It's green, makes children cry and could soon become galactic. No, it's not a bloodthirsty martian preparing to invade Earth. It's lettuce. Mars One, a controversial, to send humans to Mars by 2025, is holding a on what to send to Mars on its proposed unmanned mission in 2018. (MORE: ) One team is aggressively lobbying to grow lettuce on the red planet. Marketing their plan as #LettuceOnMars, a group of seven students from the University of Southampton Spaceflight Society...

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory snapped this picture of the Sun on Jan. 1, 2015. (NASA/SDO) Okay, it's not a literal hole. And the sky isn't falling either. On Jan. 1, NASA noticed that its Solar Dynamics Observatory satellite had snapped a surprising image of the sun. (MORE: ) In the picture above, what looks like a massive chunk of Sun missing is actually a coronal hole. As NASA explains in a blog post, , its distinctive aura, where the star's...

On the first morning of the New Year, NASA captured one of the first images of Earth in 2015. The photograph, which is focused on the Americas, was part of NASA's celebratory New Year’s message on Twitter: GOES-East, a weather satellite , captured the image from its position above the Western Hemisphere. With four current operational satellites, the GOES system provides vital environmental data that informs weather forecasts and storm tracking. (MORE:) Images of Earth’s disc may seem mundane today,...

Comet Lovejoy, first spotted in August 2014, will make its closest pass to Earth on January 7. In this photo, gas from the comet provides a green tint. (Damian Peach/SEN) A celestial surprise is coming at the end of the New Year's first week, and the man behind its discovery has an interesting background. Australian Terry Lovejoy has a prolific record among amateur astronomers. To date, the Queensland native , all using relatively simple equipment compared to what you'd find...

April 24 marks the 25th anniversary of the Hubble Telescope. To celebrate, NASA and the European Space Agency, which jointly run the telecope, released this image of the star cluster Westerlund 2. (NASA/ESA/Hubble Heritage Team/A. Nota/Westerlund 2 Science Team) To earn a name like “Pillars of Creation” requires something pretty spectacular. When in 1995 the Hubble telescope snapped a shot of three wispy gas columns enshrouded in light from a nearby group of stars, the structures in the Eagle Nebula...

A full moon rises behind Glastonbury Tor as people gather to celebrate the summer solstice on June 20, 2016 in Somerset, England. Last night's strawberry moon, a name given to the full moon in June by Native Americans because it marks the beginning of strawberry picking season, last occurred on the solstice on June 22, 1967 and it will not happen again on the summer solstice for another 46 years until June 21, 2062. (Matt Cardy/Getty Images) By the end...

An artist’s concept of an Earth-like planet orbiting an evolved star that has formed a "planetary nebula." Earlier in its life, this planet may have been like one of the eight newly discovered worlds orbiting in the habitable zones of their stars. (David A. Aguilar/CfA) The hunt for more just hit pay dirt. Astronomers have discovered eight more planets in the “Goldilocks” zone of their stars, meaning they orbit close enough that their surfaces could hold water and they get...

SpaceX successfully launched its Falcon 9 rocket early Saturday morning in Cape Canaveral, Florida, but failed to complete the experimental portion of its mission. As NBC News reports, , which was successful. SpaceX and founder Elon Musk had planned to make space travel history by maneuvering the first stage of the rocket to land on a platform 200 miles off the Florida coast. In that regard, SpaceX was unsuccessful: By landing the first stage of the rocket, SpaceX would...

Take a good look, because we’ll never see this space rock again in our lifetime. Asteroid 2004 BL86 is set to make its closest approach to Earth on Monday, Jan. 26, from our planet, according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. That’s more than three times the distance between Earth and the moon, so there is no threat to all us little Earthlings. NASA also said the asteroid is about a third of a mile large, based on brightness estimates. A...

International Space Station’s Canadarm2 is used to help astronaut Steve Robinson during the mission’s third session of extravehicular activity on Aug. 3, 2005. (NASA) All that kept Ed White from drifting off into space was a 25-foot cord, wrapped in gold tape. The astronaut and Air Force Lieutenant Colonel, pilot for NASA’s Gemini IV mission, made history on June 3, 1965, when he conducted the first Extravehicular Activity or EVA by an American. Clad in a spacesuit and carrying a...

SpaceX released new footage of Saturday’s Falcon 9 rocket failed landing, which ended in a fiery explosion that rocked the Atlantic Ocean. The rocket launched Saturday, Jan. 10, and delivered over 5,000 pounds of cargo to the ISS. After it completed this stage of its mission, the rocket was supposed to land on a platform sitting atop an “” 200 miles off the Florida coast, NBC reported. The attempted landing was unsuccessful. Going into the flight, SpaceX acknowledged in a...

It's Earth, but not as we know it.This stunning footage was shot by European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst while on board the International Space Station. The six-minute film is a compilation of 12,500 photographs taken at regular intervals during Gerst's five-month stint in orbit as a flight engineer. Gerst fitted cameras to the craft during his mission. (MORE: ) Gerst's photos included views of the Milky Way, the auroras, lightning and cities at night. We think they're out of...