Spacetime

The LISA Pathfinder Probe could help reveal the ripples caused by black holes and supernovae

The volcano Sapas Mons rises over the landscape in a computer generated image of Venus based on data from the Magellan spacecraft.

Venus May Have Surprisingly Youthful Skin

Based on a new analysis of its impact-driven blemishes, the surface of our sister planet may be much younger than thought

Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev and President Ronald Reagan at the Geneva Summit.

Reagan and Gorbachev Agreed to Pause the Cold War in Case of an Alien Invasion

The 40th President of the United States was a big science-fiction fan

How NASA's Flight Plan Described the Apollo 11 Moon Landing

A second-by-second guide to the historic mission

The Pleiades Star Cluster

Look to the Skies This Month for the Pleiades Star Cluster

The Seven Sisters will shine bright from dusk till dawn for the rest of November

A new exoplanet was discovered by telescopes at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory

A New Earth-Sized Planet Is Getting Astronomers Riled Up

It could be a rare opportunity for scientists to study an exoplanet’s atmosphere

Soon, space miners could lay claim to minerals in asteroids like this one.

Get Your Pickaxe and Spacecraft Ready, Space Mining Might be Legal Very Soon

The new Space Act would open up the potentially lucrative field of asteroid mining

A painted wooden coffin beside a looted tomb in the Abu Sir al Malaq necropolis in Bani Suef, Egypt.

This Ingenious Archaeologist Uses Satellites to Hunt Down Tomb Raiders

Can satellite imagery help protect humanity's priceless artifacts?

Mars' Gravity Is Slowly Shredding Its Moon Phobos

Telltale grooves on the moon's surface are an early sign of Phobos' grim fate

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