SUNSET: 
Curiosity Digs In During Drill Test
Six months after landing inside Gale crater, NASA's beefy rover finished the last major equipment check when it drilled deeply into a Martian rock.
(Really) Cool View of Andromeda Galaxy
Nearing the end of its mission, ESA's Herschel Space Observatory has delivered a highly detailed map of extremely cold gas and dust in the iconic Andromeda Galaxy.
NuSTAR’s New Views
NASA’s newest high-energy X-ray telescope has released two stunning images of a stellar explosion and ravenous black holes.
NGC 6872: The Largest Spiral Galaxy
Our Milky Way ranks near the top in the pecking order of spiral galaxies, but it's no match for an enormous "island universe" in the constellation Pavo that is more than 500,000 light-years across.
Kepler Zeroes in on Alien Earths
NASA's Kepler space observatory is finally achieving its goal of finding many Earth-size exoplanets with surface temperatures suitable for liquid water — and thus potentially habitable.
Kepler Hits Planet Bonanza?
Kepler observations have revealed several thousand potential planetary transits. The results are preliminary, but if they hold up there could be more than 200 habitable planets in the mix.
Toutatis Revealed by Chinese Spacecraft
Chang'e 2, a Chinese spacecraft that was orbiting the Moon 18 months ago, has wowed space-watchers around the world by returning detailed images of asteroid 4179 Toutatis taken during a close-in, high-speed flyby.
On the 40th Anniversary of Apollo 17
Forty years after the last human visitors departed the Moon aboard Apollo 17, space historian Andrew Chaikin talks about why we should return.
Gravity Probes "See" Deep Lunar Secrets
Just by circling the Moon every 2 hours while keeping hyper-accurate track of each other's motions, twin spacecraft named Ebb and Flow have mapped the lunar gravity field in unprecedented detail — and opened a window on the Moon's ancient, battered interior.
Van Allen Probes Peek at Radiation Belts
The twin Van Allen Probes have only been spaceborne for 60 days, but they’ve already returned heaps of data about the radiation belts, whose "killer electrons" endanger satellites.
Voyager's On-ramp to Interstellar Space
Now more than 11 billion miles from home, NASA's long-lived interplanetary probe is immersed in a flow of particles coming directly from beyond the heliosphere — an experience that mission scientists have hoped for since the 1970s.
Curiosity Gets a Whiff of Organic Matter
When NASA's newest rover cooked up its first samples of Martian soil, one instrument reported finding traces of organic molecules. But they're probably false alarms, say mission scientists.
Mercury's Polar Ice Defies the Odds
Today scientists confirmed a suspicion raised some 20 years ago: despite all logic to the contrary, the hellish planet Mercury is hiding substantial deposits of water ice in its polar regions.
A Problem with Pluto's Moons
The discovery of two tiny moons circling the most famous "dwarf planet" has raised concerns that the New Horizons spacecraft might be endangered when it flies by in July 2015.
Curiosity Finds Ancient Streambed
NASA's newest rover has found strong evidence near its landing site inside Gale crater that vigorous steams of liquid water once flowed across the Martian surface.
Much Ado at Mars
It's a great time to be a Red Planet researcher. Right now three orbiters and two rovers — including the increasingly mobile Curiosity — are checking out Earth's planetary neighbor from very close range.
Charting a Course for Heliophysics
A new report by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences examines how studies of the Sun and its influence on Earth have advanced in the past decade and makes recommendations for what should be tackled next.
Dawn Bids Vesta Adieu
With a gentle, constant nudge from its ion-propulsion system, NASA's asteroid explorer has departed its first target and begins a 2½-year cruise to the second one.
WISE Detects Blazing Black Holes
Astronomers using data from the WISE all-sky infrared survey have discovered a new class of luminous galaxies in the distant universe. These objects are rare, super-duper bright, and yet totally invisible in visible light.
Neil Armstrong, 1930 - 2012
The man who took humanity's first step on another world is no longer among us.
