Russian Soyuz rocket launches a Soyuz TMA-12M capsule carrying NASA astronaut Steve Swanson and cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev toward the International Space Station on March 25 from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan. (NASA/Bill Ingalls) A Russian Soyuz spacecraft skipped a planned engine maneuver in orbit late Tuesday, forcing the its three-man crew to circle the Earth two extra days before reaching the International Space Station as planned, NASA officials say. The Soyuz TMA-12M space capsule launched into space Tuesday carrying...

Astrophotographer Mike Taylor sent Space.com this image of the Milky Way galaxy, planet Venus and a meteor burning up in the atmosphere over the Marshall Point Lighthouse in Port Clyde, Maine on March 4, 2014. The photo is one frame taken from a 2 ½-hour time lapse. (Mike Taylor/Taylor Photography ) A blazing meteor disintegrates across a glittering night sky with planet Venus and the Milky Way galaxy beaming brightly over a lighthouse in Maine in this stunning image recently...

April 12 has a special place in any calendar dedicated to the study of space. On April 12, 1981, a new era of space exploration took to the sky, as space shuttle Columbia lifted off on its inaugural flight, kicking off NASA’s space shuttle program. Columbia’s liftoff marked the 20th anniversary of the first-ever human spaceflight, the 1961 launch of the trip that made Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin the first human to enter outer space. (MORE: The Blood Moon Is...

A SpaceX supply ship delivered two tons of food, gear, experiments and care packages to the six men aboard the International Space Station on Sunday. Dragon, the name of the SpaceX company’s space capsule, chased the space station for two days following its Friday launch from Cape Canaveral, Fla. before astronauts captured it with a robotic arm. Neither NASA nor SpaceX packed any Easter goodies, but the families of the six astronauts sent private care packages. “Gentlemen, the Easter Dragon...

Photographer CJ Armitage of Brisbane, Australia captured this stunning view of the sunset solar eclipse on April 29, 2014 during the first solar eclipse of the year. (CJ Armitage) The moon took a bite out of the sun in the first solar eclipse of the year on Tuesday (April 29), a celestial ballet visible from Australia that captivated stargazers despite cloudy weather. Tuesday's solar eclipse was a "ring of fire" annular eclipse, but only for an uninhabited swath of Antarctica....

All components of Mars One's settlement are slated to reach their destination by 2021. The hardware includes two living units, two life-support units, a second supply unit and two rovers. (Bryan Versteeg/Mars One) Several hundred would-be Mars colonists have just had their hopes and dreams dashed. The Netherlands-based nonprofit Mars One, which aims to establish a Red Planet settlement beginning in 2025, announced May 5 that it had sliced its pool of potential colonists from 1,058 down to 705. The...

Keep an eye to the skies later this week. A rare and major meteor shower is expected to occur Friday night into early Saturday morning. The Camelopardalids meteor shower will peak early Saturday morning, between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. EDT, according to NASA. The shower could put on a quite a show. The meteor shower will happen when Earth passes through dust that was ejected from comet 209P/LINEAR in the 1800s, according to NASA. (MORE: New Experiment Could Turn...

Apollo Missions Training in Hawaii This 1971 image shows Apollo 17 astronauts, Harrison (Jack) Schmitt, left, and an unidentified man, training with the lunar roving vehicle on the Big Island of Hawaii. (NASA/AP) NASA has released photos from the early 1970s show astronauts from Apollo missions 13 through 17 taking a spin in the "moon buggy" and scooping up dirt on the Big Island of Hawaii. The Pacific International Space Center for Exploration Systems, a Hawaii state agency, is...

Using moon rock samples gathered from the Apollo missions more than 40 years ago, German scientists say they've finally found evidence that confirms the moon was created in the wake of a cataclysmic collision between Earth and an ancient planet known as Theia some 4.5 billion years ago. For decades, the theory, known as the giant impact hypothesis, has been the most widely accepted explanation for the moon's formation. The hypothesis holds that the collision between Earth and Theia, an...

An asteroid so big that astronomers have dubbed it "The Beast" will get perilously close to Earth this weekend, although it poses no chance of actually hitting the planet, NASA reports. The mammoth asteroid 2014 HQ124, which is as big as a football stadium, will zoom by Earth on June 8 around 1:56 a.m., according to Space.com. The Beast will barrel past Earth traveling up to 31,000 mph, but at a safe distance of three lunar distances away. (MORE: Ancient...

We can hear the superstitious locking their doors and closing the blinds. This week brings a full moon to begin Friday the 13th. This month's full moon rises Thursday, June 12, and will light the night, weather-depending, in the wee hours of Friday, June 13. But this moon is nothing to be scared of. In fact, we think it sounds a little sweet: the honey moon. (MORE: Incredible Solar Activity This Week) As weather.com's Matt Sampson explains in this video,...

A mock-up of what a future Mars colony might look like. (Photo: Mars One) Imagine waking up on another planet, the Earth is just a speck in the sky and Mars dust is under your feet. If SpaceX founder Elon Musk has his way, being a citizen on an alien planet could be a possibility in your lifetime, Discovery News reports. Musk hopes his company will be able to fly humans to Mars within the next 12 years. Of course,...