Space Travel

The image of Antares captures by VLTI

This Is the Best Image of a Star Beyond Our Solar System (Yet)

A detailed convection map of the red supergiant Antares is spectacular, but it also shows we don't know everything that's going on

Astronauts traveling to Mars may be able to pack a little lighter with microbes that could make nutrients and the building blocks of plastic.

Could Astronauts Harvest Nutrients From Their Waste?

A new study suggests that modified yeast feeding on human waste can make useful byproducts for long missions in space

Scott Kelly upon his return to Earth.

Scott Kelly's Journey Home After His Year in Space

America’s longest-orbiting astronaut describes his rocky return to Earth in this adaptation from his book 'Endurance'

Astronaut Sunita Williams enjoying ice cream the last time it was sent to the International Space Station in 2012

ISS Astronauts Get a Sweet Taste of Real Ice Cream

The latest shipment to the station includes some frozen goodness for the crew

Voyager 1 is currently zipping along at around 38,000 miles per hour​ nearly 13 billion miles from Earth.

Send a Birthday Message to Voyager 1, Humanity's Most Distant Traveler

To mark its 40th anniversary, NASA is asking for your help crafting a message

The LEM model missing from the Armstrong Museum

Thieves Steal Solid Gold Lunar Lander Model From Armstrong Museum

The five-inch model was created by Cartier as tribute from French newspaper readers to the Apollo 11 astronaut

The Aurora Australis as seen from the International Space Station in 2011

Astronaut Captures 'Awesome Sauce' of Aurora From Space

Humans have been amazed for millennia by these atmospheric events

There are mind-bogglingly vast quantities of alcohol in outer space. Sadly, it's so dispersed you’d have to travel half a million light years to make a pint of beer.

Guess What? Space is Full of Booze

We’ll toast to that

Colors on this satellite image show areas where water was detected in ancient pyroclastic flows on the Moon's surface

Water May Lurk Beneath the Moon's Surface

The surprising abundance of water could help future lunar settlers survive in the barren landscape

Looking out at Earth from the Cupola Observation Module of the International Space Station on Google Street View

Explore the International Space Station With Google Street View

An astronaut and Google mapped the ISS for Street View with a DSLR and a lot of patience

Apollo 11 Moon Rock Bag Sells for $1.8 Million in Controversial Auction

NASA waged an unsuccessful legal battle to retrieve the bag, which contains traces of lunar dust, from a private collection

The Mars Rover Concept Vehicle was created as a traveling exhibit to inspire future space explorers.

A Vehicle Like This Will One Day Go to Mars

For now, the prototype rover—part tank, part Batmobile—is destined for Washington, D.C.

An artist's rendering of a star colliding with the surface of a supermassive sphere. In recent years some scientists have surmised that black holes may be hard objects rather than a region of intense gravity and compressed matter.

Could You Crash Into a Black Hole?

Probably not, but it’s fun to think about

Adorable Drone Helps Document Experiments on the International Space Station

Cute as a button, the Int-Ball is taking over astronauts’ photographic duties

Researchers tested the fungus that grew in this isolated habitat as four people lived in it for a month.

Space-Bound Humans Bring Fungus Aboard—And the Stowaways Could Cause Trouble

Microscopic life is everywhere, but it could be dangerous for future astronauts bound for Mars

Georgia Tech engineers Glaucio Paulino and Jerry Qi show two of their 3-D printed "tensegrity" structures that fold flat and build themselves up with heat. These are just proofs of concept, but Qi and Paulino predict that structures like this could be used to build space habitats or heart stents.

Print, Then Heat for Self-Assembling Space Stations

With special ‘memory’ polymers, stents and space habitats could one day build themselves

The Bonneville Crater on Mars

Mars Surface May Be Too Toxic for Microbial Life

The combination of UV radiation and perchlorates common on Mars could be deadly for bacteria

This flatworm fragment went to space and became a double-headed worm.

What Space-Faring Flatworms Can Teach Us About Human Health

Their experiment had some weird results—and could one day help humans thrive in microgravity and back here on Earth

The astronauts of "2001: A Space Odyssey" hide in a pod to discuss the troubling behavior of their spacecraft's artificial intelligence, HAL 9000. In the background, HAL is able to read their lips.

When We Go to Mars, Will We Have a Real-Life HAL 9000 With Us?

How generations of NASA scientists were inspired by an evil Hollywood supercomputer

How NASA Cut Costs With a New Kind of Spacecraft

With budgets for space exploration falling toward the end of the 1960s, NASA began to make plans for a new kind of reusable spacecraft to save money

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