Space & Astronomy News

BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan - A Soyuz spacecraft with two Americans and a Russian on board lifted off from Kazakhstan on Sunday for the international space station.

BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan (Reuters) - Google co-founder Sergey Brin, considering going into space on a private flight, made a surprise visit to Russia's Baikonur cosmodrome on Saturday to wish good luck to a fellow space tourist.

American space tourist Richard Garriott, the son of a former NASA astronaut, rocketed into orbit early Sunday aboard a Russian spacecraft alongside two professional spaceflyers to become the first second-generation American astronaut to launch toward the International Space Station.

HOUSTON - As the commander of the next Soyuz launch to the International Space Station, Yuri Lonchakov was in charge of designing a patch to represent his three-person crew.

A new crew is poised to launch to the International Space Station early Sunday to help outfit the laboratory for double-sized occupancy.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US space agency NASA said Friday it still plans to launch an ambitious mission to Mars late next year despite technical hurdles and budget difficulties.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - NASA needs more money to resolve problems with its next Mars mission and keep it on track for launch next year, and is gambling that the U.S. Congress will find the extra funds, officials said on Friday.

LOS ANGELES - NASA said Friday it will press ahead with plans to launch a supersized rover to Mars next year despite spiraling costs and schedule pressures.

NASA will push ahead with its plan for an October 2009 launch of the already over-budget Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) despite ongoing technical and schedule difficulties all but certain to push the cost of the mission past $2 billion.

NASA engineers are finalizing plans to resuscitate the ailing Hubble Space Telescope, which has been unable to beam home its trademark iconic images of the universe for weeks due to equipment failure.

The master bathroom for three astronauts aboard the International Space Station is on the fritz again just days before a trio of new spaceflyers are due to launch toward the orbiting lab, NASA officials said Friday.

DUBAI (AFP) - Computer hackers claiming to be Shiite shut down the website of Saudi-owned satellite channel Al-Arabiya on Friday, a month after Iran reported similar attacks on many of its websites by hardline Sunnis.

Former NASA astronaut Owen Garriott is proud of his son Richard and with good reason. After all, it’s not every day a child follows his father’s footsteps all the way to space.

CHICAGO - A World War II-era air traffic network that often forces planes to take longer, zigzagging routes is costing U.S. airlines billions of dollars in wasted fuel while an upgrade to a satellite-based system has languished in the planning stages for more than a decade.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Hundreds of houses in ethnic Georgian villages in South Ossetia were torched in August, after Russian troops took control of the area, according to an analysis of satellite images released on Thursday.

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - Satellites are helping scientists expand a virtual network to watch for increases in ocean temperatures that can damage or kill the fragile ecosystems of coral reefs worldwide.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A Google-sponsored satellite has beamed its first picture back to Earth in a successful test of a camera that will supply images for the Internet giant's free online map and navigation services.

For generations, astronomers have argued over how the planets in our solar system were formed. Today, most theories assume that planets were formed in a nebula of gas and dust that condensed around what eventually became our sun, but there is still great disagreement over details, particularly for gas giant planets like Jupiter: Did a small core form first around which each planet condensed, or did instability in the nebula cause pockets to collapse directly into planets?

An American astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut are preparing to blast off from their home planet Sunday to fly to the International Space Station next week.

While we yearn to walk on other worlds, SETI Institute scientist Cynthia Phillips strolls the surfaces of distant planets each day at her computer. She's a planetary geologist on a quest to understand how liquids change the surfaces of other worlds. She studies Mars and the icy moons of the outer solar system, mapping the evolution of their surfaces. It's all part of the search for life beyond our home planet, Earth.

A NASA spacecraft is set to make the closest flyby yet of an icy moon of Saturn on Thursday.

WASHINGTON — NASA Administrator Mike Griffin credited Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama for spurring Congress to action on legislation allowing the U.S. space agency to buy the Russian Soyuz flights its needs to send astronauts to the international space station beyond 2011.

A small asteroid exploded over Africa this week following what astronomers said was the first firm prediction of an incoming space rock.

Bored of checking that stripped-down version of Facebook? Try space instead. NASA will phone home daily views of the infinite cosmos, as long as you're sporting a shiny new Apple iPhone and a neat new software application.

After more than four months on the arctic plains of the red planet, NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander's days are finally numbered.As the sun begins to set for the frigid Martian winter, the spacecraft will lose its energy supply, freeze and eventually fall into a mechanical coma from which it will likely never wake up.

Astronaut Gregory Chamitoff is taking on the world in a galactic chess match from his perch aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

LOS ANGELES - Will NASA's flagship mission to Mars fly next year? The space agency could decide as early as Friday whether to cancel, delay or proceed with plans to launch a nuclear-powered, SUV-size rover to the red planet.

WASHINGTON — NASA has no intention of paying Russia to help deliver supplies to the international space station (ISS) beyond 2011 despite winning congressional and presidential approval to do so.

A NASA probe has begun beaming back stunning new images from its successful second flyby of Mercury, the planet closest to the sun.