Since 1995, when the first extrasolar planet was reported, the number of detections has increased to roughly 750 newly found worlds. All of these planets orbit stars. But a very few, if any, have been deemed potential candidates for life. New work by an international team of astrobiologists suggests a few hundred thousand billion free-floating [...]

  Orbiter Discovery now belongs to the Smithsonian Institution’s Air and Space Museum and the American people. The spacecraft’s official transfer from NASA to the famed museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles International Airport  in suburban Washington D. C. unfolded in ceremonies o Thursday morning. The orbiter launched 39 times between 1984 and 2011. Discovery’s [...]

NASA has extended nine of the agency’s astrophysics missions – programs like Kepler and Hubble that probe the cosmos in search of answers to some of the our most profound questions – how did the universe originate, how did it evolve, are there other planets like the Earth, is there life elsewhere? The extenstion in [...]

Talk about senatorial splendor! You couldn’t do any better given a new honor that recognizes United States Senator from Maryland, Barbara A. Mikulski. One of the world’s largest astronomy archives has been named in her honor. Called MAST, for the Barbara A. Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes, the huge database contains astronomical observations from 16 NASA [...]

  Ever find yourself outside on a clear night, looking out at the cosmos wondering what it would be like to fly really close to the stars? Maybe,  someday. But a contest involving the Hubble Space Telescope, a 22-year-old collaboration between NASA and the European Space Agency, offers the next best thing. Hubble operators at [...]