NASA’s four year Kepler mission to search thousands of stars in the Milky Way galaxy for sun-like stars with planets that resemble the Earth has encountered a serious technical problem. A second of the four rapidly spinning internal “reaction wheels” that aim and steady the observatory has stopped turning, NASA announced late Wednesday. At [...]

NASA’s Smartphone Nanosatellite mission is underway. Now circling the Earth are Alexander, Graham and Bell! The trio of smartphones rode to space April 21 aboard the maiden flight of Orbital Science Corp.’s Antares rocket from NASA’s Wallops Island Flight Facility in Virginia. The PhoneSats that are operating in orbit may prove to be the lowest-cost [...]

  Launched four year ago, NASA’s Kepler space telescope is narrowing an unprecedented search for alien planets similar to the Earth. On Thursday, astronomers announced the discovery of three “Super Earths” circling in the habitable zones of two distant stars, one of them quite like the sun. Than means liquid water, an essential ingredient for [...]

Howardites and eucrites are meteorite classifications, both of which are providing surprising clues to solar system-wide impact bombardment billions of years ago. New research unveils an unexpected link between asteroid Vesta and the Moon, providing new means for studying the early bombardment history of the terrestrial planets. According to the Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI) [...]

At 8:30 p.m. today (your local time), many people, organizations and landmarks around the world will observe Earth Hour by turning off their lights for an hour to raise awareness regarding climate change and our planet’s sustainability. From the Empire State Building in New York, to the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to [...]