Backyard astronomers watching the Perseid meteor shower last month saw meteoroids hitting not only Earth but also the Moon. They recorded the impacts using backyard telescopes and off-the-shelf cameras, showing that "lunar meteors" are easy targets for amateur observatories and
What if you woke up one morning and found your whole planet had been swallowed by the atmosphere of a star? Don't laugh, it could happen to you, and NASA has a special program to deal with it.
There are places on the Moon where the sun hasn't shined for millions of years, inky-dark places that may harbor a treasure of great value. NASA's is about to light one of them up.
Have you ever stared up at the night sky, felt a gentle breeze, and wished you could set sail for the stars? Get in line. Many great thinkers from history have had the same idea. This long-held fancy could soon
This Friday, August 1st, millions of people in China will witness a well-publicized total eclipse of the sun. Less widely reported is the partial eclipse, which *billions* of people across a quarter of the globe can observe and enjoy.
Researchers have discovered what powers brilliant outbursts of Northern Lights: gigantic plasma bullets launched toward Earth by explosions 1/3rd of the way to the Moon.
The sun is entering its 3rd year of eerie calm. Sunspots are rare and solar flares simply aren't happening. Is this "solar minimum" lasting longer than it should? A NASA scientist has examined centuries of sunspot data to find the
Mix moondust with epoxy, add a dash of carbon nanotubes, and spin. The result? A parabolic mirror perfectly suited for a lunar observatory. A NASA scientist has discovered this new recipe for making telescopes out of moondust, and to prove
Mercury's magnetic field is "alive." Volcanic vents ring the planet's giant Caloris basin while the planet itself is surrounded by a plasma nebula of unexpected complexity.
This summer, NASA engineers will try to realize a dream older than the Space Age itself: the deployment of a working solar sail in Earth orbit. The name of the device is NanoSail-D and it is scheduled for launch onboard
In 1967, Surveyor 3 landed on the Moon. Two years later, Apollo astronauts visited the little unmanned spacecraft and brought pieces of it home to Earth. Now, a portion of Surveyor's robotic arm, the scoop it used to sample moondust,
NASA's Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST for short) left Earth onboard a Delta II rocket. "The entire GLAST Team is elated," reports program manager Kevin Grady of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "The observatory is now on-orbit and all
