The latest discovery made by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is the trail left behind by a giant boulder that rolled down a hill on the Red Planet. NASA analysis of the rock's shadow suggests that the boulder is about 20 feet tall and 11.5 feet wide. The trail carved out by the boulder, which landed upright, is visible from space. "The boulder's trail down the slope is about one-third of a mile long," the space agency said. "The trail has...

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has captured an eruption of dust around a young star, possibly the collision of two large asteroids, which scientists say could lead to the birth of planets. "We think two big asteroids crashed into each other, creating a huge cloud of grains the size of very fine sand, which are now smashing themselves into smithereens and slowly leaking away from the star," lead author and graduate student Huan Meng of the University of Arizona, Tucson, said...

An asteroid scientists discovered only a few days ago will buzz Earth this weekend. At its closest approach, the 60-foot space rock will pass a safe 25,000 miles over New Zealand at 2:18 EDT Sunday, NASA says. That's about one-tenth the distance between here and the moon. It's also beyond the orbit of our highest communication and weather satellites. (MORE: Six Ideas For Cleaning Up Space Junk) Asteroid 2014 RC was discovered on Aug. 31 by the Catalina Sky Survey...

Get ready for the last supermoon of the year! Skywatchers can see the full moon, also called the Harvest Moon, this month, beginning Monday evening. While clearer skies will settle in from Oklahoma and Texas into the Mississippi Valley through New England, rain over the Southeast and Southwest will make for poor viewing conditions in person. That's why weather.com is bringing you a live feed from Slooh.com, above, which is presented by the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands,...

A small meteorite crashed into a wooded area in Nicaragua'scapital of Managuaovernight, the government said Sunday. Residents reported hearing a mysterious boom that left a 16-foot deep crater near the city's airport, the Associated Press reports. Government spokeswoman Rosario Murillo said a committee formed by the government to study the event determined it was a "relatively small" meteorite that "appears to have come off an asteroid that was passing close to Earth." House-sized asteroid2014 RC, which measured 60 feet in...

There's a storm coming, but this one isn't brewing in our own atmosphere. An extreme solar flare is heading toward Earth –one the size of which scientists say they haven't seen coming from the middle of the sun in years. The solar storm could interfere with power grids, satellites and radio transmissions, and even though these events are common and don't directly harm humans, this particular flare is disconcerting because of its strength and location on the sun,said Tom Berger,...

In a bid to fly astronauts commercially from the United States by 2017, NASA has awarded contracts worth $6.8 billion to private aerospace companies SpaceX and Boeing. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden announced the winners during a news conference at Kennedy Space Center in Florida after weeks of anticipation.“We’re one step closer to launching our astronauts on U.S. soil in American spacecraft,” Bolden said during the conference. Since retiring its space shuttles in 2011, NASA has relied on costly Russian Soyuz...

Forget the repairman– astronauts aboard the International Space Station will soon be able to make their own spare parts using a 3-D printer. NASA expects to put the first printer of its kind into orbit in a matter of hours. Made by northern California company Made in Space, the 3-D printer will be sent up along with some 5,000 pounds of cargo inside the SpaceX Dragon capsule. It was supposed to launch Saturday morning, but rainy weather forced the delay...

San Francisco Surface temperatures of the nearby Pacific Ocean remain chilly year round - in the mid-50s. In contrast, the California landmass is often much warmer. Onshore flow sets up, and as air moves over the Pacific toward land, water vapor within it cools, condenses, and forms a dense deck of fog. (NASA/Windows on Earth) It's not always the clear days that give us the best images of Earth from the International Space Station. Sometimes, the cloudy days can be...

A Neptune-size planet with a clear atmosphere is shown crossing in front of its star in this artist's depiction. (NASA/JPL-Caltech) Astronomers have made a huge discovery– a planet, outside our solar system that has clear skies and water vapor. The planet is called HAT-P-11b, and it is located 120 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus, according to NASA. It was discovered by astronomers using three NASA space telescopes: Hubble, Spitzer and Kepler, the report added. "This discovery is a significant...

India's space program has officially entered rarified air. The newcomer to the space race successfully placed a satellite into Mars' orbit Wednesday, and scientists referred to the final stage of the mission as "flawless," according to the Associated Press. "We have gone beyond the boundaries of human enterprise and innovation," Prime Minister Narendra Modisaid in a live broadcast from theIndian Space and Research Organization's research center in Bangalore, the AP also reported. (PHOTOS: This Project Lets Us See Weather From...

India's mission to Mars now has photo evidence. The newcomer to the space race successfully placed a satellite into Mars' orbit Wednesday, and scientists referred to the final stage of the mission as "flawless," according to the Associated Press. "We have gone beyond the boundaries of human enterprise and innovation," Prime Minister Narendra Modisaid in a live broadcast from theIndian Space and Research Organization's research center in Bangalore, the AP also reported. (PHOTOS: This Project Lets Us See Weather From...