(NASA) Two incredible events could be seen from the : the launch ofNASA's Black Brant IX sounding rocket and the colorful, glowing clouds of barium vapor it produces, according to NASA. If the weather cooperates, at 7 p.m. EDT from the Wallops Island Flight Facility in Virginia. The liftoff could potentially create several multicolored patches of light that can be seen, along with the rocket, for people on the coast in the Middle Atlantic and Northeast United States. "Residents from...

There's one thing Pluto has in common with our Earth: a blue sky. NASA's New Horizons spacecraft studied the dwarf planet over the summer, and the ship collected so much data and imagery that the administration's scientists are still sifting through it all. In an image released Thursday, we can see in color for the first time that Pluto's skies are bright blue. Pluto’s haze layer shows its blue color in this picture taken by the New Horizons Ralph/Multispectral Visible...

Billions of years ago, a network of lakes on Mars was capable of storing water for an extended period of time, NASA scientists have found. In a Thursday news release, the team behind NASA's Mars Science Laboratory and the Curiosity rover . The information the team has gathered from the Curiosity rover shows water helped carry sediment, which was then deposited into Gale Crater. Over years, that sediment became the foundation for Mount Sharp, which is found in the middle...

All of the images in this gallery were taken by ISS astronaut Scott Kelly during a single pass over Australia. (Twitter/Scott Kelly) Astronaut Scott Kelly is spending an entire year aboard the International Space Station, and he's seeing some things on our own planet that look extraterrestrial. Over the past few days, he's been posting a series of 17 images to his Twitter page that he captured during a single pass over Australia. In these images, which you can view...

Between the constellations of Cygnus and Lyra sits an uncommon star, which the naked eye can’t see, but the Kepler Space Telescope has been watching for about six years. The Kepler telescope searches for Earth-like planets in the Milky Way and has located over a thousand planets since its 2009 launch, . It keeps track of the brightness of stars and looks for little dips in light patterns that indicate an orbiting planet. The best method for watching the star...

An asteroid that was discovered just two weeks ago is expected to make its nearest pass to Earth on Halloween and will be closer to our planet . Identified as 2015 TB145, it , according to the administration's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Measuring somewhere between 920 and 2,034 feet in diameter, it's about the size of a large skyscraper, Gizmodo also said. An artist's rendition of an asteroid making a close pass with Earth. (Thinkstock/iStock) But don't worry. This asteroid is...

The Orionid meteor shower is set to peak this week. The best views, if your weather cooperates, will come overnight Wednesday into Thursday. These are the 5 things you need to know about the Orionid meteor shower. (MORE:) 5. The meteors are actually debris from the Comet Halley Halley's Comet hasn’t paid Earth a visit since 1986, but pieces of the famous space rock still show up every fall. , according to Earth Sky. Pieces of the comet disintegrate in...

A chunk of space debris orbiting the earth will crash back onto our planet Nov. 13, according to astronomers. Named , the floating clutter was detected by the Catalina Sky Survey, a program focused on discovering asteroids and comets close to the earth,and is likely hollow, reports the European Space Agency (ESA). Astronomers have been frenzied over WT1190F’s arrival because it gives them a rare opportunity to , Gizmodo reports. It also provides a chance to test a coordinated network...

Skywatchers, look up: The night sky promises another spectacular show. The annual Hunter's Moon peaks Monday and Tuesday, Oct. 26 and 27, in the Northern Hemisphere. The full moon officially arrives at 12:05 UTC, or 8:05 a.m. EDT the morning of Oct. 27. That means that the moon you'll see Monday night will be just as full as Tuesday's orb, even though Tuesday's moon will have officially started waning, . (MORE: ) This year's Hunter's is , meaning it's near...

NASA astronauts Scott Kelly and Kjell Lindgren are scheduled to perform a six-and-a-half hour spacewalk outside the International Space Station on Wednesday, in an attempt to upgrade the station and perform required maintenance, the administration said. Kelly will take command of the spacewalk, as he is the more senior member of the space station; he will be the first to depart the ship , according to Time. Plans for the spacewalk have been in development for several months, the report...

For the first time ever, scientists have detected oxygen on a comet, a discovery that could challenge theories about the solar system’s formation. The international team of researchers published their findings in Wednesday, stating that an unexpectedly large amount of molecular oxygen was found in the cloud of gas, or coma, surrounding comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko’s nucleus. The discovery was made by the , an instrument aboard the Rosetta spacecraft, which has been tailing the comet since August 2014, reports the Los...

When the Cassini spacecraft made its pass by Saturn’s moon Enceladus, it recorded jets of water spraying from tiger stripe gashes on the moon’s icy surface, placing the colorless satellite at the top of the list of places to look for alien life.What the streams of water told astrobiologists was that there was an ocean underneath the planet’s uninviting surface, kept warm by tidal heating; the rotational energy that's dissipated as heat into the planet's interior. With that said, alien...